“We need to get it, now,” Vinnie says, pacing up and down his room. “Tell me, Shay.”
So I tell him exactly where the ledger is. My father hid it in one of the investment properties he owned, in the attic, in a locked chest. He told me about it before he went to prison, just in case. The only issue is, the property is rented out, so tenants are living there. We’ll need to wait until they’re not home, then break in to retrieve it.
I just hope this is the right move.
* * *
“Where did you even get that outfit from?” Vinnie asks Faye, grimacing. Sin brought Faye with him for the retrieval, apparently she’s good at improvising in difficult situations. What we didn’t expect though, is her showing up dressed like a nun.
Yes, a nun.
“I like to dress up now and again,” she says, turning to Sin and winking. “And come on, everyone likes nuns. They can’t not let me in their house.”
“Hopefully no one’s home,” I mutter, rubbing my forehead with my palm. We park around the corner, and Faye gets out, holding a Bible in her hand.
“I’ll go suss out the situation, then I’ll message you,” she says to Sin, kissing him on the lips. “Let’s do this, team!”
She walks off, leaving us all looking after her.
“What the fuck is the plan again?” Vinnie asks, turning to Sin with a quizzical expression on his face.
“Faye is gonna see if anyone is home, and if they are, she’s going to distract them while you break in,” Sin says calmly, like he does this shit every day.
“What am I doing?” I ask, looking between the two men, realizing that Sin just said while you break in, not while we break in.
“You’re going to come with me,” Vinnie says. “You know what this fuckin’ ledger looks like, right?”
“I’m going to sit here and wait for you guys to jump in and speed the fuck away,” Sin says, gripping the wheel. His phone beeps. He reads the message, then turns to Vinnie. “There’s a woman home. Faye is having tea with her in the kitchen, she said she left the front door unlocked, so run in, turn left then go up the stairs.”
I swallow hard. Fuck, I’m about to rob a house while an innocent woman sits there talking to Faye, the nun.
We get out of the car and Vinnie grabs my hand. “Don’t panic, okay? We’re just going to go in and out.”
“And if she sees us?”
“We’ll worry about it then.”
Great.
Vinnie opens the door, and we both tiptoe inside. The first thing I hear is Faye’s louder-than-usual laugh. We turn left, and head up the stairs, looking around frantically for the attic entrance. We find it to the right, an opening with a handle on the ceiling. Vinnie pulls the handle, and stairs appear, reaching the floor. It makes a bit of a noise, and I’m scared the lady heard, but then I hear Faye singing some sort of church song, probably trying to cover any sounds. We climb the stairs into the attic, and I look around for the chest. When I find it, I tap Vinnie on the shoulder. He opens the chest, grabs the box inside, and we get the hell out of there.
* * *
When Vinnie hands me an envelope addressed to me, I run my finger over my name, written in my father’s handwriting. He found it inside the box with the ledger. My father left a letter for me, and I don’t know what to think about it. Alone, I sit down on our bed and rip it open.
Shayla,
If you’re reading this, it means that things got out of hand. I’m sorry, my beautiful girl, that you were dragged into this, and that you will have to pay for my mistakes. Just know that I love you, and you are without a doubt the best thing that ever happened to me.
Stay strong,
Love, Dad.
I place the letter on the bed and close my eyes. He knew this would happen to me; he knew they would come after me, but I guess there’s nothing he could have done about it—or maybe there was, I don’t know. Either way, he’s gone now, and I need to remember him for the good things he did for me, not the bad. It’s hard to stay angry at the dead. Vinnie comes into the room, wraps me in his arms, and I know that I’m safe.
I don’t have to hide anymore.
* * *
The agent walks into the interview room, looking over at Vinnie, Sin, Faye, and me.
“Agent Higgs,” I say, nodding my head in welcome.
“Here’s a group of people I never thought I’d see in here,” she says in a dry tone, then looks to me. “Thank you all for coming. I hear you have something for me, Shayla.”
Faye shows her the ledger but doesn’t hand it over. “There are some things we want discussed and signed by you before we hand this over.”
The ledger contains a lot of information that any criminal could use to his or her advantage. Names. Dates. Information on members of the Mafia. Basically if you wanted to blackmail someone, everything you need is in these documents, along with enough evidence to put a lot of people behind bars. It’s like a little black book of criminal activity.
“Faye Black, your reputation precedes you,” the agent says, her dark eyes revealing nothing. “This is going to be painful, isn’t it?”
“You have no idea,” Faye says, placing a piece of paper down on the table. “Let’s begin.”
FORTY-SIX
Vinnie
Three months later
I LOOK at the SOLD sign on the two-story house and feel a sense of pride. Shay is going to love this house, I know it. It’s only a five-minute drive from the clubhouse and has four big rooms and two bathrooms. She never asked to move out of the clubhouse, and I know if I wanted to stay there, she would have without complaint. Just another reason that I love her. She never guilts me into anything, or tries to get her way—she just lets me make my own decisions and lets me know that she will be here by my side no matter what. After thinking it over for the last few months, I realized that a baby can’t grow up in the clubhouse. The baby needs their own home, a quiet place with just his or her mother and father. Don’t get me wrong, we’ll still be at the clubhouse a lot, just like everyone else, but this way we also have our own private sanctuary, a place that is ours and only ours. I ride back to the clubhouse, finding Shay outside with Colt.