Hell's Kitchen Page 5

  “I said, suck my big, fat, dirty dick,” she spits, her green eyes flashing with emotion. “And while you’re at it, kiss my ass, too. She’s long gone, sunshine.”

  My jaw just about falls on the fucking floor. “Who are you?” I ask, more to myself than to her. I must have screwed this chick and I just don’t remember. I’ve taken plenty of chicks back to my place on Bleecker Street and made them do the walk of shame the next morning—I don’t snuggle after I fuck. That’s got to be it.

  “Did you just call me sunshine?” I add. I can feel this situation careening out of control, much like the car when it flipped over on the fucking bridge five minutes ago.

  “Are you deaf or something?” she bites back, her smug smile vanishing.

  I lean closer again, catch a whiff of the coffee on her breath. And something else. Vodka. Ahhh. “You’re drunk at eight-thirty in the morning?” I ask incredulously.

  She huffs, a laugh that contains no real emotion, just a defensive reflex. “Are you judging me, gangster boy?”

  I raise my eyebrows. As much as I want to keep bantering with this broad, I’ve got an Irish bitch to bag before I end up in a body bag. “Time’s up,” I growl, pressing my gun into her sternum, right along the line of buttons between her breasts.

  She clamps her mouth shut, her stance insolent, her eyes narrowed.

  And I snap.

  “Time to go for a little drive then, sweetheart,” I grimace, shifting the gun so it’s digging into the side of her ribs.

  “You’re sweating,” she says casually.

  Who the fuck is this woman? My dick wants to find out. The rest of me? I’m not so sure. She’s so unhinged, she’s almost … scaring me. “It’s hot,” I reply. Why am I even answering her? Fuck that. “Walk,” I demand, pulling her alongside me. I loop my arm around her shoulder so we’re walking side by side, shifting the gun so it’s now underneath my suit jacket, still pointed firmly into her side. “What’s your name?” I hiss.

  She just glares up at me. “Petunia,” she drawls. “What’s yours?”

  I huff. “Your name is not …” I struggle to even repeat the word, it’s so ridiculous. “Petunia.”

  She just shrugs. This chick is mad. She’s certifiable. I should just shoot her in her pretty face and make a run for it. Still, she’ll be handy as a hostage if it comes to that. The mood in the diner wasn’t exactly joyous when I ran through, bleeding and chasing Kaitlin. Why has nobody come to check on her? Are there cops out there, right now? I gotta chance it. I have to get out of here. My neck’s starting to itch, almost as much as my trigger finger.

  I’ve got that feeling in my gut. The one that tells me I’ll be emptying my clip before the day’s finished. Hopefully into somebody else, and not into my own skull.

  We make our way out of the bathroom and past the kitchen, where the fat Russian guy is throwing giant slabs of butter onto a hotplate. He’s oblivious, and I have to wonder if I was just imagining the looks I got when I ran through the diner after Kaitlin.

  We’re almost at the door when a squat Italian woman steps in front of us, her face thunderous.

  “Scarlett! You’ve got tables to clear,” she growls, snapping her fingers in front of this chick’s face.

  Scarlett. Oh, Christ. I can just imagine the way her cheeks turn scarlet red when she’s coming, my face between her legs. Oh, fuck. Focus, Barbieri!

  “I’m being abducted,” Scarlett says to her boss, glancing up at me. “Can’t you ask Helen to clear my section? She’s already taken my tips.”

  I almost choke. I’m being abducted?

  “Honey, didn’t you tell your boss I was coming to visit today? It is our anniversary, you know.”

  The squat woman smiles up at me, and I shoot back a placating grin, with as much charm as I can muster right now. “Scarlett, you didn’t tell me you were dating Salvatore!”

  And the smile falls right the fuck off my face. I can’t go anywhere in this damn city without being recognized.

  Satisfaction spreads across Scarlett’s face as she looks up at me with a grin. “Salvatore,” she says, her voice saccharine sweet.

  “How long have you two been together?” the woman asks, her eyes flicking between Scarlett and me, almost in disbelief.

  “Coming up to five minutes now,” Scarlett replies casually.

  The woman shakes her head. “When I saw you come in, I thought for sure you were one of those stronzo cab drivers using our toilet to take a dump.”

  “Oh, he did,” Scarlett says, deadpan even with a gun pressed against her right tit. Fascinating. “He’s got violent diarrhea. He just destroyed one of the bathroom stalls.”

  Well, I don’t know what to say to that. “We need to go.” I pull Scarlett firmly past her boss. “Scar forgot her crazy pills this morning. She might be back in tomorrow.”

  “What? You’re working a double today!” the woman screeches, but I ignore her, kicking the heavy glass door open and escaping into the stream of people clogging the sidewalk.

  We need a cab. We need a cab right fucking now.

  “Where are we going?” Scarlett asks.

  I pull her over to the street and hail down a cab. “For a drive.”

  “Where?”

  “Just get into the damn cab,” I say, releasing my stronghold on her long enough to shove her into the backseat of the waiting cab before sliding in behind her.

  The driver starts heading up the busy street. “Where to?” he calls through the small slot in the Plexiglas.

  “Just keep heading up here,” I say. “Head to Bleecker.” If the bitch won’t tell me where she’s hiding Kaitlin, she’s coming home with me until I can break her resolve. I groan inwardly. I really, really can’t be bothered torturing someone today. It’s Friday, I’m hung over as fuck, and there’s a very real possibility that there’s still a naked woman in my bed at home.

  “You’re sweating on me,” she remarks, wriggling away on the plastic-covered bench seat. I tut, pulling her even closer. Has she got a problem with sweat? I mean, it’s not pouring off me—I’m just perspiring a little underneath all these clothes. “It’s summer, baby. We all sweat. I bet you’re sweating right now under that sack you call a dress. And if you’re not,” I give her a sidelong grin, “we can certainly fix that.”

  God, I’d like to get her hot and sweaty.

  “Don’t call me baby,” she says, clearly unimpressed. “I’m not your baby.”

  “Sorry, Petunia.” I roll my eyes, snickering. I look up ahead, my phone vibrating in my suit pocket, the Game of Thrones theme song sounding obnoxiously through the cab. It’s been ringing on and off since we first got into the cab.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?” Scarlett asks.

  I smile condescendingly. “The only way I’m taking my attention off you is if you’re face down in my lap with your mouth open, and somehow I think we should wait until our fifteen-minute anniversary for that.”

  Bitch doesn’t even bristle. “You know, you could just silence it before I shoot myself in the face over here.”

  I shrug incredulously. “It’s the Game of Thrones theme music. Who doesn’t like Game of Thrones?”

  She stares at me angrily, and it suddenly slams home.

  “I didn’t fuck you at all,” I exclaim. She’s not one of those broads I wined, dined and sixty-nined before kicking out of my house. She’s Scarlett fucking Winchester.

  “You wish,” she mutters under her breath. I’d normally snap off a witty retort, but she’s Scarlett fucking Winchester.

  “You’re that chick out of that show!” I say excitedly. I don’t add the fact that I’ve jerked off to the image of her character more times than I can count. This is just fucking bizarre.

  She takes a deep breath and stares straight ahead. I frown. “You look … different than you used to. Hey, what the hell happened to you? You just disappeared. Did you stop sucking the director’s dick or something?”

  She presses her fingers to her
closed eyes. “Are you going to kill me?” she hisses, low enough that the cab driver can’t hear. “Because if that’s your plan, can we skip the small talk and get to the killing part?”

  Shit. She’s not joking. Her words leave me reeling for a moment. Not only have Theo and I just lost the bitch we were supposed to kidnap, crashed our limo, and probably earned ourselves each a bullet in the skull, but I’ve also managed to take a hostage who’s suicidal.

  I chew on the inside of my cheek, tasting blood. This is not good. It’s so far from good, we’re not even in the same realm as good. We’re not good, we’re not OK, we’re not anything except completely screwed. We’re dead men.

  I’m too young and pretty to die.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Scarlett asks, her hands back in her lap and her eyes on me. My cock stirs in my suit pants. Oh, your pussy can have my tongue, Scarlett fucking Winchester. Meow.

  Down, boy. My cock’s timing is terrible. I don’t dignify her retort with a response.

  Peering out of the window, I see a familiar sight. “Pull into this driveway,” I urge the cab driver, tapping the glass that separates us. I turn to Scarlett, whose attention has pricked up as she studies our path. Looking for an escape? Jesus. I can’t handle her and the cabbie at the same time. The numbers aren’t matching up.

  “You gonna behave?” I ask, jabbing her with the gun again.

  “Bite me,” she replies. I’d definitely bite her nipples if I could just get my mouth near them. But I need to stop thinking about nipples right now.

  Great. Well. This is happening.

  “Happy ten-minute anniversary,” I hiss, shoving the gun down the front of my pants and lunging for her as covertly as I can. I don’t need the cab driver seeing me attacking this girl and raising the alarm. Scarlett’s body tenses immediately, and her hands fly out, trying to push me away, but I’ve got more upper body weight than she’s got in her entire body. I overpower her easily, using my elbows to pin her arms to her sides, my palms at her neck as I press down on her carotid artery. Her eyes go wide, and she opens her mouth to scream.

  “Sorry, sweetheart,” I murmur. “I’ll make you scream if you want, but not right now.” I lean in, covering her mouth with mine, kissing her to drown out the noise of her cry for help. She tastes like I thought she would—coffee and vodka. Irish coffee, isn’t that what they call it? My stomach roils at the Irish part. Fucking Kaitlin. I’m going to find that bitch, even if I have to tie this bitch to a chair and torture the address out of her.

  I continue applying pressure to the sweet spot in her neck, cutting off the blood flow from her heart to her brain just for a few seconds. It doesn’t take long before she’s a dead weight in my arms, her eyes lolling back in her head before fluttering shut.

  I release her mouth, letting her slide down the back of the seat so she’s lying across it, her thighs slightly parted and her legs off to the side as her feet rest awkwardly on the floor.

  “She okay?” the cab driver asks, tapping on the Plexiglas. I hold my hands up in mock surprise. “I don’t know, man. She’s diabetic. I think she’s having a fit or something.”

  The cab driver looks vaguely annoyed, but to his credit he unbuckles his belt, steps out of his door and circles around to mine. He opens the door and peers in.

  “Need me to call an ambulance?” he asks.

  I raise my gun to his forehead. “No, thanks,” I reply, pressing the gun against his head. “Keys, please.”

  He points to the ignition. “They’re still in there, asshole.”

  I smile broadly as I unfold myself, stepping out of the open door and into the alleyway I’ve directed him down. “Excellent. Open the trunk, please.”

  The annoyed look on his face morphs into actual fear. “Hey, man, just take the car, okay? It’s insured. I won’t say nothing to nobody. Hell, I didn’t even see you.”

  If only that were the truth. “It’s okay,” I say. “I won’t kill you. But I really need you to open that trunk.”

  He looks past me to Scarlett, lying unconscious on the backseat. “You gonna put her in there?” he asks, his tone almost hopeful.

  “Sure,” I lie. He looks relieved. I fight the urge to smack him out. I’ll be able to do that in just a moment.

  “Hurry,” I urge, shaking the gun at him. With great reluctance, he reaches in through his open driver’s door and presses a button.

  “It’s open,” he says, and if Scarlett thought I was sweating, she obviously hasn’t seen the river pouring off this guy’s shiny bald forehead. He’s freaking the fuck out.

  “Go round and open it up,” I say, my eyes never leaving his.

  “I got heart problems,” he says. “I can’t be in confined spaces!”

  I raise my eyebrows at him. “Get in,” I demand, pushing him toward the trunk and smacking the back of his head with the side of the Glock. He yelps, covering his head with his hands. “Okay, okay.”

  He clambers in awkwardly, until finally he’s on his side in the trunk.

  “If you have a heart attack in there, I’ll kill you,” I say, slamming the trunk forcefully.

  I make my way to the driver’s door, pausing to shut the door I just used to exit the backseat. Scarlett’s still sleeping like a baby, her chest rising and falling in slow, even breaths. I didn’t kill her with my little artery trick. Thank Christ. She’s of no use to me dead.

  I get in the driver’s seat and push the chair back, catching a glance of myself in the rearview mirror. I’m still wearing my driver’s cap.

  How fitting.

  I tip my cap to myself in the mirror, take the emergency brake off, and ease the car back into the busy morning traffic; my soundtrack the oscillating ringtone of my brother’s desperation.

  FIVE

  SCARLETT

  When I come to, my neck feels tender, bruised almost. I look around, wondering where the fuck I’ve ended up today. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve passed out and forgotten where I am.

  A steady diet of booze and pills will do that to a person.

  I scrub my hand across my face, the gesture meant to make my vision clearer somehow, but it doesn’t work. My eyes feel crusty, my mouth is dry as fuck, and I can hear someone singing along to a song about city boys born and raised in south Detroit.

  And then I remember.

  I sit bolt upright, taking a huge gasp of air in as I do so. Salvatore is driving, still wearing that ridiculous-looking cap as he sings off-key. I take in the buildings outside as they pass by, quickly recognizing the Meatpacking District. My guess is proven correct when I catch sight of a sign for Bleecker Street. We haven’t gone far, which makes me hopeful that I can still somehow get out of this pinch. But first … Something’s missing. Something isn’t right.

  “Where’s the driver?” I ask dumbly, scanning the backseat. No answer. I realize he can’t hear me through the Plexiglas that separates us, especially with the music turned up so loud. I pound my fist into the clear divider to get his attention. “Hey, motherfucker!” I yell.

  He turns and flashes me a grin. “Good morning, Scarlett Winchester.” His voice is muffled somewhat by the divider, but I can still hear well enough as he drawls my name. He lets the syllables roll slowly off his tongue like he’s my best friend, or my lover, and that’s annoying. Especially since it’s not even my real name. Scarlett Smith was far too boring for Hollywood casting agents, and my daddy liked to collect rare guns. I was almost Scarlett Colt, until I did some googling and found out Scarlett Colt was a porn star whose signature move was shooting bullets out of her … well, you know.

  Scarlett Winchester seemed the better choice.

  “Where are you taking me?” I yell. “Where’s the driver?”

  I try my door handle. Locked. And there’s no mechanism to unlock it, since we’re in the back of a city cab. Fuck.

  He shrugs, almost amused as he holds up one finger. “Wait, this is the best part,” he says, turning the music up so loud, it’s gonna make my e
ars bleed. He starts singing/screaming about strangers and boulevards and street lights. He’s a terrible singer, but he’s got me so distracted, I don’t even notice him pulling the cab into a basement parking lot, my eyes wide with horror as I watch a heavy garage door closing us in.

  Fuck. How much of an idiot am I? I’ve just let this guy take me from work. I can’t afford the day off. I need those fucking tips to pay for my little pill habit.

  Okay, my large, ugly pill habit. Whatever.

  I swallow thickly as Sal shuts the car off, his expression serious as he gets out of the car and slams his door. I’m crawling back on my hands as he opens my door, his smile so congenial it’s almost reassuring.

  “Get out,” he says, offering a hand to me. I kick his hand with my foot, but he’s too fast, catching my ankle as something dark flashes in his eyes. His other hand comes into the car, and it’s pointing a gun at me.

  “Please,” he adds, his smile completely gone.

  “I can’t move,” I sulk. “You’ve got my foot.”

  He smiles dangerously, loosening his grip on my ankle. He slides his hand from my skin ever so slowly, offering it again. “Come on,” he says. “I’ve got plenty of alcohol for you, if that’s what it’ll take to get you to talk.”

  My mouth practically waters at the suggestion.

  He laughs. “Come on, Scarlett Petunia. I’ve got a busy fucking day ahead.”

  I frown, pushing his hand away as I clamber out of the car.

  It’s a short elevator ride to his apartment, my legs feeling like lead as I’m marched in front of the gun-wielding Salvatore. It’s just starting to hit me, how fucked up this whole situation is. I’m in deep shit, and it’s only getting worse. As the elevator opens and Sal presses me with the tip of his gun to get out, I freeze.

  He’s gonna kill me. He’s gonna get the address out of me, and then he’s gonna shoot me in the head.

  Worryingly, the thought doesn’t scare me as much as it should. It does scare me, but I feel oddly detached from my body, almost like I’m in shock.