Page 4 of Sloth

“I have to,” she said, helping him into the passenger side of her car. “They’ll kill you and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if that happened.” That was the honest truth too. She slammed his door shut and noted that he probably passed out. She just hoped that the tranquilizer she used was the proper dosage and she hadn’t just finished the job for her father.

Trish slid into the driver’s seat and grabbed his wrist, feeling for a pulse. “Oh, thank God” she breathed when she found it. “You’re not dead.” She looked him over, noting how handsome he was up close. His lips were just inches from hers but that wasn’t the first kiss Trish wanted from Victor. Besides, she didn’t have time to sit and admire his looks. No, she was going to have to get them both out of there before anyone knew that either of them was missing. It was her only shot at keeping both herself and Victor alive because now, she was involved in this mess and her father wouldn’t hesitate to order his goons to kill her too. Of that, she was very sure.

* * *

Trisha knew that she was borrowing time. Her father would find out sooner than later that she went against the family and kidnapped Victor Sloth before he could have his guys off him. She wanted to gloat—God, she wanted to call her father and tell him that she outsmarted him and his stupid plan to kill the boy she had a crush on her entire life. Well, he wasn’t exactly a boy anymore. Victor Sloth had grown up into a fine-looking man. He was classically handsome with his blond hair and blue eyes, he reminded her of a surfer, but she was pretty sure he had never surfed a day in his life. And she was also pretty sure that he had never even noticed her, even when she practically threw herself in his pathway at parties and syndicate gatherings. She wasn’t classically anything—beautiful, sexy, stunning, none of those things. Guys usually didn’t ask her out and when they found out who her father was, they ran the other way. Every time she was asked out on a date, she’d give the guy the whole spiel about her family and wanted to get away from the syndicate life. Maybe it was too much, too fast, but she just couldn’t seem to help herself—she was a talker. They usually didn’t ask for a second date, and that made it pretty tough to have a long-term boyfriend. The fact that she had only had one of those, if that’s what she could call her college fling during her junior year, made her feel inadequate in most of her dealings with men.

Her mother used to tell her to keep her talking to a minimum and give the guy a chance to ask her out on another date. Her mom liked to say that a little mystery went a long way, but she never liked mysteries. But maybe her mom had a point. Maybe she should have talked less and smiled more. Maybe if she had, she would have had more experience with guys and not still be a virgin at twenty-five, not that she’d ever admit that to anyone, especially not her mother. Sure, she was trying to save herself for the right guy, and in her imaginary world, Victor was the right guy, but someone had forgotten to tell him that.

Right now, she didn’t have time to figure out her messy dating life or lack thereof. No, now she was going to have to make it to the safe house that she had secured for Victor and herself, and then, she was going to have to figure out plan B. Trish hadn’t really given much thought about what her next step would be. She was hoping that Victor would be more willing to help her come up with one. Instead, he gave her a hard time, protesting her offer to help and even dismissing her. He had no idea what he was up against, but she did. She had heard the entire conversation between her father and Mr. Sloth. Her father had announced that Victor was a liability to his plans and needed to be killed and Mr. Sloth didn’t even bat an eyelash, telling her father that he agreed. He had confirmed the hit on his own son, and that’s when Trish came up with the plan to help Victor. She had to because, on his own, he wouldn’t know who he could and couldn’t trust. She wanted to be someone Victor would be able to trust, but she was sure that she had blown that when she kidnapped the poor guy. Once he woke up, he wasn’t going to be very happy with her, but she was hoping to have them both at the safehouse and there would be no finding his way back to town from that place.

To say that it was off the beaten path was an understatement. It was almost four hours away from civilization, no matter which way you decided to travel. There were very few stores—mostly smaller convenience stores, and a couple of gas stations. Honestly, she found the whole getting lost in the middle of nowhere to be kind of romantic, but that was probably due to all the romance novels she read. The safehouse did have another redeeming quality—it was about twenty minutes from the local library, and they had a great romance section where she planned on borrowing many titles.

Victor groaned and stirred and Trish worried that he was going to wake up. When he started softly snoring again, she breathed out her sigh of relief and checked the GPS. They had about another two hours until they were going to be at the safe house, and she just hoped that the tranquilizer that she gave Victor would last that long.

Her cell phone rang, and she pulled it from her pocket. It was her burner phone and only one person had that number—her older brother, Bruno. “I really hope that helping Victor was worth all of the trouble you’re causing,” he whispered into the phone. He usually spoke in hushed tones when his partner, Gino, was close by. Bruno wasn’t sure if he could trust Gino or not, but Trish was pretty sure he had a thing for the guy.

“Is Gino with you?” she asked.

“Yeah, but he’s in the bathroom. He has no idea that I’m calling you.”

“Good, no one can know what I’ve done,” she insisted.

“Too late,” Bruno breathed. “You do know that they have video footage of you helping Victor out of the restaurant and into your car, right?” Shit, she hadn’t thought about video footage and all that mess.

“No,” she whispered, “I had no idea. Honestly, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. Victor gave me no choice but to drug and kidnap him. He was going to go to his father and ask questions. You and I both know how that would have ended.”

“With Victor’s death,” Bruno said.

“Yes, and you shouldn’t want that. Isn’t he your friend?” she asked. She knew about her brother’s secret meetings with Victor and the rest of the syndicate families behind their father’s back. If their father found out, he’d order a new hit on Bruno and that would destroy her. Bruno was the only family she really loved. Her mother and father were so caught up in the syndicate world and trying to preserve the old ways, they were lost to her.

“You know that I can’t talk about any of that with you. If they find out that you know about my meetings, they’ll kill us both. I want to keep you safe and free from all this shit,” Bruno said.

“While I appreciate that, I’m kind of already invested in this mess,” she said. “I did kidnap Victor Sloth and that’s not going to go over well with the Sloth or Gluttony families. It won’t matter what my last name is once our father finds out what I’ve done.”

“I’ll try to stall him and the others, but I won’t be able to forever. Please tell me that you have a safe place to lay low,” Bruno said.

“I do,” she admitted.

“Great, don’t tell me where it is. The less I know, the better. You need to lay low and lose your regular phone—Victor’s too,” he reminded.

“Shit, I forgot to dump his phone. I got rid of mine back at the restaurant.” She pulled off to the side of the phone and put the car in park. Trish unbuckled her seatbelt and did a quick search of Victor’s pockets, finding his phone in his pants pocket.

“Got it,” she shouted triumphantly. She got out of the car and tossed the phone to the ground, stomping on it with her boot. “Done,” she said.

“Great, now get back on the road, and don’t stop until you are at your safehouse,” he said.

“I won’t,” she agreed, “and Bruno, thanks for calling to give me a heads up.” She ended the call before her brother could get all sappy on her and tell her that he loved her. She loved him right back, but that was something that they didn’t really discuss in their family, and they didn’t need to start that mushy shit now. Right now, she was going to get her and Victor out to her safehouse and then, she was going to figure out how to lug him into the house from the car—a job she wasn’t sure she’d be able to handle, but she was going to figure that all out because keeping them both safe was her top priority.

Victor

Victor woke up and groaned as he sat up in bed; his head pounding like a son-of-a-bitch. Had someone hit him from behind? He thought back over his day and tried to figure out what happened. The last thing he remembered was going to the bathroom after Bowie and Carter took off. He was pleased with how well their meeting had gone, but he was careful not to get his hopes up. Even the best-laid plans could go very wrong within the syndicate families. He knew that fact firsthand.

The room finally stopped spinning and he looked around. “Where am I?” he breathed to himself. He didn’t know this place at all and that worried him. If he wasn’t mistaken, he could smell bacon and coffee, so wherever he was couldn’t be that bad. He pulled on his shirt that was laying at the base of the bed and buttoned it halfway up. He didn’t remember getting undressed, but he had stripped down to his pants and that was about all he wore to bed. The most disturbing part of waking up half-naked was that his gun was missing and that gave him an uneasy feeling.

He couldn’t find his shoes and he gave up looking for them with the smell of breakfast beckoning him from his room. He made his way down the hallway, following the sound of bacon sizzling and the smell of coffee, peeking into what he assumed to be the kitchen when he got to the end of the hall.

“Oh, hey sleepy head.” He looked the woman over as she finished scrambling the eggs, and bits and pieces of the day started coming back to him.

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