For some reason, Adrian is still fixated on Cruise.
“You aren’t supposed to be in the actual hotel. Dad gave you the villa until you got on your feet. How’s that working out for you, Cruise?”
Dad? What is Adrian talking about? But I don’t have time to think about it more, because if I thought Cruise was scary the night he punched Patrick, I hadn’t seen anything.
“How do you think I’m doing, Adrian?” Cruise’s voice has gone deathly quiet. “I lost a year of my life. I lost…a lot of things. And you’re here, up to the same old bullshit. What happened to your promises?”
Adrian’s eyes shift guiltily, and for a moment it seems like he’s going to respond, but then his friend says,
“C’mon, Adrian. Take the stack of twenties and let’s get out of here. If we go now, we can join the guys at Cubano’s.”
“He’s not taking that money,” Cruise growls.
“It’s just chump change,” the slimy guy says.
Adrian looks back and forth between them, a smile starting on his twisted mouth. He wants to see violence. In this moment I despise him.
“It isn’t his, and he isn’t taking it,” Cruise insists.
“Ease up mate, this isn’t life and death. It’s a few hundred dollars. Your dad spends that on toilet paper.”
Cruise looms over him. “Did you just tell me to ease up?”
The sleazy guy glances over at me. “Quit trying to impress the pretty girl. Everyone knows you’re no better than us.” He looks to Adrian, who is staring out the window. Since Adrian isn’t going to back him, or stop him, sleazy guy says, “In fact, everyone knows you’re a hell of a lot lower than either of us.”
“No better than you?” Cruise takes another step further into the room.
“You know you aren’t supposed to be in here,” Adrian says. Then to his buddy, with some disappointment, “Quit antagonizing Cruise. It’s the girl we need to shake down. The money was here when dad left, and now it’s not. She’s the only one with access—”
Suddenly I’m not just a spectator in this sick dispute, I’ve been pulled into the middle of it. And as reprehensible as Adrian and his friend are, I don’t want to be accused of stealing money. There is nothing, in my profession, short of purposeful arson, that will ruin a career more quickly. Plus it feels pretty shitty to have this jerk, who’s been pushing off all his work and responsibility on me, accusing me of stealing the money that he’s just arrived to steal. And doing it in self-righteous tones.
“Are you serious?” I ask. “I didn’t even know there was a safe behind that painting.”
“It wouldn’t be hard to figure out,” Adrian speculates. “I always told Dad that stupid painting didn’t match anything in the room, that any petty thief who arrived at the hotel would know it was the front of a safe—“ He trails off and shakes his head. “The point is that Dad trusts everyone, even when he shouldn’t.” Adrian is eyeing me.
Cruise turns away from Adrian’s friend and shoves the heir to the Bancroft hotel chain against the wall.
“Do you want to repeat that?”
Adrian shakes his head, but his friend isn’t so smart.
“The point is, your girlfriend here has stolen some serious cash, and she might be about to suffer the same fate as you, precious little Cruise—”
Cruise drops Adrian, who sinks to the floor, and dives across the room, but not quickly enough to shut the guy up.
“Do you think she’ll enjoy going to jail?” Adrian’s friend spits. “Of course, you can tell her all about it, can’t you? I bet you made quite a splash with your pretty white smile, and the face that all the girls love—did your fellow inmates love it, too—?”
Cruise’s fist slams into the little weasel’s face. That might’ve been the end of it, but Adrian’s friend, obviously outmatched in Cruise, makes an obscene gesture in my direction.
“Does the girl know all about your history?” he asks.
I don’t know if it’s the gesture or the question that removes whatever inhibitions Cruise had left, but he lays into the guy, his fists connecting with deadly accuracy, one fist connecting, and then the other. Three punches and the weasel collapses. I see Cruise nearly kick him, but he looks over at Adrian, whose sick smile is back in place, and stops himself.
Adrian stays on the other side of the room.
“C’mon Cruise, C’mon buddy, stop,” he says, but he doesn’t make a move to help his friend, who moans but makes no move to stand.
“Jesus Christ, Cruise,” Adrian breathes.
“You don’t spend a year going through hell without learning a few tricks,” Cruise says. “I’m not the little brother you used to pick on anymore. You will never tell me what to do again, do you get that, Adrian? Those days are over. And don’t bring up Mom’s wishes, either.”
He steps over the weasel’s inert body, takes my arm and pulls me toward the hall.