24. Set

Chapter Twenty-Four

SET

Z ipping through traffic, Layne constantly kept an eye out all around her. It wasn't the concern of her guys following her, but the paranoia that it was whoever else might have eyes on her back.

Constantly checking the mirrors, she twisted the throttle to speed up as the cold air whipped around her. Even with the black leather jacket zipped up over her upper body, the late autumn air cut into her. The dark blue jeans she wore did little to keep her legs warm as the temperature was rapidly tanking outside.

Layne's mind was racing just as fast as she was weaving through traffic and illegally splitting lanes. There were no guarantees in this business you could trust anybody. The only person she was going to be able to rely on today was herself.

Everything she had learned about this man, Daniil, was that he had grown up in this life much like she had. Rumors swirled about his family's involvement in some sort of mass casualty event, and that made Layne even more wary than she already was. It was one thing to take out people on the same level as you in this life, and entirely another to be involved in wiping out civilians.

When she arrived at their designated meeting spot, she parked Joey's bike out front of the pretentious luxury hotel in the heart of Brooklyn. The building towered high, with the exterior appearing recently renovated. The valet stand was populated with clean-cut staff standing at full attention and ready to serve.

The doorman dressed in his blue and gold uniform gave a discreet nod of his head at one of the valet attendants. Eagerly, the young guy rushed over to Layne trying to assist her off the sports bike decorated with various skull stickers.

Ignoring him, she swung a leg over the seat and stepped up onto the sidewalk. Removing her helmet, she smoothed her hand down over the french braid she had styled her hair. She hoped with it being a short ride here that she somehow escaped dreaded helmet hair.

Instead of passing over the key to the kid waiting to whisk her ride to a garage somewhere, she made sure the bike was locked. Joey would kill her if she allowed anyone else near it, let alone touch it.

Before the young kid could utter a word, Layne shoved a hundred-dollar bill into his palm. "Nobody touches the bike. Got it?"

Holding her helmet by the chin strap in her left hand she glanced up at the name in golden script above the entrance, The Alderson Hotel. It may as well have just stated that this was a place to overpay for a subpar bed and ridiculous amenities that nobody actually used.

Walking past the doorman who held the door open for her with his mouth agape, she entered the grand lobby where the opulent decor continued to be constantly up in one's face. A few people dared to give her some dirty looks, and she couldn't blame them. Layne was sticking out like a sore thumb. Her face was sporting the car wreck's injuries and she wasn't dressed for the goddamn Kentucky Derby like the rest of the rich assholes.

Crossing the floor to the elevators, she stood and waited for the next one to arrive to take her upstairs. As she stood there, a bellboy joined her at her side. He puckered his lips at her before grabbing the front of his pants suggestively.

Layne noticed the lewd gesture from the corner of her eyes and not-so-subtly shot him the bird hoping he would get the hint. If she hadn't been worried about scaring the crap out of some little old lady, she would have been tempted to grab the bellboy by the front of his pants in an unpleasant fashion.

When the ding sounded and a set of doors opened, she boarded the elevator. The bellboy attempted to follow, but she extended her arm across the width of the opening. "Take the next one."

Layne would love to boast it was her charming personality that scared him off, but raising her arm lifted her jacket enough to reveal the high-voltage taser secured on her hip.

The taser wasn't the only weapon she brought with her. Various blades were concealed all over her body, her favorite Glock was tucked into the back of her jeans, and the high-impact helmet didn't hurt as an impromptu tool to inflict blunt force trauma if things went tits up.

After the elevator brought her to the sixteenth floor, she traveled down the hall and stopped at room 1621. Her knuckles rapped against the door demandingly, meetings like these didn't call for a delicate tap at the door.

While waiting for the door to swing open, she rested her hand on her pistol at the small of her back.

Each second that passed felt like years until finally the door swung open and she saw a well-dressed man standing before her. The first thing she noticed was he wore his money well. While Layne may not have been your stereotypical Uptown girl, most days she didn't look like she was hurting for funds. The only thing about her today that looked like it was hurting was the bruising on her forehead and cheekbone from the car wreck yesterday.

She hadn't known what to expect, but she hadn't expected him to look anything less than disfigured and crazy-eyed from the little she had heard of his reputation. Instead, he had that rugged and dangerous type of charm cloaked around him. Layne guessed that not every rumor had merit after all.

Skipping the pleasantries in favor of wanting to get down to business, "You going to let me in or are you waiting to see if I shoot you?" she asked. She typically did a good job masking her nerves with her attitude but given the past few months, her anxiety was at its peak.

He widened the door enough for her to barely pass. "You're not what I expected."

"I'm not what I expected either," she snorted, dropping her hand from the weapon holstered at her back and stepping past him into the room drenched in luxury items.

She set her helmet down on a small table as her eyes scanned the room for any signs of a potential ambush. Nothing seemed out of place, at least for a place of this caliber.

The room was laid out in three sections. Upon entry, you were greeted with a living area straight ahead of you and a kitchenette to the right–as if the wealthy elites who frequented this type of place actually cooked for themselves. To the left of the sofa in the living space was a door to a separate room where she could just barely see the corner of a bed inside.

Layne turned to face Daniil after hearing the door shut. "I don't trust you," she spoke with honesty as she watched each move he made as he stepped further into the room.

He cocked his head slightly. "Then, why are you here?"

"As much as it pains me to say it, I need someone that can't be trusted." Keeping the status quo of how she operated her business was getting her nowhere except closer to the grave.

He made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a chuckle.

Layne explained, "My brother has decided to make it his life's mission to either destroy me or drive me to insanity. So far, he's making good progress on the latter."

"From the looks of things, he's not doing too bad on the former." He motioned at the cut above her eyebrow and the bruised cheekbone she was sporting. Daniil walked by her to the small wet bar where he retrieved a previously poured glass of alcohol.

Her jaw tightened as she tried to prevent her irritation from reaching her voice. "He's getting help and I need to know how the fuck he's always one step ahead of me."

"What do you want me to do?" He sipped from the glass in his hand.

She stomped over to him after pulling a piece of paper from her pocket and slammed it down on the wet bar. "Find this asshole. I want to know everything he knows. I want to know everything from the moment he met my brother to the last time he jerked off." Her eyes flared with her rising temper.

Seemingly unrattled by her minor outburst, Daniil picked up the paper, unfolding it to reveal the name—Nicholas Orellano. Committing the name to memory, he dropped it back down onto the counter.

"I've heard you have quite the personal security team." As Layne's expression slipped in surprise he knew anything about Joey or Gage, he added, "Did you think I would agree to this without doing some research of my own?"

He set down the empty glass after consuming the remainder of the amber liquid. "Why not allow them to do their job and take care of you?"

She rolled her eyes at the concept she had grown tired of since the day she was born. "There are complications."

He smirked. "It is not a very complicated concept for a man, or men, to take care of a woman." The innuendo quite clearly rested on top of his words.

Her shining green eyes narrowed. "My needs are more than taken care of. What I don't need is to be treated like an object incapable of making my own choices. If I wanted that, my life would be a whole lot fuckin' easier."

She nodded to the ring she observed on his left hand. "Is that what your wife wants, to be just another possession you have ownership of?"

Judging from the way Daniil's eyes darkened, Layne's words struck a nerve as she brought up his wife. She didn't feel the least bit remorseful. If there was anything she had learned, it was that nothing was off-limits when it came to this lifestyle.

She shook her head, beginning to wonder if this jackass was as good as she was told. "They're too invested. They're too worried about me to worry about themselves."

"Ah, so this is the problem, isn't it? You can't trust them or you can't trust yourself. So which is it?" He posed the psychoanalytic question to her, and the way her face scrunched up said she wasn't taking it well.

"I never said that," Layne was quick to spit out.

He shrugged. "You didn't have to."

Patience was sure as hell not her strong suit and right now it was wearing thinner than a split hair. "Look, can you help me or not? For someone who supposedly knows how to get shit done, all I hear is a lot of damn bullshitting."

"How badly do you want the information from this man?" Daniil pulled his phone out, appearing to quickly fire off a message.

"I don't give a rat's ass if you want to pluck each hair from his head one follicle at a time or you simply beat the crap out of him. Whatever makes you happy and gets what I want from him." If it were up to Layne, she'd just shoot first and ask questions later. However, in this situation, she needed answers before any killing happened.

He seemed pleased that the options were limitless in the way he extracted information for her. "I don't hand out favors for free," he noted.

"Good, ‘cause I don't accept handouts. Name your price and I will make sure you will get it." She crossed her arms in front of her stomach, waiting to see how much this was going to cost her.

"$100,000," he said without so much as an ounce of hesitation.

Without the blink of an eye, she responded, "Done. You'll have it by tomorrow morning." There was no price too high to keep Joey and Gage from stupidly getting caught in the crossfire on her behalf.

"One more thing," Layne stepped uncomfortably close to him with a murderous look in her eyes with her hand digging in her pocket. "Tell him he can choke on this on his way down to hell." She grabbed Daniil's hand and pressed a small metal object into it.

After she withdrew her hand, left in Daniil's open palm was the same casing that housed the bullet that penetrated Joey's chest on their wedding day. Orellano may not have pulled the trigger, but he sure as hell put the gun in Liam's hand.

Daniil grinned as he held up the shell between his thumb and forefinger letting his imagination conjure up all the creative ways to inflict this small piece of metal into his assigned target.

"I will contact you when it's done." He pulled his phone out again and looked at an incoming message. He raised a brow and looked at Layne. "Looks like you have company waiting for you downstairs."

When Daniil rotated his phone so she could see, there on the screen was a photo taken from the lobby of both Joey and Gage at the front desk appearing to be asking questions.

"Oh, for fucks sake." She should have known better.

Pocketing his phone, Daniil walked over to the door and opened it for her. "Take it from me, no matter what you do, men like that will pay any cost for the right woman."

She shook her head as she grumbled angrily at their inability to follow simple instructions. Layne snatched her helmet off the table on her way to the door. "I'm about to hand them the fucking bill for not listening to me."

Daniil walked out with her, catching a ride in the same elevator down to the lobby. She was fuming as they passed each floor. When the doors popped open, they both stepped out.

Approaching the line of elevators were Joey and Gage. Both of them stopped short when they saw her and Daniil exit the elevator. Various emotions flickered over their faces from relief, surprise, suspicion, and their possessive jealousy over her.

Leaning in close to her, with Daniil's large frame blocking the view of both De Luca men, he whispered into her ear, "Here's the key if you need it." His hand slid the keycard to the hotel room into her back pocket discreetly. He winked at her before stepping back and gesturing to a few of his men seated in the lobby to take their leave.

Layne gave a brief nod, still seeing red that the guys had so blatantly went against her wishes when she was doing her best to keep them out of trouble. Her eyes stared at both her men's faces trying to find the restraint not to shout and cause a scene there in the lobby.

"In the damn elevator. Now ." She ground out past her temper before turning and catching the elevator doors before they shut. Layne stepped inside and waited for Joey and Gage to join her, dead set on making them aware of how they fucked up.