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Mr. Midnight blinks at me. I think I might actually have succeeded in surprising him, which seems rather monumental at the moment. “Good lord, woman, I’m not a monster,” he splutters. “I wouldn’t do any of that. No, this is me telling you that you’re very lucky. Not because you get to become my wife. The marriage is just a sham, so we can get the money. I’ll even split it with you fifty-fifty. This is me telling you that you can join our organization in some way, or you can make yourself and your loved ones disappear with all that money, but life as you knew it is over.”
I can’t help it. I burst into laughter again. I laugh until tears are streaming down my face and my sides ache, and my mouth is even dryer than before. “Oh my god. This dream. This is such a crazy dream.”
“I assure you, it’s no dream.” Mr. Midnight says that firmly in a no-nonsense, broody tone. There’s a lot of feet shuffling, and then I swear someone’s stomach growls. It was either that or a very strange-sounding fart.
“It’s definitely a dream. One wild, crazy dream. I really thought that something good would have happened by now, but this takes it. The whole marriage, I’m an instant billionaire, and my father was a crime lord thing. Wow. That’s good. It’s so good that when I wake up, I hope I can remember it so I can write it down. It would make for a great story. Doesn’t every librarian secretly want to be a writer?”
“For the love of anchovy pizza, just tell her to pinch herself!” Hungry Goon demands.
Mr. Midnight’s dark right brow arches up. “That’s an excellent idea. The chloroform obviously had unforeseen lingering effects. I know this is a lot to take in, and I should have given you more time before I came down here. I used what the internet said was a good time frame, and clearly, it was wrong.”
“Fucking internet,” one of the goons mutters.
“I’m starving,” another one adds.
“My shoes still hurt,” yet another goon pitches in.
“Can we take a bathroom break?” the fourth asks.
“I’m not pinching myself,” I protest with a snort.
I have a terrible feeling—a sinking feeling in my stomach that feels like I had too many nachos too late at night. They’re so good at first, especially when you’re starving, making it impossible to sleep when you’re that hungry, so you eat too many, and then, twenty minutes later, you start getting that lead nacho feeling in your belly. This could also apply to crackers or chips or whatever deliciously salty late-night snack of choice your go-to is. I suppose this could also be called a premonition—a very bad, very dark, in the basement sitting in a chair after I might have been legit kidnapped, and my boring life has just become anything but boring kind of a feeling. A crazy—I might not actually be dreaming for real, holy shit—feeling.
Mr. Midnight’s brow creases into a darker, more dangerous frown. “You need to pinch yourself. Do it now. Do it good and proper.”
“Or what? You’ll have one of your goons do it for me?” I don’t know where this sass is coming from. I’m a boring librarian, for shit’s sake. A librarian who, yes, says things in her head like shit’s sake, even though I’d never say it out loud for real.
“Nope, but you heard it. We’re hungry. And tired. Our feet hurt. Some of us need to pee too, and everything would be a lot better if we could just get to the part where we go upstairs, talk more about this agreement and how we’re going to move on from here, have pizza, and use the bathroom.”
I don’t have a stubborn streak that I know, but my chin is jutting out again, and I’m sitting here, crossing my arms and my legs, too, since I suddenly realize that I have to pee as well. Stubborn. It’s sheer stubbornness. I just can’t believe this. I can’t believe this isn’t a dream. If I don’t pinch myself, then it’s not real. It’s not. It can’t be.
“Pinch. Yourself. Please.” Mr. Midnight urges pleadingly.
“Or what? What kind of torture do you have planned if I don’t?”
His lips quirk up deviously, and I ignore how annoyingly handsome it makes him look. My va-jay can’t ignore it, though, and she does a little va-jay happy dance that tickles me straight up into my stomach and ribs.
“Oh, it’s better than torture,” Mr. Midnight promises with a feral gleam in his eyes. “I’ll unleash my granny on you.”
CHAPTER 3
Alden
The first thing my granny (alright, my adopted granny, but I don’t deal in adopted and not-by-blood and all that bullshit, so she’s just my granny—family who chose me, saved me, and kicked my ass into being a damn good person with some real fine skills) does when she arrives is laying one mother of a strip off on me.
