1. Emily

Sitting out behind the restaurant where I work with an enormous Diet Coke, I'm seriously at the point where I'm considering sub-table hand jobs as a second form of income.

Which is how I consider trying to explain my desperation level to Rachel, a fellow server at Cucina Amore, since she's the one most likely to catch me mid-stroke.

I'm not really serious about it. Honestly, it's a super impractical way to earn extra cash. I'd eclipse the number of dicks I've touched in my life after Guest Number Six, and I'm not really sure what the market rate for a handy is these days. But I've reached the sort of rock-bottom patheticness that leads people to do insane things with their bodies they'd never otherwise consider.

I don't say any of this. Nobody here has any idea what I've been going through, mostly because my dad would be mortified if I talked about it, but also because they can't really help all that much.

I'm in the alley behind the restaurant in my server blacks while Rachel smokes a cigarette and talks about her current-or-maybe-ex boyfriend and all the drama that entails (larceny, petty robbery, domestic assault, occasional drug use, infidelity—they nail all the trashy greatest hits) and I can't concentrate on the latest saga of Danny The Absolute Piece of Shit Who Also Happens To Have A Magical Penis Which Is Why She Can't Just Leave The Motherfucker.

And I'm seriously thinking about robbing a bank.

It wouldn't go well. I've never used a gun and people aren't intimidated by me. I'm five-foot-three with dirty brown hair and have been described as "fuckably cute" by more than one guy, but I don't think that's the kind of physical appearance that would inspire a bank teller to hand over the keys to the vault. But crime is probably better than hand jobs. And a lot faster.

"And then frickin' Danny comes charging into the back and like pushes me, physically, bodily, into the back office, where Ethan's sitting at the desk and counting out stacks of cash and like shoving it into this weird bag, and Danny starts yelling about this guy I've been messaging on Instagram, but I'm like, Dan, seriously, shut the fuck up about Liam, he's just a friend and he's a model that lives in California anyway, you stupid prick, which made Danny put his hands on me again, and then Ethan got so frickin' mad for no reason and threw Danny out?—"

I basically throw my Diet Coke in the air to get her to stop talking for one second. She looks at me like I'm insane as she takes a drag of her cigarette, and I pounce in the meager two seconds while she inhales and exhales a thin stream of smoke.

"What do you mean, Ethan was counting big stacks of money in the back room?"

I shouldn't have sounded so eager. Rachel's rolling her eyes at me, and I bet she knows what I'm thinking, but right now I feel like a kid catching Santa Claus dropping presents under the tree. This is kismet, it's magic, it's the exact sort of insanity I'd seriously consider right now, because it could possibly work.

"You do realize this place is basically a frickin' cash business, right?" Rachel waves a dismissive hand at Cucina's crumbling building. We're located in a mediocre neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, which isn't exactly prime real estate, and yet Cucina Amore gets a steady stream of clients.

Most of those patrons are men, and most of those men pay in cash.

There are obviously rumors. People talk about how the place is actually owned by the mob, and it's some kind of money-laundering scheme, and most of the guys that eat in this dump are really made men and soldiers. That's what Rachel says, anyway. And she could be right, there really is a high proportion of men coming through here, mostly single, sometimes with a girlfriend or two, but they always give off that shady vibe. Like they're casing the joint. Or like they're busy being seen.

I just never put much stock in that. It's Chicago, which means everyone's in the "mafia" or they like to pretend they are, anyway. From what I know, the mafia got wrecked by RICO cases back in the nineties and hasn't been the same since. I figured rumors are rumors, and Italian-American men just happen to like the Bolognese and the faux-Roman ambiance.

Now, I'm not so sure.

"Yeah, but why was Ethan counting it?" I press, sounding a little too eager even to my own ears.

"Duh, because as the manager of this shithole, it's his job to do the bank drop every night. And he's gotta keep the books? The idiot stashes the stupid thing in a safe under his desk and the safe doesn't even lock. I opened it once on accident. But seriously, Emily, you're missing the frickin' point. Ethan saw Danny put hands on me and he didn't even try to stop it! I'm serious, I'm done with these macho dickheads, I'm totally done with them?—"

She goes on like that for a while. I drink my Diet Coke and nod along and make encouraging comments, because I really do want her to dump Danny—the guy is an absolute monster of a human being and doesn't deserve to breathe—but we've had this conversation a few dozen times at this point. They'll fight, Danny will apologize, they'll bang, she'll swoon, the karmic cycle restarts.

It'd be depressing, but the predictability is almost a comfort in these trying times.

Once our break's over, it's back to work. Cucina's quiet on a Wednesday evening, and all I can see as I wait tables and run orders are all the men sitting around at the bar, dining with much younger and dolled-up girls at the tables, even a few older guys wearing lots of fake-looking gold jewelry buying their wives an extra drink or two in the booths. But all of them talk loud, laugh louder, eat too much, drink too much, and curse like it's their life's work to come up with an original insult.

I can't stop thinking about the duffel bag.

Rachel and I are both closing tonight. Once the place clears out, I'll do most of the work while she argues on the phone with Danny. Ethan will be busy wrapping up the bar and yelling at Rachel, and nobody will be paying attention for at least a half hour—which is more than enough time to slip back into the office, grab the money, sneak out the back door, and stash it in the dumpster.

I won't take everything. Just a few hundred dollars. Enough that Ethan will go along on his blissful way without ever realizing what happened.

It's not like I'm taking it for me. Isn't there a long tradition of thieves stealing from the rich and giving to the poor? Cucina Amore is doing just fine, whoever owns this place won't even notice if a couple stacks of cash disappear, and it'll mean everything to me.

It'll mean my father might not get evicted from his house for one more month.

Which is all I can think about. My seventy-six-year-old father, on Social Security, drained of retirement savings, with a second mortgage on the house he grew up in, the house that he raised me in, the house where my mother died—the house that he wants to die in. That house means everything to us. And it might be gone in three lousy weeks unless I come up with more money to make a payment large enough to keep the bank off my ass until I can figure out what to do long-term.

This situation isn't tenable. It hasn't been tenable for months, but I was making it work. I serve tables here at Cucina Amore in the evenings, and for a while I was getting up early to work phones in a call center all day. I was netting exactly four hours of sleep per night, which is apparently not nearly enough, because I fell asleep in the middle of a conversation with a very kind older lady named Jan who seemed interested in buying a warranty program for her personal computer, which is honest-to-god real and not some piece-of-shit scam, I double-checked before taking the job, and I woke up to a dial tone and my manager firing my ass on the spot.

Now here I am with visions of the bank taking away the only thing my elderly father has left while walking past the office every few minutes.

This is doable. Stupid, dangerous, but doable. I make my plan as my shift gets deeper into the night. Closing goes exactly the same every single time, and all I have to do is be smart. I know Ethan's routine. I know exactly what Rachel's going to do. There's a window, a little golden moment of time where they're both busy, and I can take advantage of it.

I can steal from my employer.

I don't feel good about that. I'm honestly learning a lot about myself these days. Turns out that sinking down deep past rock bottom and toward the blackest depths of the Mariana's Trench reveals things about a person. For example, I'm morally flexible. I did not realize that. I've always thought of myself as an inherently good person: I don't honk at cars when they don't start moving the second a light turns green, I pet every dog that comes up to sniff me, I wave to the guys that drive the garbage trucks, and I always tip my barista, even when all she does is pour some coffee into a cup. I never would have imagined that I could steal in any meaningful way even a few weeks ago.

Now I know that I'm willing to go to any lengths to protect the people that I love.

Even if it's protecting them from themselves.

Closing time rolls around. The guests trickle out, the guys lingering at the bar getting out last. I wipe down the tables, sweep the floor, empty the trash and recycling, and on my way back in from the dumpster, I pause in the small hallway that leads past the kitchen and the bathrooms. The office door is open a crack, and it's empty. Ethan should be at the bar, closing out the register, while I spotted Rachel sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette and cursing at someone on her phone.

I have more work to do. I need to check condiments, put up the chairs, check the front station, polish and roll silverware, and about fifty other things before we're done. I should forget this and walk away.

But I keep thinking of my dad sitting in the darkness of his office giving away everything he has, and hate flows through me.

I hate what they did to him.

Because it wasn't only his money, it was his pride, his dignity, and his future.

Stealing from this stupid restaurant is nothing compared to what he went through, and I'll be damned if he loses anything else.

I'd rather go to jail for the rest of my life than watch my dad suffer for one second more.

The office door opens without a sound. I slip inside and close it behind me. My heart's racing and my hands are sticky, and it's not too late to stop, but I don't. I head to the desk and get down on my hands and knees, crawling underneath it, my ass up in the air and my dress riding up, but I'm way past caring if I'm flashing my underwear.

The safe door opens. Rachel was right—Ethan didn't bother to lock it. There's a black duffel bag shoved inside, just like she said there would be, and I feel like I might throw up on my hands as I slowly drag it out.

The bag's lighter than I expected, but I guess money isn't all that heavy. My hands are shaking as I slowly pull back the zipper, mouth watering, tongue licking the back of my teeth, breath coming in rapid, shallow, because this is my last chance, my last attempt, and if this fails?—

I stare at several rolls of duct tape, a black silk mask, and some silk ropes.

"What the ever-loving hell?" I whisper as confusion washes over me. This isn't money. It's not even close to money. What the hell would someone need with this stuff, anyway? A blindfold? Silk ropes? And under them, a ball gag?—

Oh my god.

It's a sex bag. A kinky sex bag. Like a BDSM sex bag. Like Ethan's going to bind, gag, and do some weird fuck stuff tonight, and I found his private stash.

Rachel is so full of shit.

And Ethan's a very naughty boy.

I start to zip it closed. I'm mentally berating myself because not only did I just try to steal from my place of employment and fail, but I also outed my manager's sex life, which isn't cool. I never should have done this, but it's too late, because I hear the door to the office open, and I freeze.

My back's to the door. Whoever just walked in doesn't say anything at first. I assume it's Ethan, and he's getting a very good view of my lacy black panties—which were the only clean underwear I had tonight.

"I'm sorry," I say, trying to yank my dress down over my ass. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to find your sex bag. I didn't mean to?—"

I try to sit up and slam my head on the bottom of the desk.

"Oh, fucking fuck," I groan as stars flash in front of my eyes.

Then there are hands on me. Big, gentle hands, guiding me up and onto the chair. I groan, rubbing what's already feeling like a sizable lump, when my vision clears.

It's not Ethan.

A man's kneeling in front of me. I've never seen him in here before. He's handsome, obscenely handsome, with a square jaw and slight salt-and-pepper stubble. But despite the white mixed into his black hair, he can't be older than thirty-five at most. He's in fantastic shape, and his expensive-looking suit grips his lean, toned body like a wet dream, and I'm absolutely stunned into silence.

His dark eyes stare into mine and there's a slight curl to his lips.

"Sex bag?" he asks. Even his voice is sexy. My god, it's like he's wrapping those silk ropes around my throat.

"The blindfold," I whisper. "The ball gag. I just figured—" I stop, frowning. "I'm sorry, but who are you?"

"My name's Simon," he says, touching the top of my head where I banged it. "And that's my sex bag you're talking about."