Hold Him Like Gravity (Lombardi Family #4)

Chapter Twenty

CHAPTER TWENTY

Kick

The next two weeks were similar.

I went to work.

Sometimes I saw Rico, sometimes not.

Which, I reminded myself frequently, was for the best. Because the guilt was already eating me up. Having to face him when I had stolen money stashed in my pants or sweater or purse would have been just too much.

I would leave work and head to the Bronx, doing some more staking out of convenience stores.

Then I would get home and hope Rico would show up.

Some nights he did and always with food.

But some nights he didn’t.

And I couldn’t shake the dark cloud that clung to me those times. Even if I knew I was getting too close to him, that I was risking everything. But most of all, my heart.

Though, if I were being honest, it was too late.

It was already his.

More so than my heart had ever belonged to anyone.

Each time I thought of that, I couldn’t stop the tears from flooding my eyes. I was emotional every moment of the day. Crying in the bathroom at work. Crying in the cold and dark as I waited to see if I could find Kyle coming out of a bodega. In the shower in the morning. On the way home from dropping off the money to Kyle after demanding to see proof of my brother being okay.

I was both the happiest and saddest I’d ever been.

Happiest only in the stolen moments when I was in Rico’s arms. Miserable in every other moment.

It all seemed so completely and utterly hopeless.

Until, on one frigid night, the wind whipping lazy, wet snow flurries around, freezing me all the more, it finally happened.

I saw Kyle.

Coming out not of a bodega, but a Chinese food place.

Adrenaline surged as I pulled my jacket hood up over my knitted beanie, casting my whole head in shadow.

Then I started walking, keeping a safe distance as I followed Kyle as he hunched forward against the wind.

And then there it was.

The building he was living in. Possibly the building he was keeping my brother in.

As he got to the door, I slunk back, not wanting him to turn and see me, knowing how capable of violence he was, how willing he would be to grab me. Or, worse yet, just kill Jake, cut his losses, and run.

Alarm bells went off in my mind as he disappeared inside the building, thinking that maybe this was my chance. Maybe I should call the police, tell them that my brother had been kidnapped, that he was being kept in the basement.

That would solve… everything.

Except, of course, lying to and stealing from Rico.

I could sit him down and explain, though. Tell him I didn’t see any way out, that I would work for free to pay him back. Beg for his mercy. Tell him how sorry I was, how much this had been killing me.

He was a good man.

He would forgive me.

But something would always be fractured. Nothing would ever be the same between us.

It would break me to lose him. And I would lose him. But it was better than living like this forever.

The only thing stopping me from reaching for my phone with my frozen fingers and calling the police right then, though, was not having any proof.

What good would I do if I called the cops to report the kidnapping and torture of someone… who might not even be in the building?

If Jake wasn’t in the basement, then all I would accomplish was pissing off Kyle. Who would, almost certainly, take out his anger on my brother.

I needed to get closer. I needed to see in the basement. Or get in there myself without being seen. See with my own two eyes. Then call.

Decision made, I waited a few minutes, figuring by the size of that bag of Chinese food that Kyle would be sharing it with his friends. So when I was sure that they were all likely diving into their food, I moved toward the building.

There was a basement with small, barred windows.

But they were so covered in decades of dust on the inside and grime from the city streets that even when I flashed my phone flashlight in them, I couldn’t see anything inside.

“Damnit,” I grumbled, tucking my phone away and walking away so it didn’t look suspicious that I was hanging around.

Then I hid out, waiting for someone to be making their way up the steps. When I finally did, I rushed up behind him.

He startled, sensing me behind him.

“Oh, my God,” I said, giving him a frazzled smile. “It’s freezing out here, right?” I asked as he pulled the door open.

“Yeah. Heard we’re gonna get an inch or two,” he said.

“Really? I don’t know whether to be happy about that or not,” I said as we moved into the lobby in unison.

“Coming?” he asked, going right for the elevator.

“Not yet,” I said, waving over toward the mailboxes. “Gotta get my mail,” I said.

He nodded and let the doors close.

I waited until he went up, then hit the down button. I rushed around the corner of the wall, out of sight, as I waited for it. On the off-chance that Kyle or one of his men would come out, I didn’t want to be just standing there like an idiot.

It dinged, and I ran around to get inside. I was about to hit the button for the basement before I realized how stupid I was being.

I rushed back out of the elevator car and ran around toward the mailboxes, taking slow, deep breaths, trying to keep myself calm.

I needed to use the stairs, not the elevator that would announce my arrival. Then open to reveal me to whoever might be down in the basement.

The stairs would allow me to go slow, to carefully peek out once I got down there. To play it safe and not get caught.

I hoped.

I moved into the stairwell, trying to ignore the flip-flopping of my stomach at being alone in a secluded place at night. With only a flickering overhead light to brighten my descent.

I forced myself to take slow, deep breaths as I went down, taking careful steps to stay as quiet as possible.

It took forever, yet was far too quick, to get to the door at the bottom.

I took a moment there, closing my eyes, trying to stop the way my whole body felt like it was trembling from the inside out. It was no use, though. I wasn’t going to stop panicking until I saw what I needed to see, then got the hell out of there.

I could go somewhere safe and call. Wait for the police there. Let them do their job. Take Kyle away. For good.

Then Jake and I could pick up the shambles of our lives.

With one more deep breath, I carefully put pressure on the bar of the door, wincing as it made that little clicking noise.

I paused, half certain someone was going to come rushing toward me with a gun, was going to strap me to a chair beside my brother and beat me. Or worse.

But a moment passed, two.

No one came.

I tiptoed forward, carefully closing the door behind me so it didn’t slam.

The basement reeked of dust and damp. There was a distinct shrieking sound I knew to be rats fighting.

Great.

Bad guys and rats to contend with.

It was pitch black in the basement, so I took small, shuffling steps toward the wall, pressing my hand against the cinderblocks to orient myself as I made myself keep moving forward, my eyes adjusting little by little to the low light.

A random stack of boxes surprised me, making me almost plow right into them, sending them crashing to the floor.

As it was, I sucked in a breath, but managed to keep myself from making any other sound as I moved around the boxes and kept moving around the cavernous space.

It felt like hours passed. But it was likely less than ten minutes to move around the whole perimeter.

My belly bottomed out, though, as I realized that aside from the rats that were either fighting or fucking, given the sounds they were making, and likely a million spiders whose webs were probably covering me, this basement was unoccupied.

There was no chair with my brother strapped to it.

No bad guys waiting to grab me.

Just… nothing.

A little whimper escaped me as I made my way back to the door.

I was so hopeful that this was it, that it was all going to end tonight. I hadn’t really prepared myself for the other possibility. That Kyle lived here, but stashed my brother somewhere else.

The more I thought about it as I moved into the stairwell and dropped down on one of the steps, cradling my head in my hands, the more that made sense.

He couldn’t exactly keep a guy chained to a chair, likely thrashing around, maybe screaming when he took the duct tape off to feed him, in the basement of an apartment building where others might hear him.

Jake was likely hidden somewhere else.

An abandoned building, most likely.

The burn of tears threatened but I squeezed my eyes shut, refusing to give in to them.

It wasn’t over.

This was still a huge lead.

I could still follow Kyle or his men from this apartment building to wherever they were holding Jake.

Then I could still follow through with the plan.

Call the police. Get my brother back. Come clean to Rico. Start over again. No fear of Kyle. No more lies.

Determination renewed, I made my way back up the steps. My footsteps felt heavier than ever, though. Hell, my soul felt heavier as I made my way out of the stairwell.

I checked around, then made a mad dash to the front door and out of the building.

I was about to head back to the subway, to go home, take a hot shower to chase off the chill, get something to eat, when the front door of the apartment building flew open.

I panicked, thinking it was Kyle, that I was found out.

I ducked into the coffee shop next door and watched, my heart in a vice.

But it wasn’t Kyle.

Or that other guy from my apartment.

No.

No.

It was Jake.

Jake was walking out of the building.

No handcuffs, no tape, no bruises, no blood.

No nothing.

“No,” I gasped, falling deeper into the shop as he moved to the end of the sidewalk, waiting for a few cars to pass before jogging casually across the street.

No no no no no.

This… this couldn’t be happening.

How was Jake walking around freely? Out of the building where Kyle was clearly living?

The answer came to me as soon as the question formed, though.

My brother had never been a prisoner.

He hadn’t been chained to a chair and tortured by my ex.

He was working with him.

He was scheming against me.

“Ah, tables are for customers only,” a voice called.

I hadn’t even been aware of dropping down into a seat. It wasn’t surprising, though. I felt like my legs weren’t working. I felt like the world had just fallen out from under me.

All of these weeks that I’d been sick with worry, not sleeping, not eating, half-crazed with my fear and worry about Kyle having my brother… and he was in on it.

“Ma’am?”

“Ah, large coffee, please,” I said, forcing myself to stand, to walk over to the counter, handing over some of my stolen cash.

Cash I’d stolen from Rico.

Pain stabbed at my heart.

I’d been fucking over Rico—good, kind, Rico—for weeks because I thought it was my only choice. That if Rico understood, he would have empathy for my situation.

Only to find out that I had no good reason at all.

A small sob escaped me, making the barista’s head pop up, looking over at me with a mix of confusion and concern.

I couldn’t blame her.

I probably looked a little crazed right then.

I certainly felt crazed.

My mind was shooting off in a million directions.

I was sure I was pale, my eyes huge, my aura as frantic as my heartbeat was against my ribcage.

“Here you go,” she called, passing me the coffee with a look that I swear screamed Now please leave .

I felt empathy for her, having been that girl behind a counter late at night with some crazy person sharing your space.

So I took my coffee and made my way outside.

After a quick glance around to make sure Kyle and Jake were nowhere to be seen, I walked on numb legs back toward the subway.

I handed off my coffee to an unhoused man huddled in a jacket and small pile of blankets, then dropped down into an empty seat.

My phone popped out of the pocket and I reached for it, swiping to unlock it out of habit.

There was a little envelope in my top notification bar.

An email.

Happy to do anything other than fall deeper into a hole about the clusterfuck of a situation I was in, I swiped over to my inbox.

There, right at the top, was an email from a familiar address.

BobbyxBoobies.

Because, you know, he was an adult and everything.

The preview text had my pulse speeding up again, had a sweat breaking out across my skin despite the cold.

You wanted me to email you if I saw Jake.

With a shaky breath, I opened the email, finding a long-winded message from Bobby telling me that he’d seen Jake earlier, that he’d stopped by to pay his overdue rent, that he’d picked up some of his stuff and said he was working on a new ‘business venture’ and would be out of touch for a bit.

Me.

I was the new business venture.

A pawn for him and Kyle. Again.

Always, always their fool.

I didn’t realize a growl had actually escaped me until the woman seated across from me wrapped an arm protectively around her son who was distracted by her cell phone in his hands.

I closed out my inbox then turned off my phone, spending the rest of the ride staring out the window, seeing nothing, so overwhelmed with conflicting emotions that I started to go blessedly numb.

By the time I made it back to my apartment and went through the motions of feeding Evander, I had battled back the worst of the betrayal.

In its wake was just pure, undiluted, justified rage.

It wasn’t bad enough that those two men had conspired against me, had tricked me, had manipulated me in the worst way possible. But they’d taken something from me that I’d never thought I would ever find.

They’d taken Rico from me.

And any chance we could have at happiness.

That was the worst part.

Suddenly desperate to set the record straight, to come clean, I rushed into my bedroom, stripping out of my wet pants and slipping on a fresh pair before making my way back into the living room.

I rushed around, grabbing what was left of the money that I’d taken from Rico but hadn’t handed over to Kyle—and, apparently, Jake—yet, and counted it up before stashing it in my purse.

I was going to go find Rico.

I was going to tell him what happened.

I’d give him the money I’d stolen.

I’d clean out my account and give him that as well.

I’d swear to pay the rest of it back. Every single penny. Even the ten grand he’d given me purely out of the goodness of his heart.

I’d apologize.

I’d make this right, damnit.

It was the only thing left to do.

I didn’t have any delusions that it could somehow erase the betrayal, that he could actually forgive me for what I’d done. Not just stealing from him. I did think he had enough good in him to understand the situation I was in and forgive that.

But lying to him.

But letting him hold me and kiss me and make love to me while I was keeping this awful secret from him, while I was screwing him over behind his back.

He couldn’t forgive that.

I couldn’t expect him to.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t owe it to him to confess and make a plan to pay him back.

Decision made, I slipped into my shoes and jacket.

It didn’t matter that I didn’t even know where he was at this time of night.

I would find him, damnit.

I could start at the meat shop in case he was there after hours doing some work.

“I’ll be back, buddy. I’m going to go make this right,” I told Evander. “But you might never get to see Rico again after this,” I added. I swear he looked at me like he understood. And that he would never forgive me for fucking up his life as well.

I’d let down everyone down.

But I would have to deal with Evander later.

I had to find Rico now.

I made my way to the door.

I pulled it open.

Only to find Rico standing there.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going, babe?” he asked, his voice tight.

He knew.

Oh, God, he knew.