Taken For A Debt: A Mafia Romance (The Taken Duet 1)

“At this point, if you’re interested in helping it might be reasonable for you to get in touch and ask her some questions,” I sa

id. “But not too probing, we don’t want her to blurt out the truth unless she’s having a change of heart. I can’t have anyone getting wise to my plans.”

Mother shifted on her feet. “What are your plans, Devin?”

“If I told you,” I said, not caring what I implied at this point, “it would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?”

Chapter Eighteen

I was ashamed of myself, but I spent about an hour in tears after they finally left me alone, shut into my room. The message they had sent to Devin made me sick. It was the way they’d looked as they took turns typing out the sentences, sniggering like teenagers delivering a sick burn over IM. Either he would send the money as requested to be done with the situation, and probably never think of me again except with contempt… or he might try to find me to thrash it out in person, in which case my parents were probably going to do something terrible to him.

The only solution was to get away, but when they were still in the house with me and I couldn’t climb out the window without alerting them, there didn’t seem to be a lot of options available. I was done with them, but not to the point where I would break their kneecaps or anything.

A knock at the door, dimly echoing through the rest of the house, had me on edge. As bad as it would be for me, I’d hoped he would just send the money and cut his losses.

But it couldn’t be Devin. As far as he should have known once he realised I’d ‘left’, I was most likely to have gone back to our usual house. The only other thing like a home I’d ever had. Then again, Devin probably knew exactly what other property my parents owned, and he just had to be smart enough to guess I hadn’t gone with them of my own free will to know he had to be careful.

I heard my father, dealing with some bewildered-sounding man who explained he’d just moved into the area. That happened fairly frequently when we were out here: regular idiots who’d just saved up enough money to get a shack in the area would think they were making a ‘tree change’ to some place where everyone was a stereotypical character on an Aussie TV show and actually wanted to be in all their distant neighbours’ business.

Then a tap on my window had me diving behind the foot of my bed. I peeked through the bars of the bedframe when no follow-up sound came… and popped right up in shock when I saw Devin standing out there.

He made an impatient gesture at the window, and I hurried to open it even though I had no idea how he was going to handle the alarm going off. I just had to trust that he would be able to manage whatever happened.

But when I unlatched the window and swung the two halves out, immediately taking five steps backwards into the room, the only sound that came in was a clearer version of our new neighbour’s spiel about his plans to install a security gate. Devin stared at me in silence for a moment, an uninterrupted vista of splendid suited man, and then climbed in through the window into the space I had vacated.

He closed and latched the window, pulled the little lace curtain that balanced the provision of light and privacy, and turned back to me.

“We will have to be quiet, Julia. I don’t intend for your parents to be aware I am here until I am ready.”

The clingy visitor who wasn’t put off by my anticharismatic dad. The silent alarm. I wondered just how deep Devin’s plans for dealing with this situation went.

Then all my courage abandoned me, and I flung myself at Devin, wrapping my arms around wherever I could and nuzzling into the nook provided by the closing V of his suit jacket. The thing was, I sensed immediately that I was getting far closer than I had before. It was like my angles suddenly matched all of his much more perfectly, instead of him turning every possible way to dislodge me. I could feel his heartbeat, strong and regular against my ear, and the warmth from his body warmed me as he folded his arms over my back.

“I never wanted to just leave like that,” I murmured. “And I would never have demanded money from you if I did.”

“We did agree that money was yours,” said Devin. “I would not have judged you harshly for insisting on it, but I realise you did not, would not, and that is a piece of the puzzle you are to me.”

“I’ve always tried to be straightforward,” I protested, stepping back.

Devin nodded. I couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with what I had said or simply taking it in. “I have probably not understood you as well as I could have. Certainly I did not appreciate how significant it was for you to have maintained such humanity in the family you have grown up in.”

I stifled the laugh his words surprised out of me. “If you see humanity in me then I think you still don’t understand what I am.”

“No, I understand very well. You are trapped in the middle of two worlds, and you will never be able to reach either from where you have started. That is what I saw in you from our first meeting—and I think you have come to understand that the same is true of me. If we are together, and not at odds, we can construct a world for ourselves that will protect us from those other worlds neither of us completely fits into.”

He put his hands on my shoulders and walked me back, leading me over to my bed. Even his posture when he sat alongside me was different to how he had sat next to me before.

I found now that I was the wary one. Why were we not getting as much distance as we could from my parents while they were unaware of what was going on? There could be no good outcome from confronting them at this point.

“So,” I spoke up, pushing through my suddenly dry, croaky throat, “when does your second kidnapping of me start?”

“I am going to walk out of your bedroom with you for the second time,” Devin said. “I will show them as many times as it takes that I can make our situation personal if they insist on making it personal.”

“So it is personal,” I observed.

Devin cocked his head, listening. Now distant again, the voice of the ‘neighbour’ droned on. “We only have a short time to cover this,” he said.

“I don’t understand why they are letting him go on like that.” I couldn’t help putting the question out there. “They usually won’t allow anyone to waste their time.”