Page 24 of Heist in Paradise

We all knew it was a long shot. Men like Salvadore were too smart and far too devious to be caught with their pants down. Anything illegal was likely iron-clad, offshore, and untraceable. The fact that Olivia had managed to find anything at all on him, even if it was mostly conjecture, was impressive.

That didn’t mean anything would stick. And even if by some miracle it did, men like Salvadore with power and wealth didn’t just fold. They fought back. They crushed the little guy. Obliterated the enemy.

Olivia had no idea what she was up against. Or how much she still had to lose.

OLIVIA

The full sweep took less than an hour and yielded some surprising—and disturbing—results.

I’d just started to feel disheartened by the lack of anything incriminating (and I even dug through his literal underwear) when Madoc opened a random door at the back of the utility room and made a soft “aha” sound that immediately put me on edge.

Madoc was a piece of work. I hated him more than I hated my neighbor Donovan, who found excuses to loiter around the fenceline whenever I was in the pool. I knew I wasn’t the most likable person on the planet—I was no Molly, after all—but Madoc’s icy demeanor felt personal.

All of that vanished the moment I peered around Madoc and into the secret room. It was too dark to see much, but the location was pretty suspicious. My heart thumped at the possibilities. Was this the room where he kept Molly? A shiver wracked through my body, and I knew Madoc felt it because his head snapped toward me.

“Calm down,” he said flatly.

“I am,” I lied. “So calm. The calmest.”

Madoc rolled his eyes like I was being overdramatic. God, I hated him. The surge of anger I felt toward him was welcoming, a grounding force that I latched onto like a lifeline.

Jax pressed behind me. “Wait here. We’ll go in first.”

I scoffed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

His hand latched onto my wrist in a bruising hold. “It could be bugged. A trap.”

“Or a place to store detergent.”

Then Jax was rolling his eyes. With pathetic ease, he pulled me away from the door to stand behind him. “We don’t just run headlong into the unknown,” he said, as if lecturing a toddler who wanted to jam a fork into the electrical socket. “Madoc will go first.” I opened my mouth, but he cut me off: “It’s not a sex dungeon.”

My eyes bulged. Jax’s mouth flattened in amusement as he tapped his ear. Right. The earpieces. I forgot he was communicating with the rest of his crew. I was hideously out of the loop and only got snippets of information. I tugged on my arm, still caught in his grip. “What sex dungeon? Who said that?”

“Scooby,” Jax said with another eye roll. Who the hell was Scooby?

Movement caught my eye as Madoc lifted his shirt, exposing pale tattooed skin across his lower back, and removed a gun from his waistband. Of course he was armed. He didn’t need my knife. He just wanted to screw with me.

He walked confidently into the darkness, and I viciously hoped it was a trap and it involved something sharp and pointy.

Jax gave me one last warning look before he followed.

What felt like an hour went by without a signal, so I crept to the door and squinted into the darkness. Tall shapes moved within, and for a heart-stopping second, I thought there were more than two of them. Then I heard a switch flick, and sinister red light filled the room.

“Oh,” I said. The one word stole my remaining air.

Lo and behold, it was a sex dungeon.

The walls were painted black, hosting various tools like paddles and whips, and leather handcuffs. One side of the room had a wall-length mirror and an elevated platform with an honest-to-god stripper pole. The furniture, ultra-masculine leather, and low pine wood tables, were facing the stage like a high-end private strip club. There was a small bar in the back corner, the red light coming from a bright neon sign above that spelled ‘Sinners’.

I didn’t realize I was making any sort of noise until Jax was standing in front of me, gripping my chin and wrenching my face up to him. “It’s just a playroom,” he said.

Just a playroom? I blinked at him owlishly. I didn’t think I was a sheltered little lamb, but the way he said it, like it was inconsequential, like it was normal, made me question myself. Did most people have a playroom? Was I too vanilla? Should I know what that long, curved rod with the bristles was used for?

“I’m…” I started, but stopped. I didn’t know what to say. My stomach was full of withering snakes. Not fear, exactly, but something in that family for sure.

Jax’s fingers flexed on my face. “You’re panicking.”

“Am I?” My voice was high and reedy.