Page 36 of Rent a Mob Boss

“My Uncle Tristan has a gun with bullets,” Lillie explains slowly, patiently. “I’m not allowed to touch it. He said if I touch it, he’d be very upset. And when Uncle Tristan is upset⁠—”

“I said be quiet!”

“—it’s really scary. He doesn’t yell or anything. He just looks at you. Quinn, tell her how scary it is when he looks at you.”

“Sweetie.” I tighten my arms around her. “Let’s play the quiet game.”

“I hate the quiet game.”

“I know.” Boy, do I ever. “Let’s play it anyway.”

She huffs and puffs and clicks her tongue, but she complies.

For roughly forty-five seconds. “Quinn?”

“Yeah?”

“Why does my daddy have so many guards?”

The man driving the van snorts. The woman glances back at us over her shoulder and snickers.

“Because your daddy is very important,” I murmur.

“Important how?”

“He runs a company.”

The second man, the one who tied my wrists, arches an eyebrow. He hasn’t said a word through all of this, sitting across from us on a bench seat like the one we’re on. He’s younger than I would’ve expected—maybe a few years older than me. His face might be handsome if it wasn’t attached to a person who steals kids. “A company,” he repeats. There’s something between disbelief and amusement playing across his face.

“That’s what I said.”

“Lady, your boyfriend runs the Moretti family.” He rolls his eyes and laughs. “He doesn’t run a company. He runs every dock and warehouse on the eastern seaboard. He’s not some finance guy. He’s the head of the largest crime organization in the state. You and the kid are staying with us until he does what we need him to do.”

The van goes very quiet. We hit a bump that jostles us, and I almost hit my head. I kind of feel like I already did.

Lillie looks up at me. “What’s a crime organization?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. There’s too much brainpower being used up by what just landed on me like a bomb. The wall around the estate. The cameras, the guards, the men who nod at me with their earpieces. The car that follows Dorian’s car.

It all makes sense. Every single piece of it. The way a puzzle makes sense when somebody finally shows you what the picture is supposed to be, and you realize you’ve been holding the pieces upside down the whole time. You realize you didn’t see it because you didn’t want to see it.

I’m so stupid. Deeply, profoundly stupid. The kind of stupid that isn’t about intelligence but willingness to be blind. About the things you choose not to look at because looking would mean losing the thing you want to keep.

I chose not to look. I built a version of him that let me stay. That version was a lie, but the lie was as much mine as his.

I told myself he was in finance. Finance! I almost laugh. It comes out as a breath, sharp and short. The woman with the gun looks at me over her shoulder once again, and I press my lips together while holding Lillie tighter.

Lillie pats my arm with her small hand. “You’re squeezing too hard.”

“Sorry, baby.” I have to force myself to loosen my grip, which isn’t exactly easy now that the bigger picture is clear. These aren’t disgruntled investors. These are people who are capable of doing terrible things—because we’re both involved, in one way or another, with a man who probably does terrible things.

“It’s okay,” she tells me in a whisper, patting my arm gently the way I pat hers whenever she’s anxious. “Daddy will come get us.”

She says it with the complete certainty of a child who has never once been let down by her father. I want to believe her, and I’m furious, and I’m scared out of my mind. The van keeps moving, and I hold her against my chest while waiting for whatever comes next.

14

DORIAN