A flare of hot pain sliced through my abdomen, sending me in a staggering rush backward. I almost fell on my ass but managed to keep my feet under me.
Then I ran.
My best friend, practically my only friend, stabbed me.
Game on.
2
Allie
Some days I wished I could have been born an only child to a completely different family. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family, but they have their share of skeletons in the proverbial closet. I also love my sister, Ellie. She’s the best twin a person could have. But she had a nasty habit of lying her way into horribly complicated fiascos.
Today’s was the worst one yet. We were in Las Vegas for an obvious reason, her quickie wedding to one Johnny Porciello. Or as I’d taken to calling him, Johnny Pornstash. Because that mustache had to go.
Of course, without it, he’d look like a pre-teen.
Johnny was thirty-one years old and had the baby-soft skin of a fourteen-year-old, and just about as much facial hair, except for that dreadful caterpillar on his upper lip. It was as if his body had something to prove, but was incapable of doing more. In more ways than that, he was unworthy of my baby sister.
I was thirteen minutes older, therefore wiser, or something like that. Even though wisdom wasn’t magically bestowed through those thirteen minutes, I still knew this marriage was a bad idea.
And while putting on our dresses that afternoon, Ellie walked through the doorway of reality, finally, and realized it was an unquestionably awful idea to marry Johnny Pornstach. Which spiraled into a very bad evening.
Tequila should not be consumed before five in the afternoon. Especially not by brides who just found out their soon-to-be-husband was a lowlife, gangsta’ wannabe fresh out of his mother’s basement.
It all started because I’d gotten a tip. Not the cash kind, the clandestine kind.
Normally, I’d completely ignore anything that came from my maternal grandfather’s lawyer because it was bound to be tied up in so many strings it would make the Gordian knot look like child’s play. But this was hand-delivered by the hotel concierge himself with an urgent demand of, “Please make your sister look at the contents of this package. My Boss insists.” Capital B, Boss.
I ripped the envelope open, expecting to find yet another court summons to fight the challenges to my grandfather’s estate, and instead got a handful of photos of Johnny’s wrecked Mustang.
It was mangled beyond the point of repair. In the background was a Mercedes that didn’t look much better. In fact, it looked much worse. Johnny had rammed into the driver’s side so hard the steering column was in the middle of the vehicle.
Luxury automobile or not, whoever was in that car wasn’t walking away.
Clipped to the top photo was a hand-written note.
“The Family needs to be notified. If your sister goes through with this wedding, there will be a price.”
Crap. Family. Capital F. Not the family of the victim. That’s not how this lawyer worked. He wasn’t asking for more money, he was warning us that whoever Johnny hit with that car was likely “connected.” Just like my dear departed grandfather was connected. Just like the owners of this hotel were connected to a friend of a friend of someone who had a friend who knew a guy, ya know?
My family secret wasn’t a secret to that crowd. It was a legend. One that, two generations later, made accomplished men grovel like a puppy who’d just peed on your shoes. Unlike the puppy, I didn’t have an explanation why humans did things like that.
If I thought Chicago was a cesspool, Vegas was the whole damn sewage treatment plant.
And for an accountant, my grandfather had lived a very interesting life. So interesting, the FBI were my neighbors until I graduated from college and started my post graduate studies in veterinary sciences. No matter how straight and narrow my immediate family lived, they were interesting, too. But monitoring a veterinary surgeon was too boring for the feds, and I finally lived like a normal person, with a normal job, like every other law-abiding citizen.
That was until the will.
Ugh.
And the press… which ruined everyone’s lives. Mom and Dad took a settlement, an early retirement, and fled to Arizona with a matched pair of alpacas, their collection of tie-dyed shirts, and a used school bus where they’d live happily ever after out of the spotlight. Meanwhile, I lost my career. No one wanted to hire the mob heiress. That would be too risky.
Ellie? Well, cocktail waitressing at a dive bar on the outskirts of the Chicago suburbs wasn’t the type of job that rumor and criminal underworld entanglement exactly hurt. In fact, she turned the notoriety into better tips because “she knew a guy, ya know?”
And that’s where Johnny Pornstash fell in love—with my little sister’s trust fund and the lure of mob connections.
Except we weren’t connected. Not one bit.
