Page 12 of Wicked Mafia Sinner

Help. I truly have no one else to ask. I witnessed a murder and now I am next. Please, I need protection. I’ll pay anything.

I know two things in life. Nothing is free and death comes for all of us. Only I hope I get at least some say in the latter.

I write my name. My address. My phone number. Hell, I’m tempted to put my social media handles but I’ve run out of space. I fold the paper and slide it into the red envelope and seal it shut.

I hold it over the slot in the top of the box.

My fingers hover there. The envelope trembles against my thumb.

If I drop this in, that’s it. I go back to my motel room and then what? Wait to see if someone shows up before checkout time at noon tomorrow?

Hope. That's the whole plan. Drop the paper in and hope. My phone is dead, they can't find me at the rinky-dink motel.

Hope has done exactly nothing for me.

The men who grant these wishes are somewhere above me in this building right now. Sitting in their fancy offices while they make decisions about people's lives. What if I walk this wish up there myself? What if I put it directly into their hands and make them look at me and see a real person instead of a piece of paper in a box?

Dropping this envelope and walking away feels like writing my own eulogy and mailing it to someone who might not check their inbox.

I pull the envelope back from the slot.

I push through the red door and step back into the low-lit corridor. The lounge is to my right, back through the velvet curtain. Back to the marble and the music and the beautiful people who don't care about the horror chasing me through the night.

I turn left.

There's another elevator at the end of the corridor, smaller than the main one, with a biometric panel glowing faintly beside the doors. I'm three steps from it when a door I didn't notice opens to my right and two guards step out, both of them built like the walls of this building and wearing matching expressions of polite interest.

"Ma'am." The taller one angles his body between me and the elevator. "Can we help you?"

"Yes, actually." I straighten my spine and speak from the heart. "I need to speak to the men who read the wishes. I have one and I'd like to deliver it personally."

They look at each other. The shorter one presses his lips together in a way that might be hiding a smile.

"Ma'am, that area is restricted to authorized personnel only."

"I understand that, but this is an emergency and I really need this."

I lift my chin and push every ounce of stubborn determination into my posture. Good or bad, I’m here now and there is no way in hell I’m leaving without what I came for.

“If you could just take me…”

The taller one scoops me up before I can finish my sentence. The brute just lifts me off my feet like I weigh nothing, and tosses me over his shoulder. His friend starts walking toward the lounge and the lug carrying me follows.

"Hey! Put me down you big lug. So much for telling the truth, huh! This is not... I am a grown woman and you can't just..."

My head swivels around and I call out, “I can walk myself out. He can’t do this!”

“He can and he is.”

I pound my fists against the ocean of black fabric covering his back, but he just lumbers on like I’m not driving my fists into him.

The velvet curtain parts and we're back in the lounge and every head in the immediate vicinity swivels toward the woman slung over security’s shoulder. Sometimes I really do wish I had even a dash of luck on my side and even better fighting skills.

The hostess is waiting by the entrance with her hands folded and a look on her face that somehow manages to be both sympathetic and completely unsurprised.

The security guard sets me down gently, like placing a vase he's worried about breaking, and the three of them form a polite wall between me and the rest of the club.

Heat tears up my neck and hits my face so fast I probably match every red rose in the joint. A heartbeat pounds behind my ears, loud enough that the entire lounge can probably hear it, and if the floor would like to open up and swallow me, now would be a great time.