Page 40 of Caught Up

Around me, everyone began pulling on balaclavas and checking their weapons.

“You know the drill,” I told them. “We hit him before he gets to the door. And you better not fucking fire on him unless it’s to save your own ass. Lorenzo wants him alive.”

Thewalkie-talkiecrackled again. “He’s rounding the corner.”

Enzo grabbed the door handles, ready to throw them open.

I hit the talk button. “Tell us when.”

We all shifted forward on the benches, ready and waiting. Anticipation coursed through my body. Our target didn’t know he’d been made, but taking him by surprise like this didn’t come without risks. Most men in our line of work carried at least one weapon on them at all times. And rats tended to be more paranoid than most—we’d likely face some resistance. Stefan had been in position for hours, scouting out the rat’s house. No one else had come or gone in that time, but it didn’t mean the man didn’t have allies hiding inside, ready to jump to his defense.

It was so quiet inside the van, you could hear a pin drop.

“Go,” Stefan said.

Enzo threw open the doors, and we swarmed into the night.

Hours later, Alec and I were back at our parents’ house. Stefan had arrived well before us, his part of the operation ending when ours began. Greg was who the fuck knew where. These days, he spent more time around dead bodies than live ones, and Dad had him doing all sorts of weird shit with them I didn’t want to know about.

I’d showered, changed, and was heading down to the basement incinerator with my bloodstained clothes from earlier when Dad stopped me at the bottom of the stairs. His nickname growing up was the Crooner because he bore a striking resemblance to Sinatra, minus the baby blues. His eyes were cold, dark, and hostile, and I could tell from the look on his face that he wanted to ream me out for staying away for so long. My shoulders stiffened as I braced for an argument.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“Cakewalk,” I told him. “He didn’t even get a shot off. We were in and out of there in less than ten minutes.”

Dad’s gaze dropped to my bloody clothes in question.

“I said he didn’t get a shot off, not that he didn’t put up a fight.”

Dad scoffed. “And you couldn’t get him under control without ending up covered in evidence?” He shook his head. “Just when I think you’re ready for the big leagues, you prove you’re still an amateur.”

A sarcastic response was on the tip of my tongue, but heroically, I kept it in, knowing it would only make this situation worse. Instead, I stood there in silence, fuming, because I didn’t trust myself to speak. No matter what I did, it would never be good enough for him. There would always be a criticism or an insult.

“I’m going to bed,” he said. “You better still be here for breakfast in the morning. Your mother has overnight French toast in the fridge.”

I turned and went to burn my clothes, staring at the flames as I mulled over my options. I couldn’t keep doing this. Just being here, in this fucking house, set me on edge. Dad only responded to strength and threats, and I was beginning to think that I might end up having to blackmail him into letting me go. God knew I had more than enough dirt on him. I couldn’t threaten to go to the cops or the Feds with it—that would be a death sentence if anyone else found out. But maybe I could threaten to tell one of Dad’s rivals about one of themanytimes he had smiled to their face while secretly stabbing them in the back.

I’d need to have everything else lying flat first, though, a way to make my own money,clean money. I had some saved up, but if I had any chance of offering Lauren the kind of pampered lifestyle she deserved, I needed more, some steady stream of income so I didn’t spend the rest of my life draining my savings and stock accounts.

Back in my room, I locked the door behind me and lifted the edge of the area rug closest to my closet. Beneath it was a section of floorboard that I’d pried loose back in high school, the only hiding spot my nosy brothers still hadn’t discovered. I pulled the floorboard up and breathed a sigh of relief to see my stash still there. A smallfloral-patternednotebook was hidden at the very bottom of the pile, and I lifted it out and brushed the dust off before replacing the floorboard and rug.

It was Lauren’s diary from high school. I’d stolen it from Kelly’s room the night I planted drugs on her. At the time, I’d been worried that fucking turncoat would post more of Lauren’s writing online. Once a traitor, always a traitor.

I hadn’t looked at it in years, but Jimmy and Vinny’s stupid comments about grand gestures had gotten stuck in my head, and an idea was starting form because of them. This diary contained all the things Lauren and I had done together, all the things she’d still wanted to do with me. They were written just for her and me, her most secret fantasies. And what had I done? Pretended they were lies. Of course a normal apology wasn’t enough to soften her to me. But what if I gave her something else?

I flipped the journal open and riffled through it until I landed on the night of the fireworks. Reading the sequence of events from Lauren’s perspective had beeneye-openingall those years ago, and still brought me up short today. I’d known she had a thing for me before that night, but I had no idea just how deep her crush ran until the first time I’d read these pages.

My eyes skimmed over the next entry. It was from the day after the fair. I felt guilty all over again while reading it, seeing how excited she had been, wondering whether or not I was as into her as she was me. Knowing I’d give her a few weeks of bliss only to turn around and crush her made me feel ten times worse than what I’d just done to that rat.

I flipped ahead to her final “fan fiction” about us, the one we’d never gotten to play out. In Lauren’s fantasy, we met at the corner arcade in our old neighborhood and she sucked me off in the photo booth while the camera snapped pictures of us together.

I shook my head. Even back then, she’d had a thing for camwork.

My plan began solidifying as I started reading the entry over from the beginning. Vinny was right; flowers and chocolates weren’t going to cut it. I needed a grand gesture if I was going to convince Lauren to forgive me, and this journal was the key to redeeming myself. Her memories about it were probably bad because of what happened afterward, but what if we reclaimed them, turned them intogoodmemories instead?

A ping sounded from my pocket. I pulled my phone out to see another Me4U photo message from Lauren. In it, she sat spread eagle on her bed, naked, her hands barely covering herself.

Feeling slutty tonight,her message read.

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