Hell's Kitchen (12 page)

He sounds pissed that I’m pissed, and I want to reach down the goddamn phone and strangle him. “Have you got Kaitlin?” I snap.

“No. But I have someone who knows where she is.”

This is not what I wanted to hear from him. Not even close. I grip hold of the phone, doing my best not to snap and throw the fucking thing. “Who?”

“Some chick who’s hiding her. Bro, have you got the bodyguard under control?”

“Yeah.” The door to the kitchen opens and Alfie backs out into the hallway, dragging Sammy’s dead body behind him. Alfie grunts at me, trips, and drops Sammy. His head hits the floor hard, cracking against the tiles.
Fuuuuuck
. “I gotta go,” I say into the receiver. “Answer your fucking phone next time.” I kill the connection, backing away down the hallway. I need to get the hell out of here right fucking now. Roberto said he wanted us back here in one hour. That’s blatantly not going to happen since Sal doesn’t have Kaitlin, so the best thing I can do is get my ass as far away from Cucina Diavolo as possible. Until we have that Irish princess, this is seriously not a safe place to be.

ELEVEN

SCARLETT

It’s sad, you know, that the thing that spurs me on to get out isn’t the fact that I’m scared for my life.

Because I’m not scared, not really.

I honestly don’t really give a fuck what happens to me.

And that realization is almost freeing.

The problem, though, is that even though I don’t care, my body
does
. Very much so. Those little white pills that get me through the day are in my purse, and my purse is back at the diner. And I’m suddenly not feeling very good. I’m dizzy, I’m sweating, and I’m fairly sure if I don’t get to a bathroom soon, I’m going to throw up all over Sal’s plush carpet.

He’s busy fussing with the sheets. He rips everything off the bed and disappears, his feet thudding down the stairs and back up again.

When he returns, he’s got fresh sheets that he tosses on the bare mattress. He turns to me and frowns, as though he’s deciding whether to go ahead and make the bed, or start going to town on me with a rusty screwdriver until I talk.

“Don’t stop on my account,” I say, a little slower than I would have liked. My mouth is so dry, and my heart is pounding. Fuck. I knew I should have taken one of those tablets before I started my shift, but usually the alcohol gives me enough of a buzz until mid-morning when I take my first pill.

Timing is everything when you’re keeping yourself doped to the eyeballs day and night.

 
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I mumble.

He shrugs. “Guess you’ll just have to wait, sweetheart.”

I glare at him. “You really want two chicks pissing in your room today?”

He clenches his jaw, looking unimpressed. He leaves me for a moment, going into his bathroom, and when he comes out, he’s holding a large, very sharp cut-throat razor.

My eyes must wig out, because he smirks at me, placing the razor on top of the doorframe, where I’ll never be able to reach it.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m not going to use it.”

He closes the space between us, untying my wrists. “Two minutes,” he says.

I massage my wrists. They feel tender from where he tied the rope, but he didn’t tie it very tight. It’s just that my skin is so fucking sensitive right now, it’s like paper-thin glass, ready to shatter into a million pieces and leave me a bleeding mess. At least, that’s what it feels like when I can’t get my pills and booze when I need it.

I nod, because I don’t even have the energy to speak anymore. Sal raises an eyebrow, giving me a strange look, but I need to be sick. Now.

I’ve only gone through withdrawals once before. It was back when I’d just gotten here and my doctor back in LA had prescribed the Oxy to keep me functioning through the worst of the court shit. I guess he didn’t want me jumping off a building like I kept threatening. The drugs numbed me, gave me some artificial sense of calm, a buzz in my stomach that I became rapidly obsessed with maintaining at all times.

Then he cut me off.

Fucker said I’d become too dependent on them and refused to prescribe them anymore. I’d been in New York three weeks by then, and I was tripping out.

Until I found Taylor, selling the shit at the AA meeting I’d been instructed to go to as part of my parole.

After that, it was just a matter of juggling enough tips to get my hands on a couple of the pills each day. Ideally I’d get more, but they were expensive, so I compensated by spacing out my doses and filling the voids with cheap alcohol. It’s worked pretty well for the past seven months that I’ve been existing out here.

I lock the bathroom door behind me, holding my hair back as I retch over the toilet bowl. God, it’s disgusting. I haven’t eaten since last night, and all that comes up is coffee and the burning vodka I consumed earlier.

Losing the vodka to the toilet bowl makes me sad. Hopefully I got most of the alcohol in my bloodstream before that happened, because today’s going to be a fucker. Then again, Sal might do me a favor and kill me.

“Hurry up,” Sal yells, pounding twice on the door. I roll my eyes, flushing the toilet and rinsing my mouth out under the fancy tap. This guy’s got to be rich, I think, because everything in this house stinks of money. Even the chick in his bed looked like an upmarket slut. I take a little bit of toothpaste from the tube on the counter and rub it around my teeth to get rid of the vomit taste, and then my eyes are scanning every square inch of the room, looking for a weapon.

I could squirt shampoo at him. Nope, too messy and difficult. He’s taken the razor. Could I strangle him with a towel? Negatory. He’d strangle me with it. He seems to enjoy cutting off my air supply.

I’m coming up blank when my eyes settle on the toilet cistern, and more specifically, the heavy porcelain lid that covers it.

Excitedly, I grip each side with my fingers and pull up, testing the weight of the thick slab. I can definitely maneuver it.

Lucky I’m a fucking actress,
I think. I let the lid slide back into place and then wash my hands in the sink. I dry them off before going back for some more water—not much, just a little sip that I hold with my tongue against the roof of my mouth. I unlock the bathroom door and pull it open to see Sal leaning against the doorframe.

“I hope you used air freshener,” he says with a smirk. I don’t respond, other than to put my hand to my mouth.
Game on, motherfucker.
I make my eyes go wide and rush back to the toilet, facing away from him and making a retching sound as I open my mouth, letting the water dribble out of my mouth and into the toilet.

I continue to make the most disgusting noises possible with my throat, resting a hand on the cistern.

Come on. Come on, Barbieri. Come and get me.

“Bet you’re needing a drink right about now, you little vodka-soaked degenerate?”

I don’t answer. I don’t move. Come closer.

“Or maybe it’s those little white pills I found in your purse. Yeah, I think that’s what’s got your panties in a twist. You’ve got the bends.”

I resist the impulse to fire off a witty retort or my standard Fuck You. I clamp my mouth shut.
 

Closer, motherfucker.

“Sal,” I say softly, looking up at him with my glassy eyes. Yeah, I can cry on demand as well.

“Cat got your tongue, Scar?” he mocks me.

“Can I please have some water?” I ask, in the most helpless voice I can muster.

I can sense his hesitation. “I’m gonna pass out. Water. Please.”

I can practically hear his face contort into a scowl. There’s already a glass sitting on the bathroom counter, which he fills with water and brings over to me. Two feet away. One. As he’s holding out the glass, I take the only window of opportunity I’ve got and pick up the heavy cistern lid, swinging it with every bit of strength in my body. It isn’t much, but it’s enough, and he’s taken completely by surprise as the porcelain smashes into his temple, sending him careening to the side, the glass of water flying through the air before smashing on the tiles between us.

I eye the length of rope in the bedroom, beyond the open bathroom door, as a devious plan begins to reveal itself in my drug-starved brain. Yes. Of course. I’ll give him a taste of his own medicine, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll give me back my medicine so I can breathe properly again.

I wonder briefly about the girl I helped, probably huddled in my apartment right now, waiting to be found. Or maybe she’s already been found. Fucked if I know.

I don’t really care, either. A good Samaritan act has turned into a fucking nightmare, and although it’s taken me this long to get my shit together and move past the detachment and shock to start fighting for myself, I’m pretty fucking pleased with my efforts to knock Sal out. A thin trail of blood leads from his temple down into his mussed-up hair, the violent reality of his wound oddly satisfying.

I drag him into his bedroom. Fucker’s heavy. I prop him up and tie his hands behind his back, securing them tightly to one of the bed posts. I collect the gun from his waistband, the car keys and phone from his pocket. I take his ridiculous driver’s cap and put it on my own head, because
I’m
steering this motherfucking show right now.

When I’m convinced he’s not going anywhere, I make my way downstairs to the kitchen, the gun gripped furiously tight in my sweat-slicked palm.

I’m getting myself a motherfucking drink if it’s the last thing I do, and then I’m getting the fuck out of this house.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m nursing a glass of bourbon and waiting for Sal to wake up. He’s taking his sweet time, so I eventually just tip a glass of water over his head. He comes to almost immediately, coughing and spluttering. I give him a big ol’
Fuck You
grin, taking a sip of bourbon that tastes pretty goddamn satisfying right now.

“Nice hat,” he grumbles. “I’ll make sure I bury you wearing it.”

“Now, come on, Sal,” I say. “I know it hurts, getting your ass handed to you by a girl, but don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Oh, yeah?” he says. “I’ve never heard that one before.”

“I mean it,” I say, taking another gulp of my drink and delighting in the way it burns as it slides down my throat. “Just tell me how to unlock your front door, and I’ll be out of your hair.”

See, I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes trying to get out of this fucking place. And I can’t. Every door, every window, has this same fucking keypad stuck to it. The windows don’t open. And the elevator door we came in from the basement is the same—it only works if you know the code.

Sal’s eyes light up. “She set the alarm,” he says, grinning. “That dumb bitch finally listened.”

“Good for you,” I say, feeling slightly uneasy at the fact that blonde playboy bunny could get herself out of this house, but I can’t. It’s infuriating.

“Here’s the thing,” Sal says. “I’m not giving you the alarm code, unless you tell me where Kaitlin is.”

I pull the gun from my apron pocket and point it at him. “Here’s the thing,” I say, mimicking his tone. “You’re telling me exactly how to unlock that door, asshole, or I’ll redecorate this room with your fucking brain matter.”

TWELVE

ZETH

A pineapple sits on the kitchen counter. A
pineapple
. It’s just not something you see everyday. It wasn’t there when I went to bed last night, that’s for sure. I’m all for eating fruit—you don’t get a body like mine by shoving Twinkies down your throat twenty-four seven—but this thing looks like it requires preparation. It’s fucking spiky. I stand in the kitchen, staring at it for a while, contemplating how to proceed, and then I figure,
fuck it, I’ll wing it
and go on a mission to find a knife.
 

Sloane’s still asleep upstairs in our bed.
Our
bed. I never thought I’d be thinking those words. It gives me insane pleasure to run a playback of what took place in that bed yesterday in minute detail as I carve up the fruit for my girl’s breakfast. There was a lot of spanking involved. And a tiny clamp that I hooked up to Sloane’s clit, firing electrical charges into her sweet pussy that had her clawing at my skin and screaming out my name. I fucking love when she does that.
 

It’s one of those rare sunny mornings in Seattle. Like a damn finger of fate pointing straight down from Heaven, a pillar of light is shining straight through the glass doors at the front of the house, landing directly on the drawer where I stowed a small, velvet covered box three nights ago. A gift for Sloane. A gift I’m not ready to give her yet. Seems as though every time I walk past that goddamn drawer, I can feel the box inside humming like a freaking signalling beacon. I really need to move it. Take it down to the gym or something. Leave it in my locker there. She’d never find it amongst all my sweat-soaked work out clothes, hand wraps and boxing gloves. But then, no. That just seems fucking wrong.
 

I carry the sliced pineapple upstairs on a plate, along with the eggs I’ve made and some fresh orange juice. Very fucking domesticated. I would never have done this for anyone else. The stars would have collided and the universe collapsed in on itself before I bowed and scraped to any other chick. I don’t see taking care of my girl as bowing and scraping now, though. I see it as making sure she’s fed. Making sure she’s content. Making sure she’s safe. Making sure she’s fit and healthy enough for me to fuck her the way I like, and for her to demand more.
 

She’s still asleep when I enter the bedroom. Her dark hair is spilled across her pillow in loose waves around her head, her almost black eyelashes like charcoal smudges against her pale cheeks. She looks like she’s been drawn or something. Created out of thin air. I find myself thinking that a lot—that someone has crafted her, this mythical creature who’s turned my life upside down—because how else can she be real? It makes no sense. The universe just isn’t this kind to anyone, especially guys like me.

Placing the food down on the bedside table, I move up the bed, pulling the covers back from her body as I climb. She’s naked underneath—so fucking perfect. Her breasts lay heavy, crushed between her arms as she lies on her side. I can already feel my cock stirring in my shorts. Nothing new there. Poor Sloane’s eggs are going to be cold by the time she gets around to eating them. I haven’t even made any food for myself. I knew
she
was all I was going to want to eat. Placing my hand on her hip, I gently turn her body so that she’s on her back. Unlike my cock, her perfect nipples aren’t erect yet, but I have plans on changing that. Slowly, carefully, I lower my mouth to her skin and I lick across her collarbone, moving down until I trace my tongue across the swell of her tits. So. Fucking. Amazing.