Kane's Ransom: A BWWM Mafia Romance Novel (18 page)

"You Kane?" the man asked as soon as the door opened, not giving any sort of introduction.

Killian nodded, temporarily thrown off balance by this unexpected newcomer.

The man looked Killian up and down, not appearing particularly impressed by the result. "Huh. Well, Jiggs sent me to give you a certain... item, yah know, that you requested. So here you go, special delivery. No need to sign shit."

"Wait, I don't have a place for-" Killian started, but it was too late. The little man standing outside the door to his hotel room reached into the small of his back, beneath his leather jacket that hung off his narrow little shoulders, and pulled out a gunmetal gray handgun, which he tossed easily to Killian. The former surgeon, caught off guard, instinctively caught the weapon as it flew towards him in the air.

"There ya go," the little man replied, dusting his hands as if they were covered in flour. "All passed on, as ya wanted. And when you're done with the thing, just toss it in a dumpster somewhere, or bury it under some poor asshole's rosebushes. No need to worry about returning the thing to us."

Still feeling at a loss for words, Killian looked down at the gun in his hands. He had, of course, familiarized himself with guns, and had even carried one for a while during his younger years, when he felt concerned about his own safety, given the company that he'd kept. The gun currently in his hands was a semi-automatic, firing three fifty-seven cartridges, as he had mentioned to Jiggs. His hands slid almost instinctively around the grip of the pistol, and he ejected the magazine, catching it as it slid out the bottom of the gun.

Fully loaded. The little stamp on the gun told Killian that it was a Glock - a pretty cheap model, but still more than capable of killing someone. He pushed the magazine back into the bottom of the grip, in until it clicked and locked in place. He still had the gun's safety turned on (he checked that automatically, thanks to his training from his earlier life), and he lowered the gun down to his side, keeping his finger off of the trigger.

"Well, thanks," Killian heard himself reply, as he pulled his eyes back to the little ferret-faced man standing outside the hotel room. "Pass that on to Jiggs."

"No problem," the man replied, but he didn't appear to be in any hurry to leave. Looking a little closer at his face, Killian caught that the man's eyes were focused past him, looking into the hotel room.

Killian turned and glanced over his shoulder - and with a sinking feeling in his chest, he saw that Alicia had emerged from the bedroom around the corner. She'd pulled her shirt back on, although the little points of her nipples protruded out through the thin cotton - and her eyes were wide, as she stared at the two of them.

Without another word, Killian took a step back inside and slammed the door on the lasciviously leering man on the other side. As he turned around, however, he saw Alicia's eyes shift over to him - and then drop down to stare at the gun still held in his hand.

"Killian," she said, her tone somewhere between a gasp and a sigh.

"Alicia, wait," he said quickly, holding up his hand out towards her to try and keep her calm. "Look, this isn't what it looks like-"

"Is that your plan?"

The words were quiet, soft, without harsh anger driving them, but Killian could hear her pulling away, withdrawing. "Alicia, it's just in case that they-"

"You're going to go charging in, try and shoot them, free my brother that way?" Her words were a little stronger, now, a little bit sharper as they flew at Killian like knives. "Without telling me? That's your big, grand plan?"

"No, it's not!" Despite his attempts to stay calm, Killian felt the situation spiraling out of his control, and he stepped forward. It wasn't until he saw Alicia shrink back, her eyes widening a little, that he realized that he still held the Glock in one hand, now lifted up above his head. He hastily brought his hand back down and set the gun down on the little table beside the hotel room's door, but the damage was already done in the young woman's eyes.

He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, trying to control the whole situation. "Alicia, I really do want to get your brother back safe. But from what I've heard, the Curanos might not be willing to go along with things, even if we do give them-"

"Give them what?" she spat back at him, her voice twisting now into full-on anger. "The hundred thousand dollars that I don't have? Or were you just going to shoot a couple of them, and then try and console me when I have to bury my brother because he gets caught in the middle? Or maybe you weren't going to help at all - you just wanted to get me into your bed, get what you couldn't have back at the diner!"

Those words cut deeply at Killian, and he winced, taking a half step back at their sudden fury. Where had this come from? Just a minute ago, Alicia had been on top of him, hungrily kissing at him as she grabbed him, pulled herself closely against him, begged him to take her-

And now, it had all suddenly fallen apart.

"You promised," she said, throwing the words at him. "You promised that you wouldn't bring violence into this."

"I'm not the one bringing it in - I just want to be ready when they do!" Killian erupted back, his temper slipping for a moment. He tried to lower his voice, calm his tone, but he could see her recoil from the words. "Look, Alicia, it's better to be safe than sorry!"

But she wasn't listening to him any longer.

"Better safe than sorry," she repeated back, those big brown eyes of hers filled with sorrow as they stared at him. "I've heard those words before. You know where I heard them?"

He didn't say anything, knowing that interrupting her would just bring more anger down on his own head.

"When the police argued for bringing in the riot squads," she said, her eyes lingering on him for a minute longer before dropping to the floor. "They wanted to bring them into the ghetto, put a cop with an assault rifle on every corner. They said that it was just for protection, that the police wouldn't shoot, that it was just so they could be better safe than sorry. And you can guess how well that turned out for all of us, who just wanted to live, to be left alone, to not get dragged into the whole mess between the cops and the gang-bangers."

After she finished this speech, she looked for a moment longer at Killian, who found his mind completely blank. His mouth hung slightly open, but he just couldn't find any words to speak.

And in that silence, Alicia turned away, heading back into the bedroom.

Suddenly coming back into awareness of his own body, as if the momentary paralysis had just lifted, Killian hurried after her, around the corner. "Wait!" he called out, turning to look at her as she paused, standing beside the massive bed. "What are you doing? Can't we talk about this?"

For a moment longer, she just looked back at him. Killian would have given her a hundred thousand dollars right then and there to know what thoughts were flickering back and forth behind her eyes, but he couldn't get the slightest sort of read on her.

"I'm going to bed," she said softly, reaching down and pulling back a corner of the comforter. She picked up one of the half-dozen pillows at the head of the bed and put it in the middle, clearly forming a barrier between the two sides. "Tomorrow, I'm going to go withdraw everything I have from the bank, and I'll call the kidnappers. I'll tell them that I have all the money I could get my hands on, and I'm going to try my best to save my brother."

And then, without waiting to hear Killian's response, she crawled into bed, pulling the sheets up over her shoulders and neck. She turned away from him, burying her face in the pillow and clearly wanting the conversation to be over.

For a moment longer, Killian looked at her, his own head buzzing with a million thoughts as he tried to find the words to make everything okay again. He could feel his heart pounding, thumping heavily inside his chest. This wasn't what he wanted! He wanted to yell at her, to somehow say the right thing to convince her that he wanted to help her, that he had no ulterior motive, that he truly did care.

But he couldn't find the words, and after a minute, he closed his mouth without speaking.

Killian stepped into the room, gathering the nearly empty pizza boxes from the bed and carrying them out to the little garbage container in the living room. He reached out and clicked off the bedroom light behind him as he left. He set the boxes down, and then turned around to draw the French doors between the bedroom and living room almost all the way shut, trying to give Alicia some privacy so she could at least fall asleep.

He sat down on the couch - and then, giving in to the anger raging through him, he threw several punches into the pillows on the sofa, feeling the stitching stretch and contort beneath the force of his blows.

After this, he felt only slightly better. He stood up, retrieved the gun, and then sat back down again, placing it on the coffee table in front of him.

Staring at the weapon, Killian interlaced his fingers and leaned forward, bracing his head. What he needed to do right now, he told himself, is think.

And he sat there thinking for a long time.

Chapter twenty-one

For a moment, as Alicia slowly opened her eyes, she felt herself seized by panic. Where was she? She didn't recognize the soft bed beneath her, the soft pillow under her ear, and the silence from around her didn't remind her of the near-constant sounds in her house.

She blinked, wiggling her arms and slowly digging her way out from beneath the heavy blankets and comforter that she'd pulled over herself in her sleep. She tried to wipe the sleepiness from her eyes, looking around. Where was she? What was going on?

A minute later, as she sat up in the incredibly soft bed, she finally felt her memory come creeping back. She wasn't at home, she recalled. She was in a hotel, an expensive and fancy one, in Dallas. They'd come here because of her brother...

Suddenly seized by fear, she scrambled up, her hand flying out to her cell phone on the bedside table beside her. She clicked the display on, and breathed a sigh of relief. Barely seven in the morning. She still had plenty of time to call before the deadline for the ransom.

But now that she'd started thinking about that ransom, her mind remained in high gear, churning furiously as panic started to climb up her insides and grip her thoughts. She had decided to be honest with the kidnappers, to give them all the money that she had and hope that it would be enough. But what if it wasn't? What if her brother would be dead at their hand by the end of the day? She'd never be able to live with herself-

With a muffled scream, Alicia threw herself back down into the soft pillows beneath her, kicking at the covers in an ineffectual temper tantrum, feeling utterly overwhelmed. She'd never asked for any of this to happen to her!

"Mmph." From the other side of her, Alicia felt someone shift in the bed, letting out a sleepy grumble.

She froze. Someone else? Moving more slowly and cautiously, she lifted herself up from where she'd buried her head in her pillow, glancing over to the other side of the big king sized bed.

Killian lay there, sprawled out mostly on top of the covers, his head half-buried in the pillows on his side. He still wore his jeans, she saw, but he'd peeled off his shirt before going to bed. She could see the light little hairs covering his white-skinned chest rising and falling as he took the slow, steady breaths of someone fast asleep.

For the briefest of moments, Alicia felt anger towards the man come flooding back through her. He'd tried to take control, had gotten his hands on a gun from one of the thugs in his past! Didn't he remember how her brother was at risk here, how going in with a gun could mean that her brother, her only family left, might end up dead?

But as she looked at him, her mind slowly clearing from the fog of sleep, Alicia couldn't hold on to that anger, and felt it slipping away. He was trying to help, she reminded herself. He really should have talked with her first, should have included her in his plans, but he did want to help. Without him, she wouldn't be here, would probably be sobbing and unable to sleep with all the fear of what might happen to her brother. He didn't deserve her hatred.

She leaned back down, putting her head back on her pillow, but she couldn't fall back asleep now that she'd awoken. After a few minutes of closing her eyes and trying to clear her mind without success, she eventually threw back her covers, climbed out, and headed to the bathroom.