Page 34 of Rent a Mob Boss

“I think about lots of things.”

I can’t describe how much I love this kid. “I know you do.”

The door opens behind us, and a woman walks in wearing the same black apron as the other waitstaff. I barely glance at her—a brief, polite smile in the mirror.

“All done,” Lillie announces. I reach past her for the paper towels in the dispenser mounted to the wall.

“Don’t turn around.”

The voice is flat. Wrong. Too calm for a sentence that starts with don’t. I freeze with my hand on the dispenser, and my eyes go to the mirror over the sink. I catch sight of the gun in the reflection. It’s small and dark, and pointed at a spot between my shoulder blades. The woman holding it isn’t shaking. Her face is blank, like she knows exactly what’s going to happen next. All at once, my whole body goes cold as if it was just dropped through ice.

“Both of you,” the woman says. “You’re coming with me. Now.”

Meanwhile, Lillie is busy playing with the faucet, turning it off and on. She’s going to have to wash her hands again. It’s amazing, the things that go through our heads at a time like this. Like it matters whether she just dirtied her hands again when there is a gun pointed at my back. She is completely unaware that the world just changed.

“Please.” It surprises me how steady my voice comes out, since I’m screaming inside. “She’s only five. She’s just a little girl. Take me. Just take me, leave her here. Someone will find her. Her father will⁠—”

“Both of you.” The woman steps closer. The gun doesn’t move. “I’m not asking again. Got it?”

“Quinn?” Lillie looks up at me. Her hands are dripping on the floor. “Are we going someplace?”

I look down into her face. Those dark eyes of hers, Dorian’s eyes. Trusting and completely unaware. I have a decision to make here, and there’s really no choice involved. Breaking down is not an option. Failing her is not an option.

So I do the only thing I can do. I take her hand and give it a squeeze. “Yeah, honey. We’re going.”

I pick her up off the floor because I don’t trust this woman. I mean, obviously—she has a gun. God forbid she decides to make a grab for Lillie. With her in my arms, I maintain a scrap of control.

The gun prods my lower back while the woman moves us through a door at the back of the bathroom I hadn’t noticed. It leads to a service corridor, gray concrete, and the hum of a refrigeration unit fills the air. We pass a stack of boxes and a mop bucket, and a fire exit propped open with a brick. Beyond it, there’s an alley. In the alley is a white van with no markings. The sliding door on the side is already open. Two men are waiting for us, one of them sitting behind the wheel.

“Get in,” the second man growls.

This is actually happening. It’s not a dream. It’s the most surreal situation I’ve ever been in, but it is very real, and I have to protect Lillie. That is the single imperative, the one task I have to train all of my energy on. Forget me. This little girl needs me to hold it together and be on her side, or else.

I lift her into the van first, then climb in after her. The door slides shut, robbing me of the light from the bulb over the exit we just took. A man takes my wrists and wraps them together with a zip tie. Fast, practiced, as if he’s done it before.

Then he reaches for Lillie. Something inside me detonates. “Don’t touch her.” It comes out savage, a voice I didn’t know I had. “Tie mine? Fine. But not hers. She is five years old.”

The man and the woman exchange a glance. The woman frowns but nods, so the man leaves Lillie’s wrists alone. I feel a small victory that means nothing and everything at the same time.

The van starts moving.

I pull Lillie into my lap, and she curls against my chest. I wrap my bound hands around her as best I can and hold her close. My heart is hammering so hard, I’m sure she can feel it. I’m sure she can hear it, too. But when I look down at her face in the dim light that leaks through the front windshield, she doesn’t look scared.

No. In fact, she looks curious. “Where are we going?” she asks, looking around.

“I don’t know, sweetie.”

“Is it a surprise?”

“Something like that,” I whisper. Yes, it is most definitely a surprise. I never did like surprises very much.

“Do I need my shoes? Because I don’t have my shoes.”

I look at her feet, prepared to tell her she’s wrong. She’s not. Somewhere between the bathroom and the van, her shoes came off. I was so shocked I didn’t notice. She’s in her socks—the ones with the little strawberries on them.

That detail is the thing that almost breaks me. Not the gun or the zip tie. Not the van with no windows. It’s the thought of her shoes on the bathroom floor back at Gino’s, and Dorian sitting at the table, waiting for us to come back. He has no idea.

He doesn’t have the first clue.