Chapter 27

“I toldyou she’d be up.” The speaker hits the lights, flooding the room with light, and two figures appear in the doorway. I squint against the brightness, trying to see them clearly.

My wrists burn. The ropes tying me to the chair dig into my skin when I start tugging again. I’ve been awake for a while. I’m not sure how long. Maybe an hour or longer. The moments tick by at a strange pace when you’re tied to a chair and locked away in a dark room with only your thoughts and fears to keep you company.

Now that I can see the room I’m in, I realize it’s just a bedroom.

A normal bedroom with a full-size bed, with a dark blue comforter on top. Posters of cars and bikini models are hung on the walls. A high school letterman jacket hangs off the closet door.

“Hey. Hey.” Fingers snap in front of my face, dragging my attention back to my captor.

My stomach squeezes.

“Jimmy.” Instant rage fills me. “What the hell, Jimmy!”

“Now. Now.” He pats my cheek then drags a chair over to me and sits backward on it, facing me.

“What am I doing here? Why did you do this?” I tug harder on the ropes. Raising my voice makes my head throb.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Marlena. You know how much I hate that shit.” He folds his arms over the back of the chair, resting his chin on them. “You thought you’d get the upper hand, but it doesn’t work that way, sweetheart.”

“What are you talking about?” He can’t know about our plans for what to do with that recording. He can’t even know I have it.

“Fine.” He shakes his head. “We’ll do this your way. Robby, go downstairs and shut the door on your way out.”

“Uncle Jimmy, c’mon, man. I don’t think you should do this. Mom’s gonna be home tomorrow. If she finds out about this, she’s gonna have my ass.”

I tilt my head to look over Jimmy’s shoulder. His nephew looks about eighteen. Robby shifts from one foot to the next, his hands fidgeting at his sides.

“You got your little nephew to help you? You want him to go to jail like you?” I notice the bruises on Robby’s forehead, and the thin white butterfly bandage on the bridge of his nose. “You had him in the car that rammed into us?” Jimmy’s lost his fucking mind.

“Don’t worry about Robby.” Jimmy twists around and jerks his hand at his nephew. “Just go, Robby. Don’t worry, she’ll be gone by tonight. Just get the hell out.”

He frowns but does as his uncle says, quietly shutting the door once he’s in the hall.

“I have another week to come up with the money, Jimmy,” I say when he swings his attention back to me.

“Oh, I have your money. That’s not the problem.” From his back pocket, he retrieves the envelope Diana had given me with my payment for this morning. He tosses it to the bed and pulls out his phone. “The issue here is your fucking boyfriend didn’t keep his nose out of our business. And now he’s causing real problems for me.”

“Viktor isn’t doing anything to you.” I slowly twist my wrists, trying to loosen the rope.

Jimmy drops his chin. “No? So, he wasn’t at a meeting this afternoon with Michael telling him about my side hustle? That wasn’t him?” Spit gathers in the corner of his mouth.

“What? No.” Viktor said he’d wait for me. He’d promised.

“No?” His nostrils flare. “Well, you’re a fucking idiot then, because he sure as fuck was there. And he had a long ass meeting with Michael. Tell me what he was saying to him. Because going to him and tattling is a bitch move, even for a fucking Russian.”

“How do you know it had anything to do with you? The Petrovs have done business with Michael before.” It’s been a long time, and I have no idea what sort of business they’ve done, but I remember hearing their name well before I met Viktor.

“And it’s just a coincidence that you and I are in the middle of business and he goes to Michael?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Jimmy. Viktor has no reason to talk to Michael about you.” Unless he brought the recording on his own, but he swore he wouldn’t make a move without me. He promised.

“Hmm.” Jimmy pulls out a phone from behind him.

It’s my phone.

My throat closes shut.

“You’re not a good liar, Marlena. I remember that about you.” He points my phone at me while he says this. A few swipes and he has the phone open and shows me the recording app I used last night.

“Jimmy.” It’s a plea.

His thumb touches the screen.

“I found one, but it’s in fucking Los Angeles. I’m gonna need more cash upfront if you want me to go out there to get it and bring it back.” Jimmy’s voice comes through the phone, and I close my eyes to the fury blossoming in his.

“You see, I could have sworn I’d seen you last night. I wasn’t positive, cause you were all dressed up in that gown and it was dark in the back yard where you were talking with some other woman. But then I saw you get in the SUV with your boytoy and realized it had been you in the yard.”

“Jimmy.” I tug harder on my binds, but they won’t budge. My ankles are in no better shape. I’m going nowhere.

“Then I hear Viktor is meeting with Michael today. I figure one thing must have to do with the other.” He flips the phone around, tossing it from hand to hand. “So I figure I might not have as much time to get the cash I need as I thought. So I decided to take matters into my own hands.”

“You kidnapped me for the money.” I try to stay with him, but I’m thinking a million thoughts at one time. How can I get out of these ropes? Where does his sister live? And the thought I’m trying to avoid; did Viktor go behind my back and meet with Michael?

“I did.” He laughs. “And then I find this.” He smacks my phone against a palm.

“Viktor wasn’t taking the recording to Michael,” I explain. “Yes, I wanted to. And I was going to tell you that if you didn’t delete the photo, that I would.”

He stares at me a long moment.

“Too late for that, I’m afraid.” He shrugs. “See, I got a little pissed when I heard this, so I went ahead and sent the photos to Donato and his niece, you know, the one you work for. See, it was her cousin’s car we lifted that night.”

Everything, all the scrounging for money, selling my television, was for nothing.

“Then.” He gets up from his chair and slips my phone into his jeans. “I sent a message to your boyfriend, explaining what he needs to do in order to make all this better.”

“What do you want from me, Jimmy?”

I was wrong about Viktor.

“From you, nothing. You’re as broke as you can get. I want Petrov money. Especially now that I have to find a way to keep my uncle off my ass.”

“How do you know Michael’s not on his way here now?”

“He’s not a hothead like me. He’ll cool off first, then he’ll call me over to the house for dinner or something. I got time. And if I get this done before then, I’ll be able to get away from here.”

“Why did you betray your own family anyway? You know he’s not going to let that fly.”

“He’s my uncle.” He lifts a shoulder. “And he let me go to prison to keep you safe. He wanted to keep his precious Marlena out of prison and out of trouble. So he let me take the full rap then gave me no fucking protection while I was in there. He fucking betrayed me, and for what? His whore’s daughter?”

“What?” I lunge forward, but I get nowhere.

His eyebrows shoot up, then slowly his lips curl up into a twisted and demented grin.

“You didn’t know?” He laughs. “I was doing a lot of drugs back then; I thought you knew.”

“Know what, Jimmy? Know what!”

He gets really close to me. The stench of his breath hits my face.

“Michael is your father.”