“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mr. Mustache said. “I’m not going near her. She’s crazy.”
Crazy? I’d show them crazy.
“Rah.” I lifted my floorboard and charged at them, screaming my frustration. Ginger stumbled back and tripped over the broken door. Mr. Mustache bolted. I ran after them until they jumped into a black Chrysler 300C and roared down the street.
I was still heaving in my breaths when I noticed Jack’s motorcycle was gone. He’d climbed out the window like the cowardly slug he was. I texted Gage and told him to add Jack to the list of people who deserved to suffer, then I grabbed my bag and went to see Rose.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
?“It was too much,” I said over tea and Chef Pierre’s peanut-free twist on peanut butter brownies. “Not just the men breaking into my apartment and pointing a gun at me, but Jack running away and leaving me. My whole life I’ve been overlooked or left behind. I thought he was different. I thought I’d found someone who would have my back, someone who cared, someone who would protect me the way Gage looks out for Chloe. But he left. Just like everyone else.”
I was lucky to have caught Rose on one of her rare nights in, and even more lucky that she’d been up watching Columbo because she’d had a double espresso after lunch.
“Not everyone needs protecting,” Rose said. “It sounds to me like you were quite capable of handling those goons on your own. When you are that competent and self-sufficient, people don’t realize you want or even need their help. It’s not easy, but sometimes you need to speak up. You have to ask for what you want and tell people how you feel.”
“You are very wise,” I said to Rose.
“If I were wise, I wouldn’t have eaten an entire plate of peanut-free peanut butter brownies right before bed.” She patted my hand. “Even at my age, people make mistakes.”
“I seem to make more than most, especially when it comes to men.”
“That means you’re taking risks, and taking risks means you’re finally out there living your life. You’ve been so busy trying to make other people happy, you’ve never really had a chance to figure out who you really are. Tonight you learned something about yourself. You chased those men away. You don’t need the stability and security someone like Gage offers. His overprotective nature would be too much. You need . . .”
“Chaos?”
“Adventure,” she said. “Challenge. Independence. If you’re looking for a partner, find someone who isn’t afraid to break the rules, someone who is fun and exciting and just as curious about the world as you are. You need a partner, not a protector. Someone who will embrace all the things that make you the unique and beautiful soul you are.”
“Too bad I don’t know anyone like that.” I dabbed at my eyes with a napkin. I’d forgotten how insightful Rose could be. “I only know people who run away at the first sign of danger.”
“It is too bad,” she said. “Because it would be very entertaining to hear him grovel.”
I liked the idea of Jack groveling. I liked it so much I fell asleep on Rose’s couch mentally listing all the things I would make him do to earn my forgiveness.
Lucky for Jack, I was so exhausted I didn’t make it past ten.
Unlucky for me, Jack wasn’t the groveling type.
Twenty-Two
Despite the fact that I was running on only a few hours’ sleep, the wedding rehearsal at the Angelinis’ mansion went as smoothly as a wedding rehearsal could go when the bride was being forced into marriage with a cruel and sinister groom who happened to be the son of a New York crime boss. Beefy bodyguards wearing menacing scowls and ill-fitting suits wandered around pretending they weren’t packing some serious firepower and just itching to stick someone’s head in a vice or grab an ice pick and skewer a couple of eyeballs. I dealt with a bridesmaid and groomsman who kept sneaking off to practice their “horizontal tango,” a flower girl who threw a tantrum every five minutes, a priest who kept falling asleep, a crying bride, a glaring groom, unfriendly Rottweilers, overly friendly “uncles,” warm champagne, cold pasta, and a swarm of bees—real ones, not drones. It was pretty tame compared to the drama of a South Asian wedding rehearsal, so I chalked it up as a win before giving the wedding party directions to the post-rehearsal dinner in Chicago’s city center.
After that, everything went according to plan. Bella was fine with us leaving the van parked out front. Emma picked us up in the limo and drove around for forty minutes, then we all hid on the floor when she returned to the house to pick up Bella and her family for the rehearsal dinner.
“I’m half an hour early,” Emma said, leaning over the seat. “I’ve parked three feet from the van in the camera blind spot. The guards are shooting the shit on the steps. I’ll let you know as soon as they’re gone, and you can make the switch.”
It seemed to me, squeezed between Gage and Anil on the limo floor, that this part of the heist could have used a little more thought.
“What’s that lump?” I arched my back, trying to put some distance between Anil’s hips and my ass.
“Ski masks,” Anil said, leaving me both disappointed and relieved at once. “I brought one for each of us. I also brought surgical gloves, so we don’t leave fingerprints.”
“The gloves are a good idea, but Chloe will be shutting off the cameras. We don’t need ski masks.”
“It’s better to take precautions,” he said. “What if Chloe’s hack fails? What if they have a secret battery-operated camera in the room? What if the security guards get past Gage and find—”
“Not going to happen.” Gage rolled to his back and pulled out his gun. “No one is getting past me.”
“What part of ‘this is a no-weapon heist’ did you not understand?” I asked him.
“The part where we got shot at on the lake.” He holstered his gun. “If it makes you feel better, it’s for self-defense.”
“As opposed to what?” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm from my tone. “Cold-blooded murder?”
“I vote ‘yes’ for ski masks,” Jack said. He was stretched out on the seat above me. I didn’t trust myself anywhere near him. Just the sight of his handsome face made my blood boil. Between work and finalizing all the details for the wedding on Saturday, I hadn’t had time for anyone over the last four days, and especially not the man who had abandoned me and then didn’t even have the decency to call.
“Tell that person beside you no one cares what he thinks,” I told Chloe.
She cut her gaze to Jack. “Simi doesn’t care what you think.”
“Ask him who were the two men in hotel uniforms who broke into my apartment and threatened me with a gun while he hid in the bathroom like the pathetic coward he is.”
“Simi wants to know—”
“I heard her,” Jack said, his voice laced with amusement. “They were after the necklace, which means we can’t fail today.”
“Tell him the only reason he’s alive right now is because we need him to open the safe, but the minute we’ve got the necklace, all bets are off,” I said. “And tell him he’ll have to beg for my forgiveness and do a lot of groveling because he didn’t even bother to contact me to see if I was okay.”