Behind Closed Doors (Behind Closed Doors #1)(76)

“Hey, man,” Abel says, greeting Jason, then offering me a nod. “Hiya, Skye.”

“Hey. What’s up?”

“Nothing that can’t wait until another time,” Abel says, glancing at Daniel. “And be handled by the two of us.”

Jason glances between the two men. “Are you sure?”

“We’ll handle it,” Daniel says.

Abel claps his hands together. “I’m ready to play.” He eyes me. “Got yourself a shirt and everything there, lady. Looking good.”

I’m confused by this shift in his mood, but I assume he wants to end the battle with Daniel, and I go with the flow. “I do,” I say. “And I’m ready to take on the haters, too. Jason prepped me.”

Jason laughs. “I did. If they say you distract me, you say . . .” He points at me.

“Dream on.”

Abel laughs but Daniel doesn’t, focusing on Jason. “You’re a go for Europe, fulfilling your TV contract. The paperwork is headed to our attorney now.”

“What’s up with the TV show?” Abel asks.

“I’m taking Skye to see Europe, and agreed to a European tour,” Jason says. “But we had to work around my contract.”

“Europe,” Abel says. “Those are fun tours. I need to do one again soon.”

An announcement sounds and Jason kisses me. “Gotta go, baby. See you at break.”

Abel salutes me and ignores Daniel.

“What was that about?” I ask Daniel.

“He asked how the blackmail situation was going, and I told him we had it under control.”

“And?”

“I usually tell him details. He’s feeling like I don’t trust him, which isn’t the case.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“I did.” He scrubs his jaw. “He’s a good friend, but I’m just doing my job. I need to go deal with Davie on one more issue before you two leave in the morning. Stay close to me, will you? I know we have people around, but I’m on edge. Maybe that’s what Abel sensed and read wrong.”

“I’ll stay close,” I say, but as he walks away, my nerves are magnified by one thousand.

Inhaling, I walk into the event room, and almost instantly Mandy is by my side, pulling me to a seat with “the girls,” Devon and Sheila. Somehow I manage to chat with them, tease with them, and wait for the tournament to start, relieved to find Jason and Abel chatting and laughing on the floor below. Wounds healed. Trust restored.

Two hours later, Jason is at the final table, and Abel is with me and the girls and flirting like crazy with Devon, who’s apparently on the hunt again. Daniel and I take up residence at the barrier for the final table’s play. “He might win again,” Daniel says. “That’s going to piss someone off big time.”

“Or make them happy,” I say. “Buddha implied they want him to keep winning.”

“May the mob gods be with you,” Daniel says. “I guess that’s better than having them against you.” Another player falls, and it’s down to Jason and some player I don’t know. “You know what gets to me?” Daniel says.

“What?”

“The waiting. The knowing something else will happen.”

“Maybe it won’t,” I say.

“I say that every time. And then it does.”

And then it does, I repeat in my mind, no words or actions ever making me feel as claustrophobic as those.





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


AND THEN IT DOES . . .

Those words play in my mind for the next few hours, until finally we’re back in the press room with Jason the victor again, this time for charity. But something is subtly off about him. An edge that I’ve noticed only one other time, when he’d been given that note.

“I see it, too,” Daniel says, and the next fifteen minutes feels like an hour.

Finally Jason joins us, and shows us his phone with a message from Buddha. I’m in your room. Hurry your pretty little ass up.

None of us speak. We start walking and don’t stop until we’re in the elevator, crunched in a crowd of people. Jason grabs me and holds me when it starts moving, but I don’t even notice the sway of the car. Anxious butterflies are attacking my belly that have nothing to do with my confinement. This doesn’t have to be bad news. This could be the answer we need to end this.

We reach the apartment and find Buddha at the window, his back to us. We’ve formed a line, me in the middle and Jason and Daniel framing me. “About f*cking time,” Buddha says, turning to face us. “Charity events are such a waste of f*cking money.”

“Don’t let yourself into my apartment again,” Jason bites out. “What do you have for us?”

“Joe was hired to clean up a mess,” Buddha says. “See, the mob doesn’t like it when people try to mess with the outcome of the betting cycles. Blackmail is frowned upon, unless they’re the ones doing it. And you, Jason, even before this insane winning streak, have been the steady performer that made everyone a good bit of money.”

Ice slides down my spine. “What do you mean, ‘clean up a mess’?”

“Stephanie is six feet under with concrete blocks, and so is that waitress who left you the note,” Buddha says.