“Yes, I know,” I said in reference to the movie Airplane and took a seat. I pulled a mug toward me and inspected the bottom for any powder or liquids. I couldn’t be too careful.
“Do you always make jokes when you’re nervous?” he asked. I gave him a sharp look. He smiled and folded his hands over the notepad. “Go ahead, I didn’t drug it. I’m not some Bond villain.”
I placed the other mug in front of him. “No, you’re definitely not. You’re just a sadistic freak with control issues.” He flinched, barely susceptible. “I’ll drink it if you’ll drink it.”
He sighed and poured my mug before he poured his own. “I guess our trust was broken a long time ago, wasn’t it?”
We both took a sip at the same time, our eyes glued to each other. “Actually, I had trusted this new Camden McQueen.”
“And now?”
“And now I’ll never make that mistake again,” I said after a mouthful. I still couldn’t get over how Camden pulled a fast one on me. I was no stranger to cons getting conned. I’d been conned a few times before, though you learned to read the warning signs as you went along. You get better. More aware. Sometimes, there were just people who were better at your job then you were. But I never saw Camden coming. I never saw his true motives. I never could have predicted his switch. Sure, there were probably a few signs here and there but I was so wrapped up in my lust for him, my plans for him, and he was always such a strange bird, that they could have meant anything. I had no idea—no idea—that I had hurt this man that badly.
“So we’re even.”
I put down the mug. “Nothing’s even when you’re being blackmailed. So, tell me, what’s the plan?”
“I need you to make me disappear,” he said, straight and to the point.
I raised my brow. “Disappear as in…?”
He took a quick sip of his coffee and stared down into the mug. “Ellie, I’m going to be honest with you.”
“Oh what a pleasant change of pace.” I sat back in my chair, utterly intrigued. Camden had been a master at hiding his emotions, but there was a tiny pulse of life at the corner of his eye, magnified by his glasses. I knew that pulse, that twitch. I had it myself. It was fear.
He ignored my sarcastic remark and spoke to the coffee. “I’m not in any trouble, because that’s the first conclusion you’re going to jump to. If I just carried on my life like this, running my shop and following orders,” I raised my other brow but let him continue, “then that would be that. My life would go on and no one would probably get hurt.”
He paused and picked up his pen and began to click the end of it, in and out, in and out. I waited. It was excruciating.
With a sigh he continued, looking everywhere except my face. “But I’m tired of my life. I want out of it. And it’s not the kind of life you can escape from. Not by normal means.” Click click went the pen. “After Ben was born…I did a bad thing. I had my reasons and I have my excuses. But it happened and Sophia divorced me. But no one’s truly free from Sophia. When you marry a Madano, you marry the whole family. And it’s a bad family, Ellie.” Click click. Click click. I eyed the painting of Sophia on the wall. “And they don’t let you go so easily, especially when you owe their sister child support. Do they care, really, how Sophie and Ben get on? No. They don’t. They’d turn on her in an instant. They just care about their image. Their pride. Their family values. And so they said they were doing me a favor. I didn’t have much money back then. Even with LA Ink and the increase in business, I barely got by. LA is an expensive city and they knew I could never make enough there. So they came to me with a deal. They’d give me a shop anywhere I wanted as long as it was in a low-rent town with a couple of paying customers. They’d give me my dream.”
“Sins and Needles,” I said quietly.
“Yes,” he said, finally looking at me. “They gave me this place. But as you now know, everything comes with a price. They said they wanted me to do well and then give most of my earnings to Sophia and Ben. I didn’t have a problem with that, I’d give them everything if I could. But I wondered, if they had the money to buy a shop, why didn’t they just give her the money outright? Well, they said it was because it had to go through me, because I owed her, not them. And then the truth came out, about two weeks into running this shop. Business was slow. Terribly fucking slow. I had a handful of customers and that was it. This goddamn town, it just isn’t the place to make a life. It’s still not.”
“So what happened?” I had a feeling I knew where this was all going, and to be honest, I was starting to feel a bit bad for him.