Fuck. Shandi. Yeah, that’s right, Shandi, like the drink but with an I instead of a Y. Total stripper name, which is exactly what Shandi was before my father decided to give her a job as a waitress in the restaurant. She wanted to clean up and Pops wanted a hot piece of ass working the floor to distract the diners from the comings and goings of New York City’s underworld elite. I’ve fucked her a few times here in this very room, which is what she must be looking for now—a quick roll to make the day a little more interesting.
She won’t go away. I know she won’t. Gracie’s eyebrows are arched, showing her disapproval. Shandi, on the other side of the door, somehow says the worst thing she possibly could say. She has a talent for that. “Come on, Theo, open the door. I wanna suck that beautiful dick, baby. My pussy’s wet and you haven’t licked her in a while.”
I hate when women refer to their pussies as her. Gracie bites back laughter, rolling her eyes. “Please, lover boy. Don’t stand on ceremony on my account. By all means, go right ahead.”
FOUR
SAL
I can feel it in the way my hands are fidgeting, the nervous dread locked in my gut like cement.
I’m about to lose my shit over this broad.
“Come on, smartass,” I say, flicking my eyes over her. She’s short, small tits, but they’re perky underneath that ill-fitting sack she’s wearing. Not so small that you couldn’t stick your dick between them and go to town. “Where is she?”
Not that I’m thinking about that right now. Nope. This chick might be the hottest thing I’ve seen in a long time, dark hair and hazel-green eyes set just right in her pretty, heart-shaped face. But—and there’s always a but—she looks like she’s got a screw loose somewhere in there, and, oh yeah, she just lost my fucking mark. Kaitlin is probably halfway back to Hell’s Kitchen by now, ready to tell Papa Paddy what we just did.
We’re dead, the both of us. Me and Theo. Motherfucker! We should’ve just gone with my plan—chloroform the bitches the second they stepped off that plane. But Theo, man, he’s always gotta do things his way.
And now we’re completely fucking fucked.
I grind my teeth together, so hard I think they’re going to crack under the pressure. Wouldn’t be the first time. My dentist says I carry all my stress in my jaw.
I lean in real close to her, crowding her. How we’re still the only two people in this room, I have no frigging clue. I can only guess the manager woman I saw out the front doesn’t want cops poking around the back of her diner and has pointed them off in some other direction. Still, doesn’t explain why nobody else has come looking. When I ran back here, chasing the Irish bitch that slipped through my fingers, the whole diner seemed to turn and gawk as I flew through. I mean, I’m not exactly easy to miss. All six-four of me, and especially since I’m still wearing the goddamn driver’s suit and hat. How it didn’t fall off in the crash is anyone’s guess.
“Where. Is. She?” I demand, enunciating every word, every syllable, because I’m this close to smashing her face in, woman or not. Every second she screws around and bats her eyelashes at me is a second Kaitlin McLaughlin is running her blonde ass further away, and taking with her any hopes of my brother and I making it out of this fix unscathed.
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.