A Prince's Ransom: Kidnapped by the Billionaire (34 page)

“Come in,” Capozzi called, and Sebastian stepped through, glancing around the room. Everything was, of course, absolutely pristine—like this was an actual office and he had an actual job here. Not that it mattered much that he didn’t. Even if the cops knew about this place, this was one bar they would never enter without fifty arrest warrants at their disposal. In other words, they would never dare to breach its sanctity.

Sebastian’s boss was an attractive older gentleman—obviously Italian in some respects, with his dark hair and round features, although by now he suspected that Capozzi had started dyeing his hair. He was wearing one of his pressed suits, and from the way the tip of a pen scratched on a piece of paper, Sebastian could see his cufflinks glittering in the light of the lamp on the desk.

“You wanted to see me?” he greeted his boss complacently, lowering himself into a chair with familiarity.

“Ahh, there you are, Sebastian.” The other man looked up with a warm smile that never touched his dark eyes. “And here I’ve been listening to talk of your heist all this week, but I haven’t seen a sliver of you in all of this.”

“Been keeping my head down. Joe being at the jewelry store certainly put an interesting twist on things.”

“Indeed.” Capozzi set down his pen and reached for an already-lit cigar propped up against an ashtray, taking a breath of it as he regarded Sebastian for a long moment. That wasn’t a good thing, how quickly the air of formality seemed to fade. “That job was rather… mucked up, wasn’t it? I had expected things to go a bit better, Sebastian, with you having planned the entire thing.”

“All of my intelligence informed me that Joe always left the store for lunch at the same time, every day he was open. This had been confirmed over two weeks of surveillance,” he answered, having been prepared, at the very least, for this interrogation.

“And you didn’t watch to make sure that he was gone before breaking in?”

“That street isn’t busy that time of day, Capozzi. Joe would’ve seen the car and been able to identify it after.”

“But he would know better than to go to the police over a matter such as this.”

“Just as he was supposed to know better than to skim off the debt he owed us?” Sebastian countered with a lifted brow, and that made the other man go silent, lowering his cigar again as he met his brown gaze unflinchingly. “You entrusted the operation to me. I’ve long since learned the value of good intelligence. You made sure that I would. My intelligence was good, but it just happened that on the day of its execution, it was incomplete. I take responsibility for that, but this outcome is barely different from the desired outcome.”

“My nephew getting shot was a part of the desired outcome?” Capozzi sneered, starting to lift himself from his chair.

“You assigned Jesse to that operation at the last minute, giving me no time to prepare for his presence or to properly prep him on how to behave in that situation. Ultimately, though, the message you meant to send has still been received loud and clear.”

“Except for the fact that Joe is now dead.”

“You were planning to kill him anyway.”

Silence immediately dropped between them, and Sebastian folded his arms over his chest, a sardonic smirk on his face. “You don’t send me on a jewelry heist if you didn’t mean to kill him. I know you too well. You were going to see how much you could squeeze out of him when he became terrified that we knew about him skimming. His death would have come within the next few months regardless, and all the other businesses who are in deals with us would have learned their own lesson regarding his fate. You always meant to kill him.”

Capozzi lowered himself back down into his chair. “You always were just a bit too clever, Sebastian. Always just a bit too resourceful and calculating.”

“You wanted someone you could trust to know the importance of things like this. Would you really have it any other way?”

Another bout of silence as they stared at one another. Sebastian knew that this argument was, at the moment, at its end. He had long ago learned how important it was to figure out Capozzi’s intentions. It was the only thing that had kept him alive this long.

“At any rate, I ought to thank you for seeing to it that Jesse got the medical care he needed—from a vet, was it? I could tell from the way he told the story that getting shot was his own fault.”

Sebastian paused for a moment, then let out a slight, bitter laugh. “I can’t argue with you on that one. He’s like Vic, can’t ever shut up.”

Capozzi sighed and nodded. “It’ll cost him his tongue, one of these days. The vet, though—she was taken care of? It was improvised, I understand. Sacrifices have to be made for the good of the Family. Only Mark and Rob didn’t see you leave with her body.”

“She was taken care of,” Sebastian lied without hesitation. “I wanted to make sure that we had cleared out before there was a chance of anyone coming to see what the gunshot was. But you don’t need to worry about her.”

“Good, good. You go have a drink on me, then.” Sebastian flashed him a smile, and then started to stand, to turn away. Inwardly he fought to repress a sigh of relief. All of this had been very uncertain. The last thing he needed was Capozzi questioning his loyalty to the Family, or his motives.

“Oh, and, Sebastian.” He turned back. “You screw up like this again, I’m going to castrate you before I kill you.”

He lifted his jaw slightly, staring at his boss, silently testing the waters. Capozzi wasn’t looking at him, having gone back to his paperwork. His jaw clenched, and without a word, he was turning away and leaving the office again before heading back downstairs to the bar.

Kate and Lisa had been very understanding over the past week and a half. They had covered for Tobin’s shifts at work and pet owners who specifically requested her, because she just couldn’t deal with it right now. It had been hard enough, or it would’ve been, if the only truly worrisome thing in all of this had been her dad’s heart attack, but now… now Tobin didn’t think she’d be able to go home. Now she felt like she really ought to start looking for a new place. She’d only been able to go back long enough to get more clothes and toiletries, and some of her cats’ favorite things, after being released from the hospital. She had woken up screaming every night—which really wasn’t even as fun as it sounded with a cat sitting on your face.

That aching fear, though, meant that she had gotten almost no sleep since before that entire, awful day had started. She had gone a few times to see her dad, but the police still had her car—also something she was thinking of finding a new one of. At the very least the bruises on her face had healed already, so he hadn’t asked any particularly lingering questions. She’d been able to get away with saying that a large dog had gotten overexcited at work and had head-butted her. Something that had happened before, actually, so he had bought that pretty easily. Tobin couldn’t tell him that she had been kidnapped at gunpoint moments after leaving his side, when he’d had a heart attack. She couldn’t. Never mind that she really didn’t want to relive it again.

Ultimately, that meant that yoga pants, and a shirt without a bra, and a fairly large bowl of ice cream were her best friends at the moment. Kate’s Bichon Frise was curled up on her feet where she was nestled into a swath of blankets on the couch. He was warm and very snuggly, which she was perfectly okay with at times like these. Cats weren’t really good cuddle companions except for when they wanted to be. Which was usually when she didn’t. They were still getting used to the new surroundings themselves, and Autumn was sitting very royally on the arm of the couch at the moment, staring ominously down at the dog. He was completely ignoring her, lifting his little black nose to sniff out anything she might drop that he could lick up.

Daytime television really was pretty awful. Old sitcoms or soap operas, neither of which held much appeal. But they kept her mind off of other things. Other things she really, really didn’t want to think about. Other things that kept popping into her head every damn time she tried to sleep. Namely his face. She kinda wished she had a name to put to that face. Calling him “him” sounded super ominous. Maybe that was appropriate.

The dog’s head lifted seconds before the door to Kate’s apartment rattled, and he barked happily; Tobin flinched and pressed herself down into the pillows, staring in mute fright and brandishing her spoon like a sword. Predictably, of course, once the door opened, it was just Kate, and the Bichon leapt from the couch to greet her, curlicue tail wagging wildly as he reached up for attention. His owner smiled and rubbed his head before looking up toward where her nearly despondent houseguest was. She hadn’t moved since Kate had left that morning, except to get ice cream.

A speculative brow was lifted at Tobin, and she put her hands on her hips after closing the door. “Alright, go get dressed.”

“Why?”

“We are going out. You needed to get out this apartment for reasons other than seeing your dad and ice cream shortages.”

“I don’t want to go out.”

“Too bad. You’re my guest and it is my job to entertain you.”

“I’m good with televised entertainment.”

“Get dressed,” Kate repeated stubbornly. “Something nice, something fun.”

“All my fun clothes are—”

“Are not. I grabbed some myself when I was getting your cats. I knew you’d need a pick-me-up at some point, and tonight is that night.”

“I don’t want to go clubbing, Kate.”

“We are not going clubbing. We are meeting Lisa and her girlfriend at a nice bar-slash-restaurant downtown where we can have a good meal and a few drinks and you can relax a little bit. Because you haven’t relaxed for a long time now, Tobin.”

She was silent, staring at her friend. “You’re going to make me go, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

Tobin wrinkled her nose. “You’re a stinker.”

“That’s why you love me. Go take a shower and get dressed and I will take this.” Kate snatched the bowl of ice cream from her hands.

“Hey, I was eating that!” she complained, sitting up.

“The restaurant has baked Alaska. You can fill your daily allotment of ice cream on that.”

Tobin sighed in defeat and shoved away the blankets she’d been nesting in, then giggled a little when Autumn meowed loudly in anger; she’d tossed the blankets onto the cat. Pulling them off, she smiled sheepishly down at her. “Sorry, sweetheart.” Her apology was met with Autumn smacking her cheek with a paw, claws retracted, and scampering off. Giggling a little more, she went to climb into the shower and get clean.

Maybe close to an hour later, her still-damp brunette hair was caught with a French comb on the back of her head—a quick an easy version of a French twist that got her hair off her neck. She had done as bidden and pulled on a metallic silver dress that accented her curves quite well. Once they had made sure their respective pets had been fed—and that things they could, and would, get into were put away—Tobin and Kate climbed into the latter’s car. Traffic this time of night was always pretty bad, of course, but Lisa and her girlfriend weren’t expecting them for a while. And Tobin… Tobin couldn’t do cabs and getting into a car with a stranger right now. Maybe ever again, despite how stupid it was to try and drive everywhere yourself in a city like this one.

She couldn’t help that she was fidgety. Kate was talking about work even though she knew Tobin was only half-listening, but she was trying to keep her mind off the unmentionables. But Tobin was staring out the passenger-side window, trembling, fearing every person that walked too close to the car, or darted between cabs to get to the other side of the street. It felt like her heart was going to leap into her throat and stay there until she suffocated.

“Am I just paranoid?” she asked at last, interrupting her friend.

“No,” Kate answered with a gentle sigh. “It’s only paranoia if you’re worried about things that haven’t happened and have no basis for ever happening. That happened, and… I totally, completely understand why you’re so afraid. If you keep hiding in my apartment, though, you’re never going to stop being afraid.”

Tobin was silent for a moment—a long moment. “I don’t want to go back to my apartment. Ever.”

“I know. And if you want to move out of there, you can absolutely stay with me until you find a place, Tobin.”

Relieved, she smiled. “Thank you, Kate.”

“Always.”

A lot of Tobin’s tension had faded thanks to Kate’s reassurances; she was almost not entirely paranoid when they pulled up to the restaurant and climbed out of the car. Kate purposefully parked on the street with a parking meter, since a parking garage was also not high on her list of places to return to anytime soon. She couldn’t but feel absolutely grateful to have such a good friend; she really needed that right about now, all things considered.

The restaurant itself seemed pretty nice; not as nice as that place she had been the other week on her botched date, but it was an entirely different vibe to begin with. It was called the Champagne Room, with a combination of low-key pop music playing on loud speakers and higher-end upholstery and furniture, so that it was welcoming and hip. Yes, hip was the best word to describe it. No, it didn’t make her sound fifty years old when that was clearly the vibe they were going for in the first place. Lisa and her girlfriend were standing outside the restaurant when Kate and Tobin waded through the crowd of people on the sidewalk.

“Tobin!” Lisa gushed excitedly, hurrying to pull her into a hug. She hadn’t seen the clinic’s receptionist since the day she had left work early to go see her dad, so she couldn’t blame Lisa for her enthusiasm. “I am so glad you came—I’ve been worried sick about you! After Kate told me what happened… I just couldn’t believe it! That’s absolutely insane, and I’m so glad that nothing… worse happened.” Her peppy greeting tapered off rather quickly, and Tobin was pretty sure that it was partly because of the look on her face. She looked ready to apologize, but her girlfriend stepped forward and held out her hand.

“Hi, I’m Poppy. It’s nice to see you again,” she said with a smile. Poppy was a pretty girl, probably given her name because of her wealth of curly red hair and dark brown eyes.