Page 9 of Wicked Mafia Beast
"Okay..."
Her eyes wide a fraction when she raises her brows, expecting me to continue.
"They're criminals, Sloane. Like, actual blood-on-their-hands criminals. The kind with body counts and offshore accounts and half the Chicago PD on the payroll."
Sloane's eyebrows finish shooting up toward her hairline, but she doesn't look as shocked as I expected her to. "I mean, I kind of figured there was something going on. Nobody's that paranoid about their phone and their coffee shop choices unless they're hiding something big."
I force myself to sit up straight. "Yeah, well. I've been investigating them for the past six months. Building a case. Trying to expose everything they've done so the whole rotten empire comes crashing down into a pile of ash and ruin." I swallow hard against the lump forming in my throat. "They found out about it tonight. And now my uncle wants to sell me."
I didn’t mean to just dump info and then drop a bomb on top of the shit pile that is my life, but that was surprisingly easy to say.
"Sell you?" Her voice pitches up in disbelief. "What do you mean, sell you? Like, sell you sell you?"
"Is there any other kind of selling option? I mean, there's an auction. Saturday night. For—" I suddenly can't say it. The words choose this moment to stick in my throat like shards of broken glass, cutting deeper every time I try to force them out.
Shit.
I grab her drink and swallow a mouthful of appletini.
Gross.
I wince through a bit of too much sweetness before I answer her question. "It doesn't matter what for. The point is, I have five days before I become someone's property, and I can't go to the cops because my uncle owns half of them and the other half are too scared to cross him."
Sloane stares at me, her perfectly glossed lips parted in shock. For a long moment, she doesn't say anything, and I watch her process it, watching the wheels turn behind her eyes as she recalculates everything she thought she knew about me.
Then she grabs my hand across the table and squeezes hard enough that I feel her rings dig into my fingers.
"Okay. Okay, we're going to figure this out." She glances around the club, her gaze lingering on the VIP section hidden in the back corner, and something in her expression shifts from shock to calculation. "Actually... this might be exactly the right place for you to be." She purses her lips like she is rerunning her whole thought process just to double check.
"What do you mean?" I press.
She bites at her cherry-colored lip. "Have you ever heard of the Red Letter wishes?"
My pulse kicks up a notch, thudding against the base of my throat. "I've heard rumors when I was doing my research on the families. Some kind of wish-granting thing. Urban legend stuff that kept popping up but I could never verify."
"Err.. Well, it's not a legend." Sloane leans closer, dropping her voice low enough that I have to strain to hear her over the music. "There's a room somewhere past the VIP area, behind all the security. You write your wish on paper, put it in a red envelope, and drop it in a box. These powerful men, the ones who run this place, they read the wishes and pick the ones they want to grant."
"In exchange for what?"
"Depends on the wish and what you have to offer. Money. Favors. Information. Connections." She shrugs one elegant shoulder. "They're not cheap, and they're sure as hell not saints. But they help women. That's kind of their thing, their calling card. Women in bad situations who can't go through normal channels, who can't go to the cops or the courts and expect any kind of justice. Like you, right?"
I nod. “Like me.”
My brain starts clicking pieces together like a puzzle I've been staring at for months finally coming into focus. The Red Letter Syndicate. The wish-granting rumors I could never pin down to a solid source. The pattern I noticed in my research, how certain women connected to powerful men suddenly got out of horrific situations without any explanation that made sense on paper.
"The men who run this place," I say slowly, the realization settling into my bones. "They're the Syndicate who grant these wishes."
Sloane's eyes widen slightly. "Now you’re getting it, yes. You know about them?"
"I didn’t realize they were the wish granters. But I know about their reputation and that they own this building. This club." I know they're my father's enemies, have been for as long as I can remember. I know they've been at war with the Malone organization for years, a cold conflict fought through shell companies and shifting alliances and the occasional body that surfaces in the river. I know my uncle hates Rafael Milano with the kind of seething, bitter hatred that only comes from losing, over and over again.
The enemy of my enemy might be more useful than I thought.
"Onyx." Sloane grips my hand tighter, her nails digging little half-moons into my skin. "Whatever you're thinking right now, think carefully. These aren't guys you mess around with. They're dangerous in ways that make your uncle look like a playground bully."
"More dangerous than the man who's planning to sell me to the highest bidder in five days?"
She doesn't have an answer for that. Nobody would.
