Chapter 1

Part I

Go Big Or Go Home

Alex

Iwas about to pop my kidnapping cherry.

I’d popped all the cherries already. Death. Torture. Theft. I’d done it all. I’d stolen thousands of times—mostly cars, the reason for this whole ordeal—but I’d never kidnapped anyone before.

The truth was painful to acknowledge in this dark, loud nightclub while I waited for thedeed to be done.And the truth was simple—we were fucked. We’d pushed it to the absolute limit and we had only two choices now: death or kidnapping.

Neither my partner nor I wanted to assassinate a U.S. Attorney because that would inevitably bring a slew ofothergrandiose problems, and we were already in over our heads.

So, we decided to kidnap that U.S. Attorney’s only daughter. His name was Sebastian Moretti and his daughter’s name was Jane or Jen or…Julie?

It didn’t fucking matter. The father-daughter duo had been building a case to lock us up for decades and we didn’t have any time to delay, no time to think about it, or even do any research.

There was also no time to figure out a solid plan or weigh all the options, but we made the call. Every choice had a consequence—win or bust, go big or go home, and I always went big.

I wasalwaysa winner.

“Ona v zolotom platye,” Maksim, my head of security, shouted in my ear and pointed toward a group of women on the chaotic dancefloor, all of them looking awfully young. We didn’t even know how old she was. Hopefully over twenty-one since she was in a nightclub.

He said she was in a golden dress. I squinted, not sure why—it was already pitch black in here—I could barely see anything, let alone the color of a dress.

“Mashina zhdet. Vse gotovo.”Maksim let me know the car was waiting and everything was ready. Everything being the entire security system of the nightclub about to be corrupted.

I took a last drag of my cigarette as I watched Maksim shuffle toward the crowd and headed after him, ready to get out of here, but someone’s fingers dug into my forearm. I turned around and dread hit me instantly.

“Alex? Oh my God!Baby!I didn’t know you were going to surprise me!”

Gianna. My ex-girlfriend. A true demon walking on this earth. A dark soul living in a stunning body.

I blinked at her, quickly trying to calculatehowshe knew I’d be here tonight.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Gianna whined and slumped against me, wrapping me in her intoxicated hug.

I pulled back and steadied her with one hand. She was drunk, but more importantly—I wasn’t herbaby.“You should have told me you were coming!” she shouted in my face just as I watched a whole bevy of her friends file into the VIP booth I was about to abandon.

“What’re you doing here?”

Gianna’s smile slightly faded, but her nails dug deeper into my forearm. “Huh? It’s my birthday, what’re you talking about?”

My phone buzzed in my pocket at the moment.

Maks: 3 mins

“Alex?” Gianna called my name. “You didn’t…You didn’t know I was here?” I caught the look in her eyes; disappointed and hurt, but I knew better than to believe that. This was Gianna’s schtick—puppy eyes and trembling bottom lip.

She’d used it throughout our one-year relationshipandour million breakups over the last year. At some point, I stopped believing her, but…I still picked up the phone when she called.

Because it was so difficult to disentangle from old and familiar strings.

“Gianna, are you stalking me now?”

She reared back, her gaze searching mine. In the half-darkness of the grimy club, our last night together rushed back to me. The curve of her waist, her fake lips kissing up my neck, the filthy words she whispered in my ear, but mostly, the way I couldn’t get hard.