“You need to calm down,conejito,” Sylvia said. “If you go in there like this, it is only Bowie who suffers.”
Javier held up the paper. “He’s already suffering,” he snarled, “because of me.”
“No. He’s suffering because of them. Whoever they are. And we’ll handle them as we handle all things. As a family,” Angelo vowed, standing in front of the massive gun safe in his office.
“They want me to come alone. I’m not risking Bowie’s life by having any of you come with me.”
“That’s suicide,conejito,” Sylvia vowed. “Do you really think they’re just going to let Bowie walk away once you arrive? You know they won’t. You’re not thinking clearly.”
Javier flicked his eyes to histía, who sat loading another clip, careful not to ruin her perfectly manicured nails. “I’m thinking fine. Bowie is the priority. There’s no guarantee they won’t just shoot him in the head on sight if they see I’m not alone.”
Sylvia stopped what she was doing to pat him on the cheek. “Who says they’ll see us?”
Bowie sat tied to a chair in the middle of an abandoned factory. It stank like mildew and spoiled beer. The kegs surrounding the walls indicated that, at some point, they’d manufactured the beverage. He was no longer afraid. He’d rocketed past fear straight into a strange, hazy level of acceptance. He’d been kidnapped. Like,actuallykidnapped. He was tied to a chair like something out of a James Bond movie, but his brain kept hopping to the most inconsequential things before snagging on them. Like his jacket. She’d taken his new jacket. His beautiful, brand new jacket. It was just like in the hospital. Bowie was clearly destined to never own designer clothes.
He snickered at the thought, drawing his kidnapper’s attention. “What’s so funny,kotek?”
“The fact that you think you’re going to get away with this.”
She rolled her eyes at him before turning back to her cohorts, dismissing his words entirely. She was confident, whoever she was. She had a small group of men with her. Big, gruff looking men with large guns who spoke Russian in clipped tones.
Bowie wasn’t making it out of there. He didn’t need to speak the language to know they’d have hidden their faces if they truly meant to set him free. His palm throbbed. She’d made a huge show of slicing open the skin in the back of the limo, cleaning the blade off on a sheet of paper before handing it off to one of her goons. Goons? Henchmen? What did they call them anymore? It didn’t really matter. He was just sort of biding his time now.
He didn’t know if it was still bleeding. He’d lost the feeling in his hands an hour ago, and now he could only feel his heart beating in them from the lack of blood flow. Other than the cut, he’d managed to stay relatively unscathed, other than losing his jacket. He really wanted that jacket back.
There was a sound like metal dragging across metal and then a loud bang. His kidnapper spun around, pointing her gun directly at Bowie’s head before moving behind him, using him like a human shield. Her three guards pointed their guns towards the noise.
Bowie’s mouth went dry as Javier appeared in his view. He’d changed out of his dress clothes, back into his usual jeans and button down. He stood, hands behind his back, taking in his surroundings.
“You’re early,” she said.
“Punctuality isn’t really a high priority of mine. You took something that belongs to me. I came to get it back.”
The look on his face would have made most people’s blood run cold. It just made Bowie feel warm all over. “Hey, baby,” Bowie said. “Sorry about the ballet.”
Javier gave him that once over that always made his heart do cartwheels. “Hey, angel. You good?” he asked, voice in that low rasp Bowie hadn’t heard in weeks. That smug, almost conspiratorial tone, like he and Bowie shared some kind of private joke.
“She cut my hand but, other than that, she’s been very…benevolent,” Bowie conceded, keeping his tone as breezy as possible.
Javier finally looked to the woman, tilting his head. “Who the fuckareyou?”
Bowie couldn’t see her face from where he sat, but he could feel the way she dug the barrel of the gun into the back of his skull. “I’m the woman holding a gun to your boyfriend’s head, so maybe you should watch your tone?” Javier took two steps forward almost as if he couldn’t help himself. “Uh-uh. Stop right there. Hands where I can see them.”
Javier slowly raised his arms, palms out. “Now what? What do you want? Were you Giordano’s girl or something?”
Her gasp was borderline cartoonish. “As if I’d let that disgusting pig touch me,” she said, sounding like she would sooner spit on him.
Javier and Bowie exchanged looks. If this wasn’t about Giordano, then what the fuck were they all doing there? Had Bowie somehow pissed off somebody else? Had Javier? That seemed like a much larger suspect pool. But why attack now? Why come after Bowie? None of this made any sense.
“I think that’s what pisses me off most about this,” she said, finally moving the gun from Bowie’s neck to gesture with it, like she had in the car. “You just fired without any thought as to who was on the other side.”
Javier’s brows furrowed. “You’re going to have to be more specific, miss. I’ve killed a lot of people.”
“Giordano’s car!” she shouted. “You fired into that car without a single thought for who was on the other side of that glass.”
Javier shook his head. “You’re wrong. I knew exactly who was on the other side. The piece of shit who raped my boyfriend.”
Bowie flinched, feeling like he’d been kicked to the stomach. Javier shot him an apologetic look. It wasn’t something he hadn’t said a thousand times before by now. He’d even heard Javier say it that day to the cops. But tied to a chair, a gun to his head, in a room full of strangers, it was jarring.
