BOW DOWN: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Barone Crime Family) (19 page)

T
he door is locked
. It’s always locked when he’s around.

I can’t remember anymore who I was trying to keep out. The people chasing after us, or him, my dangerous stepbrother. They want to cut our throats and leave us for dead, or at least that’s what he says. I don’t know what I believe anymore.

The last time I saw him, he was a thief, a criminal, famous in our town for being good at cards and boosting cars. His smile could melt diamonds, and his body was ripped and smooth. Our parents may have been dating, but he was as different from me as possible.

Now though, now I don’t know what he is. The smile is still there, the body is still there, but there’s a new weight to him, a new darkness. He doesn’t seem like the same man that left us all those years ago.

We thought he was dead. I wanted him to stay a memory, a dream. I wanted him to be nothing but the empty ache in my chest.

Instead, he was dangerous, so much more dangerous. I was on fire around him, and he knew it.

But I hated him. Hated him so much for what he was doing to our family.

Late at night, the scratchy hotel sheets keeping me awake, I could hear him breathing. I could practically hear him laughing.

“We can push these beds together,” he whispered in the darkness. “You can give in to me.”

Never, I thought to myself.

“I know what you want. You want me to touch your skin, make you feel things you’d forgotten about.”

I could see him, wearing only a tight pair of black boxer briefs, standing against the wall. His eyes practically glowed in the dark. His ripped, lean muscles stood out black and white in the night. His gun rested on the nightstand, easily within reach, cocked and ready.

“You hate me because of what I’ve done, but you don’t know the half of it. That’s fine. I can handle that.”

His breath on my skin. His hands between my thighs. Shivers running in cascades down my spine.

“Hate me all you want, but you’re going to come for me.”

His lips against my ear, my mouth.

The sweet pain of him pressing hard against me.

I won’t give in to you.

My gasp as he slipped the clothes from my body.

“I know what you really want.”

I don’t want you.

“I know how far you’ll go.”

Wave after wave of blinding pleasure.

I won’t give in to you.

H
e’d been
my best friend for years. That was how our parents met and started dating, actually, but more on that later.

We had homeroom together in eighth grade. Camden was quiet, maybe a little shy, but he was too handsome for his own good, even back then. People knew him, but he didn’t turn into the outgoing thief he was destined to become for another few years.

Back then, he was just Cam.

I’d never forget the first thing he said to me. It was two weeks into the new school year, and he hadn’t so much as looked at me before that.

“What’s your deal, anyway?”

I looked up and he was staring back at me, his piercing green eyes smiling but his face otherwise passive.

“What?” I asked, surprised.

“What’s your deal?”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

He nodded at the pen I had been clicking incessantly. “You keep doing that every day, all morning long. Do you have OCD or something?”

“Uh, sorry,” I mumbled, surprised at how forward he was being. “I guess it’s just a habit.”

He looked at me appraisingly. “I’m Camden.”

“Lacey.”

Although he was probably being a jerk, there was something about him I couldn’t put my finger on. He could get away with being forward somehow, like what would normally be an incredibly rude question from someone else seemed perfectly okay coming from him. He just had a way about him that made people want to be close to him. Everybody knows someone like that, but with Camden it was always turned on and always turned up to the maximum.

He was like that with everything. Things came to him effortlessly, but Camden rarely seemed to care enough about anything to try hard. As that first year wore on, we talked every day during homeroom and quickly became friends outside of school. I wasn’t blind. I mean, I was young but I wasn’t stupid. I could see how attractive he was, even back then. But for some reason our friendship was just that, a friendship, and nothing developed between us that first year we knew each other.

Then things changed.

It was only a matter of time before people started noticing Camden. In ninth grade he hit his growth spurt and shot up to well over six feet tall. The muscles he became famous for seemed to sprout overnight, and he went from a normal but still handsome eighth grade boy to a lean and strong-looking man, practically in a day.

That was the problem, though. We spent so much time together, were such good friends, that I didn’t see it coming when he suddenly began to hang out with a rougher crowd. They smoked and drank and cursed and fought, and eventually they stole cars and sold drugs. I didn’t understand what Camden saw in them, but he became their leader, and eventually their scapegoat.

I was a good kid. I always had been. There was no question that I would go to college. And as much as I hated it, I had to admit that I didn’t fit in with Camden and his crowd anymore. I wanted to, but they just never seemed to like me, and I couldn’t make myself be someone I wasn’t just for the sake of people I didn’t really like to begin with.

We stayed friends. We still talked all the time. But slowly he became less like the guy I used to know and more like the person that would disappear one day into thin air without so much as a phone call.

I didn’t understand the change. For years I blamed myself. Maybe if I had reached out more, tried to talk to him more, tried to understand why he was doing the things he did instead of shying away from mentioning it, maybe I could have saved him.

That was probably wishful thinking, I know. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what I could have done better to save Camden from himself.

That guilt was quickly replaced by anger. I was angry that he had abandoned his friends and his family. I was angry that he had abandoned me like I was nothing to him, like it was the easiest thing in the world to just up and leave town. He could have called or emailed or written, but instead there was only silence from him. After a while, we all assumed he was dead in a ditch someplace far away, and that anger only grew day by day.

And when our parents finally got married, I was beyond pissed at him.

I hated my deadbeat stepbrother, wherever he was.

I hated him, even if he was dead.

He was an arrogant, selfish prick, and part of me was happy he was gone.

I flopped down onto my childhood bed, exhausted from the long trip home.

It felt weird looking up at my old ceiling again, the colors and the shadows unchanged, as if I had never left home at all. Four years was a pretty long time, all things considered, but it had flown by in the blink of an eye.

“How are you doing, honey?”

I looked over and saw my dad leaning in the doorway wearing his usual Canadian tuxedo: jeans and a tucked-in denim work shirt.

“I’m fine. Tired from the trip.”

“Miss California yet?”

“More and more each minute.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “You could at least lie to me.”

“You raised me to be an honest person, Dad.”

“Honest to a fault,” he mumbled.

“Where’s Lynn?”

He shrugged. “Shopping for dinner, I think.”

Lynn was Camden’s mom. I liked her a lot, though I hated her at first. She was about my Dad’s age, maybe a few years younger, and they had met when Camden and I were spending a lot of time together. I guess something clicked and they were together from our junior year onwards. They didn’t get married until two years ago, though. Well after Camden had disappeared.

Another milestone Camden missed.

“She doesn’t need to go to any trouble.”

“You know Lynn. She gets excited when you come home.”

I felt a little bad. I had visited as often as I could, mostly on big holidays, but it was hard getting from Berkeley, California out to Hammond, Indiana. My Dad and Lynn didn’t exactly have the money to pay for my airfare, and I definitely wasn’t rolling in cash, either. Life as a physics student at an expensive school was fun and amazing and challenging, but I never had a spare dime to spend on anything non-essential.

I sighed and climbed out of bed. “I’m going to unpack.”

“Okay. I’ll give you some privacy.” He paused. “I’m glad you’re home, kiddo.”

“Me too, Dad.”

He smiled and then left, back down to his armchair and whatever sporting event was currently on TV.

I wasn’t exactly lying when I said it was good to be home. Hammond was a small town, pretty boring, and had plenty of its own problems. It was just like a hundred other Rust Belt towns in Indiana, except it was my home and always would be. Plus, it was right around the corner from Chicago, which was something I took advantage of as often as possible when I was younger.

It took me an hour to dig all of my stuff out of my suitcase. Even though I was drop-dead tired, I knew that I didn’t want to live out of my luggage for the whole summer. I had a spot waiting for me in the physics graduate department back at Berkeley, but I couldn’t afford to live in the city all summer until it started.

In the meantime, I was crashing with my Dad again just like the old days.

“Lace?”

I looked up and smiled. “Hey, Lynn.”

She walked over and gave me a huge hug. “How was your trip?”

“Uneventful.”

“Exactly how it should be.”

“It’s good to see you.”

“You too. How long’s it been?”

“Since Christmas.”

“Wow, seriously? I can’t believe how fast time moves.”

I laughed and shook my head. That was typical Lynn, always saying strange things. She was short, shorter than me, with mousey brown hair. She was a runner and was in amazing shape for her age. Sometimes I felt like she put me to shame, but it didn’t make a difference. I loved ice cream and chocolate and chocolate ice cream, and no amount of abdominal muscles would take either of those things away from me.

“How’s Dad been since I was last here?”

“You know your father. He’s good when he’s good and not when he’s not.”

I nodded as if that made complete sense. “How’s his work?”

“Surprisingly good, actually.”

Dad was a small-time chandelier maker. He built and fabricated lamps and other lighting materials during the day, but his real passion were these artful chandeliers made up of recycled bottles and antiques. They were pretty spectacular, but not exactly super popular.

“Really? What changed?”

“He finally got up off his ass and made a website.”

“I’m shocked.”

“I know. Your technophobe father has a web presence.”

“Does he wear his tinfoil hat when he touches the computer?”

“Please. He doesn’t do any of it. He makes me take care of that stuff.”

I laughed, nodding. “That makes more sense.”

“But business is doing much better ever since we set up an online shop. He sold three chandeliers so far this month.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Wow. That’s awesome.” Dad’s chandeliers were high-end and expensive as hell, which meant that he only needed to sell a handful every year to make good money. Three in one month was a lot.

“I’m proud of him. But don’t tell him I said it, he’ll get all cocky.”

“Your secret is safe with me.”

She grinned. “Come down for dinner soon.”

“Okay. I just have to finish unpacking.”

She turned and left without another word.

I smiled to myself as I finished putting my things away. I had been pushing my dad to list his stuff online for ages, and he kept making up some excuse. It wasn’t like he didn’t believe in technology or something, but he kept saying that people should do business in person and know the people they’re dealing with.

Which was all well and good, but there wasn’t exactly a market for high-end chandeliers in Hammond, Indiana. He traveled to Chicago sometimes to sell them, but not nearly enough. His shop was also his workspace, and so people had to travel out to him to really see what he was doing.

The Internet could really open his world up. I was glad Lynn had finally pushed him into it, though a little suspicious. I wondered what she used to bribe him, or if she simply took it upon herself to do it all.

I grabbed my phone and checked the time. It was already after seven, and the smell of delicious roasting vegetables wafted up from the kitchen. My stomach did a little grumble, and so I resolved to check Facebook as briefly as possible.

I scrolled through my feed, paying more attention to people I went to high school with. I hadn’t seen most of them in a long time, but since I was home for the whole summer I figured I could try to rekindle some lost friendships. It wasn’t like I didn’t like my old friends, it was just that it was difficult to stay close when you were so far apart.

That was pretty typical. No matter how hard you tried, it was easy to drift when you were far away from people. I hated that I was the kind of person that had “ex-friends,” but it was the truth.

Finished with that, I made my way downstairs. Dad was posted up in front of the TV, probably on his second beer of the night, and Lynn was in the kitchen. I plopped down on the couch next to Dad.

“The Cubs suck,” he grunted at me.

I grinned. “You say that every time I see you.”

“It keeps being true.” He took a drink.

“You got one for me?”

He raised an eyebrow and looked over at me. “Didn’t think you were a beer drinker.”

“Well, I’m of age now. Figured I’d try and bond with you.”

“We don’t need alcohol to bond.”

“According to you.”

He laughed. “Check the fridge then.”

I got up and went into the kitchen, not intending to get a beer at all. I sat down at the table as Lynn bustled around.

“Anything I can do?”

“Nope. You’re too late to help.”

“Darn,” I said.

“Don’t act so upset. You’re doing dishes.”

“You got it.”

I smiled to myself as Lynn began to talk about her job at the hospital. She’d been a nurse for as long as I could remember, and she always had the best stories about the patients and the doctors. It was amazing how crazy it could get in a hospital, and frankly I thought she was a saint for handling it all.

It felt good to be sitting at my kitchen table. It felt good to tease my dad, to hear him say the same old stuff about the same old crappy baseball teams. I realized that for the first time in a while, I felt calm. Life out at Berkeley was one mad-dash day after another, long hours of studying and the occasional long hours partying. But mostly long hours studying, as much as I hated to admit it.

In Hammond, I didn’t have to worry about any of that. I didn’t have to calculate the effects of gravity on passing solar bodies or really think at all if I didn’t want to. I could just sit and be a person, chat about nothing, and feel good for once.

Then the doorbell rang.

I stood up. “I’ll get it,” I called out.

“You sure?” Lynn asked.

“Yep.”

I walked into the other room and headed toward the front door. I smiled to myself, laughing softly at the thought of my dad actually offering to get up off his ass for once and get the door. He hadn’t even bothered.

I turned the knob and pulled it open.

“Hey, Lace,” he said, his face splitting into a cocky grin.

My smile melted from my face. I stared at him, barely understanding. He was the same height, had the same muscular frame, the same arrogant smile and striking green eyes. It couldn’t be him, though. The more I stared, the more I realized that there was something different, something older. I remembered him as a good-looking troublemaker, but he looked more like a smooth-talking businessman. Only the tattoos poking out of the corners of his simple white button-down shirt hinted at his criminal past.

“Camden?” I said softly, my heart racing.

I couldn’t believe it was him. I thought he was dead. I thought he’d never come back. I’d lived my life all these years convinced I’d never see him again.

He had to be a ghost.

“In the flesh. It’s been a while, Lace.”

“What . . . what are you doing here?” I managed to say.

He took a step closer but didn’t move to come past the doorway.