Red Handed by Jessa Wilder
We spent a lot of time agonizing over the question of, “How do you define a ‘DARK’ book?”
This is not a bully book and there isn’t much darkness between the main character and the members of the harem. Frankly, she wouldn’t take that shit.
That said, we ultimately felt we couldn’t tag this book as anything other than dark. There’s a decent amount of descriptive torture in here. Torture is pretty damn dark, and isn’t the kind of thing you can just not warn a person about, you know? There is also a single brief mention of attempted sexual assault, a fuck ton of swearing, graphic sex, random gang related violence, and highly questionable character motivations.
If that’s your poison, welcome to the dark side.
Fair warning, this is absolutely the lightest book in the series. It will only get darker from here.
Please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times and enjoy the ride.
Fuck, I should have worn different shoes.
I peered up at the windowsill five stories above me, then back at my feet. Biting back a string of curses, I kicked off my heels behind a flowering shrub and glared at the wall before me. This was going to hurt like a bitch.
I wedged my fingers as tight as I could into the grout lines of the old world brick, and thanked God that the architects hadn’t gone with a sleek metal design. My bare toes burned as they gripped the side of the building. The rough texture shaved off more of the skin from my feet with each floor I passed.
If I’d realized I’d be cutting my night out short to do a job—and that job would involve scaling the side of the Hotel Esposito—I wouldn’t have worn four-inch heels. I definitely wouldn’t have worn the faux leather mini dress that was now slipping down over my strapless bra to pool around my waist. The entire outfit needed to be burned.
I should have expected it—the job, that was. My dad had a sixth sense for knowing when I was having fun and ruining it. I could swear he took some sick joy in finding the worst possible moment to call me into work. The only consolation was it wasn’t just me. He did the same thing with all his employees. Jimmy O’Rourke said “jump,” and we said, “in front of what?”
I eased my magnet out of my bra, struggling to maintain a solid three point grip on the wall. I gasped as one foot slipped, dropping me a half foot before I could steady myself. Fear coiled in my stomach, and my heart pounded in my throat.
I took a deep breath, reminding myself this was what I trained for. Breathing evenly, I hauled myself up onto the window ledge and smiled at the simple latch. I’d been counting on the Espositos’ arrogance. They put high-tech motion sensor locks on the lower floors, but hadn’t counted on a thief scaling their walls. Idiots.
I ignored the wind whipping at my hair and the edges of my dress, maneuvering the cold magnet over the lock. I clasped my bottom lip between my teeth, holding on for dear life with one hand while trying to keep the magnet steady.
I held my breath, slowly moving the magnet until I heard the tell-tale sound of the latch springing. My breath whooshed out of my lungs as the window opened—thank God. I didn’t feel like doing the “breaking” part of breaking and entering. Not five stories off the ground, anyway. My thighs spasmed, and I tightened my grip on the sill, praying that whatever rich asshole was staying in the hotel room beyond wouldn’t take this moment to admire the city. They would get much more than a view of the skyline, that was for sure.
Sucking in my breath, I crawled through the tight window. My hip clipped the edge and a piece of metal trim clattered to the floor. In the quiet of the building, it sounded like a drum kit. My heart hammered in my throat as I stayed perfectly still, waiting to hear something. Anything.
No sound came, and my hips cleared the frame. I laid my back flat on the solid floor, taking heaping breaths until my heart calmed. The offending piece of trim dug into my spine and I reached around for it. “Fuck you, you little bastard.” I tossed it out the window into the bushes below.
I stood and shook hair from my face, corrected my ruined dress, and blinked at my surroundings. The ballroom of The Hotel Esposito. The belly of the fucking beast. On instinct, I pulled my gun from my thigh holster and spun it in my hand. Just in case. Thigh holsters looked sick, but they were super impractical. Still, I hated being unarmed, and I hated carrying a purse more.
The massive room was dark, the only light coming from the thin, stylized windows set every few inches all along the wall. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling at intervals of ten feet or so, and bar tables were pushed up against one wall.
This was just the initial intel mission. Getting the lay of the land. Tomorrow was the real deal—or tonight, since it was past midnight. “The real deal” being the Esposito Annual Gala. Everyone of note in the city of St. Adrian would be there, and so would their jewelry, their wallets, and their car keys. It was a goddamn all you can steal buffet for someone like me—assuming I could figure out how to get in and out undetected.
Scaling the outside of the building in a ballgown was not going to work, but now that I was inside, I could see the huge double doors at one end weren’t the only entrance. There was a staff door at the opposite end, probably used for catering weddings and stuff. The staff entrance would undoubtedly have security cameras if I knew anything about the Espositos, which unfortunately, I did. I knew several lifetimes worth about them and had too many debts to settle to even count.
Our tech guys had looped the cameras in the ballroom tonight so I could check it out. I strode the length of the empty ballroom, scanning the ceiling for large air vents or other opportunities for entry. Nothing. Alright, staff door it was.
I pulled out my phone and opened my very handy and very illegal jammer app. I’d just need to jam the cameras in the staff hallway for like five minutes, so their surveillance probably wouldn’t notice. It would be nothing more than a blip. As I flipped through the app, searching for the right IP address, the phone vibrated. I jumped and immediately put it to my ear.
“What?” I hissed, not even bothering to say hello.
“Rae, where are you?” my sister, Sophie, whined, loud music emanating from the background.
I tried not to roll my eyes, but it was hard. Really hard. “I left, remember? Let Connor take you home.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I ground out, holding the phone slightly away from my ear as I peered into the coatroom. May as well double check everything.
“I didn’t see you go,” Sophie said.
“Yes, you did. You’re drunk.”
She made a noise of protest, but I didn’t care. The ballroom had some pretty nice paintings on the wall. I crossed the room and tapped the edge of one of the frames out of curiosity.
“Did you leave with someone?” Sophie asked.
“Yeah, huh.” I was barely listening. Despite being from the same family, Sophie and I weren’t raised the same way. At all. At twenty-four, she was a year older than me, but you wouldn’t know it. Our parents treated her as breakable, while they sent me to break into hotels. It was a whole thing.
I inspected one of the modernist paintings closely. It wasn’t that big. I could definitely carry it, and I was pretty sure it was worth a couple hundred thousand dollars at least. I was nothing if not opportunistic.
Only the fucking Espositos were so flashy they would leave a $500,000 painting unguarded in their ballroom. This wasn’t even their main hotel. They just built this location last year. If I were to write a list of everything I fucking hated about the Esposito family, being flashy would definitely be on there somewhere. Right underneath being lying, cheating, stealing, murderous assholes. Just to name a few things.
“Soph, I gotta go,” I said. “I need both hands.”
“Ooh,” she giggled. “Say no more.”
I rolled my eyes, but didn’t correct her as she hung up. I needed both hands to pull this thing off the wall. It wasn’t heavy, but it was high up, and I was at a disadvantage with no shoes. I stood on my toes inspecting it and sighed when there weren’t any alarms hooked up. Not that I couldn’t handle a couple of security guards, but I didn’t want to. I had been hoping for a chill B&E.
My phone buzzed again, this time with a text, and I jumped. “Fucking hell,” I berated myself. What was wrong with me?
Brian: Where are you?
I rolled my eyes, glancing at the time. I had been gone twenty-five minutes tops, most of it spent climbing the building. Brian, my father’s giant, sixty-something head of security, was overreacting.
Me: I’ve got the layout, I’m heading back
I reopened my jammer app, knocked out the cameras in the staff hallway, and strode through the door. Sure enough, it was just a service stairwell on the other side. Perfect. Now, I had a plan for later, and a painting to give my dad for my trouble. Not too bad for one night’s work. I allowed myself a little pat on the back. I was basically a real-life Laura Croft.
The stairs emptied into an alleyway behind the hotel, with a dumpster and a fire escape. I could have kicked myself. It was the kind of door that was locked from the outside but open from the inside for emergencies. Picking a lock was no problem, though. I could have avoided scaling the damn building. Oh well, hindsight and all that.
I rounded the corner and spotted Brian’s car parked a little way down the street, facing away from me. Okay, now I just needed to find my shoes and—
The hair raised on the back of my neck.
A whisper of sound and a hint of musk was the only warning I wasn’t alone. I whipped around, peering into a shadowy alcove on the side of the hotel between the rear entrance and spindly metal fire escape. I blinked into the darkness.
A man’s presence was barely discernible in the shadows—significantly taller and wider than me, letting me know that my chances of escaping barefoot were slim to none. I took my only advantage, acting first and pulling the six-inch blade from its sheath at my thigh, my nearly priceless painting clattering to the sidewalk, and lunged for him.
The lucky bastard got an arm up, gripping my wrist hard enough to bruise, and blocking me from slicing into his jugular. He flipped us until my back slammed against the brick wall and knocked my knife out of my hands, pinning my arms between us. Oomph.
“Hey!” the guy grunted as I brought my knee up and tried to free myself. “Fuck, do you usually go around trying to kill every guy you see?”
I shook wisps of red hair out of my face and blinked up at my captor, and was distracted by the bizarrity of the moment. In my experience running into gangsters and the everyday street criminal, they weren’t usually as hot as you would expect. This guy looked less like a real criminal and more like an actor playing one. That said, the gun strapped to his hip that was digging into my stomach told me he was for real.
“Do you always hang out in the dark waiting to ambush girls in the middle of the night?” I asked. A shiver ran through me, unable to stop the spike of excitement.
I was a sick bastard for being turned on by guys with guns.
He pushed his hips flush against mine, blocking another assault from my knee and locking me in place. He was tall—a good head taller than me at least, especially as I still had yet to retrieve my shoes. He had striking hazel eyes and dirty blonde hair, worn artfully messy in a way that couldn’t be natural. Half his face was still shadowed, but his sharp jaw and pierced lip caught my eye. A shiver ran through me as his full lips formed into a sexy-ass grin. I wanted to taste the cool metal of that piercing.
Tingles rippled down my spine, and his hot breath fanned across my skin. His eyes shifted from me to the painting at my feet. Fuck.
“What’s that?”
“What?” I asked, too innocently.
“See, I’m pretty sure the Espositos would be fairly put out if someone took the Monet from their ballroom. That’s not what you’re doing, right?” His tone was light, almost playful.
My stomach curdled with rage at the sound of the Esposito name. So he was one of the Gentlemen. Outstanding. Well, I didn’t feel as bad about having to kill him, then. He was pretty, though. Such a waste.
I glanced over his shoulder to where I could see the nondescript black sedan where I knew Brian was sitting right now, wondering what was taking me so long. I just needed to get free of this guy and run fifty yards to the car.
The blonde guy towered over me, unmoving, his frame nearly doubling mine in size. Shit, why didn’t my security look like that? My panties could get wet just by looking at him. What was weird, though, was he hadn’t made a move to either grab the painting or incapacitate me further. He was just watching me, looking almost amused. What the hell was he doing out here, anyway?
I made a split-second decision I’d probably regret later, but the hell with it. It was my only chance. I shoved the painting back with my foot and lifted on to my toes, pressing into him until his chest branded mine. He stiffened, rightfully not trusting my intention, but his gaze was molten with want. I sucked in a breath, and my heart hammered in my ears, making it hard to think. Why did this guy have to be so hot?
I dug my fingers into his shirt, nails scraping against his chest, and that’s all it took to snap his control. He groaned low in the back of his throat and went from holding me still to hands roaming over every inch of my skin. It shouldn’t have turned me on, but it fucking did.
He dropped his lips to the curve of my neck and sucked hard, sending heat radiating down my spine. He no doubt left marks to remember him in the morning. His hand reached below my ass and pulled us flushed together. Heat burned, flooding between my thighs, and I let out an involuntary whimper.
“Shhh, Little Thief, or someone will hear us.” His rough, breathy voice fanned over my neck, and I trembled against him.
He slowly tipped my head back, and I met his hazel gaze. His eyes darted almost involuntarily down to my mouth, and I licked my bottom lip. The only invitation he needed. His mouth crashed over mine, owning me with his. Fuck, he was a good kisser.
I moaned into him, earning me a growl from the back of his throat. He tasted sweet, and I had to fight against the need making me stupid. He was as lost as I was, and this was my opportunity to take advantage of it. I slid my hand down to my thigh and smiled, lifting my gun toward him. His beautiful eyes went wide a second too late. I stepped back and pulled the trigger, firing off a round directly beside his head. The entire world echoed around us, and he was forced to let go of me to cover his ear.
“Fuck!” His voice was too loud—no doubt his ears were ringing.
I grabbed the painting and took off toward the car, swinging open the passenger side door and launching myself inside.
What the fuck was that? Why didn’t I kill him? I had planned to shoot him until the last possible second. Dammit. God knows he would have killed me. The Gentlemen had absolutely no problem shooting first.
“Took you long enough,” said Brian. He gave me a once over and shook his head, noting my torn dress and lack of shoes.
I shot him one annoyed look for talking to me like that, but let it go. “Got held up. Should have no problems at the gala though, and I got a present for dad.” I held up the painting.
My father's head of security whistled long and low as we tore down the empty street. “Good. He’s in a shit mood. Just got a call, another of the guys turned up dead over on the North side.”
I just nodded, and I glanced in the rearview mirror at the blonde guy standing in the street staring after us. I opened my window, stuck out my hand, and waved goodbye. I should’ve fucking killed him. Nothing good ever came from being soft.