Hell's Kitchen (6 page)

Briefly, I wonder which one of them will kill us. Roberto or Paddy. Our father or hers. Maybe they’ll take one each. A bullet in the head, a nice swim in the Hudson with our feet encased in quick-set concrete. We’ll sink like stones to the bottom of the dirty river, frozen like caricatures of our former selves, while the fish eat out our eyes and our flesh sloughs off with rot and the shifting tides. Until finally, we’re two skeletons standing at the bottom of the deep brown riverbed, our bones gently swaying in the wake of the ferries that cut across the harbor every few minutes, our skulls grinning maniacally without flesh to hide our teeth.

“Suck my dick,” she says, her eyes alight with something—with satisfaction? What a strange creature she is. Most other women in this situation would scream and cry and beg, but not this one. She’s got this aura about her that makes me wonder what happened to her, how exactly life crushed her. Yeah. That’s it. She looks crushed. She looks … empty.

I pull my head back a little, certain what I heard isn’t what she said.

“Pardon me?” I ask, fighting the urge to laugh. She didn’t say that. Words like that don’t come out of mouths as perfect as hers. God, where do I know her from?

She smiles, but the gesture is completely devoid of warmth. For the first time since I ran into this bathroom stall, I’m beginning to wonder what exactly the fuck I’m dealing with here. There is something seriously off about this chick.

“I said, suck my big, fat, dirty dick,” she spits, her green eyes flashing with emotion. “And while you’re at it, kiss my ass, too. She’s long gone, sunshine.”

My jaw just about falls on the fucking floor. “Who are you?” I ask, more to myself than to her. I must have screwed this chick and I just don’t remember. I’ve taken plenty of chicks back to my place on Bleecker Street and made them do the walk of shame the next morning—I don’t snuggle after I fuck. That’s
got
to be it.

“Did you just call me
sunshine
?” I add. I can feel this situation careening out of control, much like the car when it flipped over on the fucking bridge five minutes ago.

“Are you deaf or something?” she bites back, her smug smile vanishing.

I lean closer again, catch a whiff of the coffee on her breath. And something else. Vodka.
Ahhh
. “You’re drunk at eight-thirty in the morning?” I ask incredulously.

She huffs, a laugh that contains no real emotion, just a defensive reflex. “Are you judging me, gangster boy?”

I raise my eyebrows. As much as I want to keep bantering with this broad, I’ve got an Irish bitch to bag before I end up in a body bag. “Time’s up,” I growl, pressing my gun into her sternum, right along the line of buttons between her breasts.

She clamps her mouth shut, her stance insolent, her eyes narrowed.

And I snap.

“Time to go for a little drive then, sweetheart,” I grimace, shifting the gun so it’s digging into the side of her ribs.

“You’re sweating,” she says casually.

Who the fuck is this woman? My dick wants to find out. The rest of me? I’m not so sure. She’s so unhinged, she’s almost … scaring me. “It’s hot,” I reply. Why am I even answering her? Fuck that. “Walk,” I demand, pulling her alongside me. I loop my arm around her shoulder so we’re walking side by side, shifting the gun so it’s now underneath my suit jacket, still pointed firmly into her side. “What’s your name?” I hiss.

She just glares up at me. “Petunia,” she drawls. “What’s yours?”

I huff. “Your name is not …” I struggle to even repeat the word, it’s so ridiculous. “
Petunia
.”

She just shrugs. This chick is mad. She’s certifiable. I should just shoot her in her pretty face and make a run for it. Still, she’ll be handy as a hostage if it comes to that. The mood in the diner wasn’t exactly joyous when I ran through, bleeding and chasing Kaitlin. Why has nobody come to check on her? Are there cops out there, right now? I gotta chance it. I have to get out of here. My neck’s starting to itch, almost as much as my trigger finger.

I’ve got that feeling in my gut. The one that tells me I’ll be emptying my clip before the day’s finished. Hopefully into somebody else, and not into my own skull.

We make our way out of the bathroom and past the kitchen, where the fat Russian guy is throwing giant slabs of butter onto a hotplate. He’s oblivious, and I have to wonder if I was just imagining the looks I got when I ran through the diner after Kaitlin.

We’re almost at the door when a squat Italian woman steps in front of us, her face thunderous.

“Scarlett! You’ve got tables to clear,” she growls, snapping her fingers in front of this chick’s face.

Scarlett.
Oh, Christ. I can just imagine the way her cheeks turn
scarlet
red when she’s coming, my face between her legs. Oh, fuck. Focus, Barbieri!

“I’m being abducted,” Scarlett says to her boss, glancing up at me. “Can’t you ask Helen to clear my section? She’s already taken my tips.”

I almost choke.
I’m being abducted?

“Honey, didn’t you tell your boss I was coming to visit today? It
is
our anniversary, you know.”

The squat woman smiles up at me, and I shoot back a placating grin, with as much charm as I can muster right now. “Scarlett, you didn’t tell me you were dating
Salvatore
!”

And the smile falls right the fuck off my face. I can’t go anywhere in this damn city without being recognized.

Satisfaction spreads across Scarlett’s face as she looks up at me with a grin. “Salvatore,” she says, her voice saccharine sweet.

“How long have you two been together?” the woman asks, her eyes flicking between Scarlett and me, almost in disbelief.

“Coming up to five minutes now,” Scarlett replies casually.

The woman shakes her head. “When I saw you come in, I thought for sure you were one of those
stronzo
cab drivers using our toilet to take a dump.”

“Oh, he did,” Scarlett says, deadpan even with a gun pressed against her right tit.
Fascinating.
“He’s got violent diarrhea. He just destroyed one of the bathroom stalls.”

Well, I don’t know what to say to
that
. “We need to go.” I pull Scarlett firmly past her boss. “Scar forgot her crazy pills this morning. She might be back in tomorrow.”

“What? You’re working a double today!” the woman screeches, but I ignore her, kicking the heavy glass door open and escaping into the stream of people clogging the sidewalk.

We need a cab. We need a cab right fucking now.

“Where are we going?” Scarlett asks.

I pull her over to the street and hail down a cab. “For a drive.”

“Where?”

“Just get into the damn cab,” I say, releasing my stronghold on her long enough to shove her into the backseat of the waiting cab before sliding in behind her.

The driver starts heading up the busy street. “Where to?” he calls through the small slot in the Plexiglas.

“Just keep heading up here,” I say. “Head to Bleecker.” If the bitch won’t tell me where she’s hiding Kaitlin, she’s coming home with me until I can break her resolve. I groan inwardly. I really, really can’t be bothered torturing someone today. It’s Friday, I’m hung over as fuck, and there’s a very real possibility that there’s still a naked woman in my bed at home.

“You’re sweating on me,” she remarks, wriggling away on the plastic-covered bench seat. I tut, pulling her even closer. Has she got a problem with sweat? I mean, it’s not pouring off me—I’m just perspiring a little underneath all these clothes. “It’s summer, baby. We all sweat. I bet you’re sweating right now under that sack you call a dress. And if you’re not,” I give her a sidelong grin, “we can certainly fix that.”

God, I’d like to get her hot and sweaty.
 

“Don’t call me baby,” she says, clearly unimpressed. “I’m
not
your baby.”

“Sorry,
Petunia
.” I roll my eyes, snickering. I look up ahead, my phone vibrating in my suit pocket, the
Game of Thrones
theme song sounding obnoxiously through the cab. It’s been ringing on and off since we first got into the cab.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” Scarlett asks.

I smile condescendingly. “The only way I’m taking my attention off you is if you’re face down in my lap with your mouth open, and somehow I think we should wait until our fifteen-minute anniversary for that.”

Bitch doesn’t even bristle. “You know, you could just silence it before I shoot myself in the face over here.”

I shrug incredulously. “It’s the
Game of Thrones
theme music. Who doesn’t like
Game of Thrones
?”

She stares at me angrily, and it suddenly slams home.

“I didn’t fuck you at all,” I exclaim. She’s not one of those broads I wined, dined and sixty-nined before kicking out of my house. She’s Scarlett
fucking
Winchester.

“You wish,” she mutters under her breath. I’d normally snap off a witty retort, but she’s Scarlett fucking Winchester.

“You’re that chick out of that show!” I say excitedly. I don’t add the fact that I’ve jerked off to the image of her character more times than I can count. This is just fucking bizarre.
 

She takes a deep breath and stares straight ahead. I frown. “You look … different than you used to. Hey, what the hell happened to you? You just disappeared. Did you stop sucking the director’s dick or something?”

She presses her fingers to her closed eyes. “Are you going to kill me?” she hisses, low enough that the cab driver can’t hear. “Because if that’s your plan, can we skip the small talk and get to the killing part?”

Shit. She’s not joking. Her words leave me reeling for a moment. Not only have Theo and I just lost the bitch we were supposed to kidnap, crashed our limo, and probably earned ourselves each a bullet in the skull, but I’ve also managed to take a hostage who’s suicidal.

I chew on the inside of my cheek, tasting blood. This is not good. It’s so far from good, we’re not even in the same realm as good. We’re not good, we’re not OK, we’re not anything except completely screwed. We’re dead men.

I’m too young and pretty to die.

“Cat got your tongue?” Scarlett asks, her hands back in her lap and her eyes on me. My cock stirs in my suit pants.
Oh, your pussy can have my tongue, Scarlett fucking Winchester. Meow.

Down, boy. My cock’s timing is terrible. I don’t dignify her retort with a response.

Peering out of the window, I see a familiar sight. “Pull into this driveway,” I urge the cab driver, tapping the glass that separates us. I turn to Scarlett, whose attention has pricked up as she studies our path. Looking for an escape? Jesus. I can’t handle her and the cabbie at the same time. The numbers aren’t matching up.

“You gonna behave?” I ask, jabbing her with the gun again.

“Bite me,” she replies. I’d definitely bite her nipples if I could just get my mouth near them. But I need to stop thinking about nipples right now.

Great. Well.
This
is happening.

“Happy ten-minute anniversary,” I hiss, shoving the gun down the front of my pants and lunging for her as covertly as I can. I don’t need the cab driver seeing me attacking this girl and raising the alarm. Scarlett’s body tenses immediately, and her hands fly out, trying to push me away, but I’ve got more upper body weight than she’s got in her entire body. I overpower her easily, using my elbows to pin her arms to her sides, my palms at her neck as I press down on her carotid artery. Her eyes go wide, and she opens her mouth to scream.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” I murmur. “I’ll make you scream if you want, but not right now.” I lean in, covering her mouth with mine, kissing her to drown out the noise of her cry for help. She tastes like I thought she would—coffee and vodka. Irish coffee, isn’t that what they call it? My stomach roils at the Irish part. Fucking Kaitlin. I’m going to find
that
bitch, even if I have to tie
this
bitch to a chair and torture the address out of her.

I continue applying pressure to the sweet spot in her neck, cutting off the blood flow from her heart to her brain just for a few seconds. It doesn’t take long before she’s a dead weight in my arms, her eyes lolling back in her head before fluttering shut.

I release her mouth, letting her slide down the back of the seat so she’s lying across it, her thighs slightly parted and her legs off to the side as her feet rest awkwardly on the floor.

“She okay?” the cab driver asks, tapping on the Plexiglas. I hold my hands up in mock surprise. “I don’t know, man. She’s diabetic. I think she’s having a fit or something.”

The cab driver looks vaguely annoyed, but to his credit he unbuckles his belt, steps out of his door and circles around to mine. He opens the door and peers in.

“Need me to call an ambulance?” he asks.

I raise my gun to his forehead. “No, thanks,” I reply, pressing the gun against his head. “Keys, please.”

He points to the ignition. “They’re still in there, asshole.”

I smile broadly as I unfold myself, stepping out of the open door and into the alleyway I’ve directed him down. “Excellent. Open the trunk, please.”

The annoyed look on his face morphs into actual fear. “Hey, man, just take the car, okay? It’s insured. I won’t say nothing to nobody. Hell, I didn’t even see you.”

If only that were the truth. “It’s okay,” I say. “I won’t kill you. But I really need you to open that trunk.”

He looks past me to Scarlett, lying unconscious on the backseat. “You gonna put her in there?” he asks, his tone almost hopeful.

“Sure,” I lie. He looks relieved. I fight the urge to smack him out. I’ll be able to do that in just a moment.

“Hurry,” I urge, shaking the gun at him. With great reluctance, he reaches in through his open driver’s door and presses a button.

“It’s open,” he says, and if Scarlett thought I was sweating, she obviously hasn’t seen the river pouring off this guy’s shiny bald forehead. He’s freaking the fuck out.

“Go round and open it up,” I say, my eyes never leaving his.

“I got heart problems,” he says. “I can’t be in confined spaces!”