Captive Beauty

When I reach his door, I hear the sound of talking. I don’t recognize the voice, but it’s deep and scratchy, like a man who has been smoking for a long time. I wonder if Jones forgot about our dinner and, before the warning in my head registers, I knock on his door and call out his name, making some comment about how he’d better not stand me up.

But my voice trails off at the end of my own sentence. That’s when I know something isn’t right.

“Jones?” I ask a little more quietly as I lay my hand flat against the damaged wood.

The door opens a crack.

“Oh, there you are,” I start, relieved. But then I see his face. The look in his eyes. There’s a bruise forming on his right cheekbone and his lip is cut. I tilt my head trying to process. “What—”

Run.

He mouths that single word as a hand closes around the door, pulling it wide. A hulking man appears behind him, grabs me by the arm and hauls me inside. He thrusts my back against the wall and clamps his hand over my mouth.

“Fuck. Cilla. I’m sorry, I’m so—” But Jones doesn’t have a chance to finish his sentence because one of the two men in his apartment knocks the butt of a gun across his temple and Jones crumples to the floor.

I think I scream, but the sound is muffled by the big, meaty hand covering my mouth.

The man who knocked my brother out looks down at him, shakes his head once before turning his gaze to me. I cower, realizing then that I’m clawing uselessly at the arm of the one holding me to the wall.

“Wrong place, wrong time, honey,” he says, and the next thing I feel is a sharp pain at the back of my head. Lights explode in my vision before I feel myself slide down the wall and fall over, my eyes closing.

2

Kill

“What the fuck is this?” I’m sitting behind my desk watching the two figures on the monitor. They’re passed out, lying on the floor in the basement, hands bound behind their backs. The girl’s eyes are covered with a blindfold.

Hugo, the man in charge of the clowns who fucked up tonight, is shaking his head, watching the same monitor. “She walked in on them. Saw their faces. They got scared.”

I look at him, tilt my head to the side. “They got scared? What is this, fucking amateur night?” Hugo opens his mouth to answer but I put my hand up to stop him. “Never mind. Did you recover the bag?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, that’s something.” I turn back to the screen. “Who is she?” It’s only supposed to be that idiot Jones down there.

Hugo opens her wallet and hands me a driver’s license. Priscilla Hawking. Jones Hawking’s sister. I check her birth date. Twenty-four. She’s his kid sister.

I peer at the face smiling at me from the license then back at the screen. She’s passed out, and somewhere in transit, must have lost one of her shoes. She’s still got her coat on but it’s unbuttoned and her skirt’s ridden up to expose one slender thigh.

Jones’s body shifts a little. He’s waking up. I watch as he slowly blinks his eyes open and turns his head a little, surveying the ceiling. An instant later, he shoots upright. I smile. He knows where he is. Why he’s there. But then he sees his baby sister there, still passed out on the floor, and he starts crying like a fucking baby himself.

“Should I head down?” Hugo asks.

I almost forgot about him. “No. Give him a minute to appreciate his circumstances.” Because tonight, Jones is going to learn a valuable lesson.

I get to my feet. Hugo follows. I unzip the duffel bag my men retrieved and take a rough inventory of its contents. “All here?” I ask Hugo without looking at him.

“Looks to be.”

I’m fingering the slit in one of the bricks. “Tampered with.”

“He probably took a few hits but we got him when he arranged the sale.”

That’s how we found out it was Jones who’d stolen the bag. He tried to sell my coke back to one of my own men. Fucking idiot.

But Jones’s little stunt comes as a good lesson for me too. It reminds me that just because people fear you, doesn’t mean they’ll keep their sticky fingers out of your shit.

Tonight, I’ll make an example. Remind everyone what happens when you get greedy enough to steal from Killian Black.

I zip the duffel and glance again at the monitor. The girl creates a complication.

“Let’s go.”

Hugo follows me into the elevator and we ride it down to the main floor. The doors slide open and we step out into the nearly empty room. A girl is dancing on one of the stages and the manager sits watching her. She must be auditioning. I look over at her. Pretty, young, good looking, with a nice set of tits and a tight ass. She needs a little work in the dance department though.