CHAPTER 1

NINE HOURS EARLIER

Vero hadn’t so much as glanced up from the ransom note in her hand since we’d left her cousin’s garage, when she’d handed me the keys to one of Ramón’s loaner cars and slumped down in the passenger seat, reading and rereading the single sentence on the sheet of paper like it was a puzzle that might solve itself if she stared at it long enough. I turned down the long gravel drive, checking the number on the rusted mailbox against the address printed on the custody agreement my ex’s attorney had sent me before the holidays. As I rounded the last bend, I breathed a sigh of relief when Steven’s F-150 came into view.

I pulled the loaner car beside it and cut off the engine, ducking in my seat to get a better look at the two-story farmhouse as I took a moment to collect myself. It was eight thirty A.M. on a Friday in late January, but it felt like an entire year had passed since I’d seen my children yesterday.

“We should figure out exactly what we’re going to tell him before we go in,” I said, raking my soot-stained hair from my face, “to make sure we’re on the same page so he doesn’t suspect anything.” I checked my reflection in the rearview mirror. A pair of raccoon eyes stared back at me, and I wiped them with my smoke-blackened fingers. “Vero?” When she didn’t answer, I snatched the ransom note from her hand, folded it up, and stuffed it in the glove box. “Dwelling on that note isn’t helping.”

“They’re going to kill him, Finn,” she said in a small voice. A voice that should not, under any circumstances, come out of a mouth as big as Vero’s. An hour ago, she’d been cussing up a bilingual storm of expletives, threatening murder in two languages, ready to roll up to Atlantic City in body armor on the back of a white horse, rescue her childhood crush, and kick someone’s ass.

But then we’d found the ransom note tucked under the windshield wiper of Javi’s van:

You have seventy-two hours to pay back what you owe.

There had been no phone number on the note. No name. Vero hadn’t needed one.

She’d paled upon reading it, as if Javi were already dead. But she was moving through the five stages of grief way too fast, and she was skipping the most important one: bargaining.

“They’re not going to kill him. It’s not a condolence card, Vero. It’s a ransom note, which means Javi is alive and they want to negotiate.”

“We don’t have anything to negotiate with! If it was just about the two hundred grand, we could borrow it. Or steal it. Or come up with some kind of an installment plan using my inessential body parts for payment. But that’s not what Marco wants.”

“He’s a loan shark and you’re in debt to him. Of course that’s what he wants.”

“Marco got every penny I owed him and more when his goons stole the Aston Martin from us.”

The Aston Martin Superleggera that had been “gifted” to me by a Russian mob boss felt more like a stone around our necks. If it hadn’t been purchased by the mobster and registered in my name, I probably would have let Marco keep the damn thing. But since our names were on the title and Vero’s boyfriend was in the trunk, we had two very compelling reasons to find it.

“This isn’t about money, Finlay. This is about an eye for an eye. Marco obviously took Javi because he thinks we have Ike. And since what’s left of Ike could probably fit in a ketchup bottle, I don’t think those negotiations are going to go very well.” I grimaced at the memory of Ike—or rather, Ike’s shoes—sticking out from under a pile of cars in Vero’s cousin’s salvage yard. It hadn’t been our fault he’d tried to kill us and accidentally ended up squishing himself. What I did regret, however, was asking the Russian mob to dispose of his body for us. In our defense, at the time, we hadn’t had much of a choice.

Vero turned to the window, drumming the passenger door with her soot-blackened fingernails as she gathered a breath. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t asked Javi to fence the car, he never would have been there when Marco’s people came to steal it.”

“All that matters now is that Javi is alive,” I reminded her.

“What are we going to tell Marco when he asks about Ike?”

“I don’t know. I’ll make something up.” As a romantic suspense novelist, I got paid to make up stories. I’d come up with something. “The police only found Ike’s car burned in that field. They didn’t say anything about finding any remains inside it. For all Marco knows, Ike is alive. All we have to do is convince him we had nothing to do with his disappearance.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“We’ll figure it out once we get to Atlantic City.”

“You really think bringing the kids along is a good idea?”

“You really think we should leave them with Steven?” Steven had recently been the target of a contract killer called EasyClean. And EasyClean had seemed pretty convinced that Steven deserved it. “We have no idea what kind of shady business Steven was involved in. Delia and Zach will be safer with us. Besides, we’re not going to Atlantic City to start a war with Marco. We’re going to handle this using our words, like civilized adults.”

“I’m voting for a more violent approach. Maybe we should take the children to your mom’s.”

“My mother has enough on her plate.” My father had just passed a kidney stone that Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck could have blown up with less drama, and my mother had spent the last two days in the hospital enduring it with him. I hadn’t wanted to burden her, so I hadn’t bothered to call.

“What are you going to tell Steven?”

“The truth. That we’re exhausted, stressed out, and in desperate need of a vacation, and we’re taking the kids with us.” I opened my door, fighting my damp, stiff jeans as I climbed out of the loaner car. Vero followed, slamming her door a little too hard.

A curtain parted in one of the first-floor windows as I hauled our single piece of surviving luggage from the trunk. The front door swung open before I reached the porch. My ex-husband, Steven, stood in the frame, wearing his favorite threadbare plaid pajama bottoms with mismatched socks and a sleep-wrinkled undershirt. His eyes raked over my soot-smeared clothes, down the singed sleeve of my coat to the suitcase in my hand. Water seeped from my shoes as I dragged it up the porch steps.

“Jesus, Finn! I’ve been worried sick.” He ignored Vero’s snort of disgust as he grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled me into a suffocating hug. “I’ve been trying to call you since I woke up and saw the news. That citizen’s police academy was all over the TV this morning.” He held me at arm’s length, wrinkling his nose. “You smell like a chimney. What the hell happened to you?” I could only imagine what Vero and I must have looked like. Neither one of us had slept more than a wink the last two nights, and we’d narrowly avoided being burned alive less than four hours ago.

“I’ll explain everything after coffee.” Or at least, almost everything. Now was not the time to tell him that the local head of the Russian mob had tried to barbecue us because I had pissed him off. And it definitely wasn’t the time to tell him that Vero and I were heading to Atlantic City on a rescue mission because of a gambling debt to a loan shark she couldn’t pay back. Steven disliked my children’s nanny enough already. I saw no reason to add fuel to his fire.

Copyright © 2024 by Elle Cosimano