AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The weight of it all crushes me from above; squeezes the air from my lungs and makes my bones creak. My eyes fall closed.
I allow myself one minute of sheer exhaustion.
One idle thought about how things could have been different. Another life entirely, with a certain freckled face smiling by my side. A life of sleep and laughter and petty concerns about things like whose turn it is to do the dishes. Maybe I’d have been something boring. A professor or a writer. An art dealer, perhaps.
Then I push to my feet and smooth the front of my waistcoat, soothed by the familiar silk against my palm.
This is how it needs to be. And only children pine after fairy tales.
* * *
“Feeling cooperative?”
I rap against the guest suite door as I open it, peering around Erin’s deluxe makeshift cell. The lights are all off and soft breaths drift from the bed.
Ah. My captive is snoozing.
I should leave. Should close the door and let her catch up on sleep after her antics last night, not walk further into the room and flick on a table lamp, but as everyone knows, I am not a good man.
Golden light spills across the rugs. Erin’s breaths are slow. Steady.
Even as a kidnap victim, she gets more sleep than I do.
The door falls shut behind me as I stroll across the suite, hands tucked in my pockets, and now we’re truly alone. Erin is a small lump in the bed, piled high with blankets, and a rejected pillow lies tossed on the floor.
She snuffles, burrowing deeper into her pile of bedding. I stand at her bedside and observe, ignoring the dull ache in my chest.
“Mmph?” Erin says after several minutes, her hindbrain finally realizing that she’s not alone. “Whazzat?”
“Erin.” I sink down into the armchair. “I have a proposition for you.”
She’s frozen under her blankets, not breathing since she heard my voice. And though I scowl at the wall, a headache flaring in my temples, I know it’s not an unreasonable reaction.
I took her captive.
I watched her sleep… again.
I—
“Gawd, you people hate sleep, I swear. What time is—it’s not even seven thirty, Santo! We were up most of the night!”
It’s an effort to keep my face blank as she fights her way out of her tangled bedding, red-faced and rumpled, her silk pajama shirt twisting around her body. Erin harrumphs her way to a cross-legged seat, glaring at me from the center of the mattress, and she clearly doesnotfear me right now.
So the milkmaid has a temper under those freckles? Interesting.
“What can you possibly have on my schedule today that couldn’t wait for a reasonable hour?” she asks, so scathing. But her hazel eyes track over my chest and arms, that flush deepening as her gaze wanders.
It’s incriminating, the blush staining her cheeks. She doesn’t hate finding me here, no matter her bluster.
“A proposition,” I repeat. She’d know that if she paid an ounce of attention. “And seven thirtyisa reasonable hour, Erin. Such a spoiled little princess.”
Her fingers twitch, like she might actually lunge for me, and her tiny growl sends a pleased ripple down my spine. “Are all mob bosses huge jerks?”
I fight a smile. “Exclusively.”
“Well I am not a morning person, so if you want a biddable captive, come back in an hour or two.”
“I want photographs,” I say, ignoring her rant and leaning back in the armchair. “Of the two of us. Photographs that will ruin your father’s career. I can do it in other ways, obviously, but this process is dragging and I’d like to speed it along. Will you cooperate?”
