Page 1 of Abduction
Chapter One
Josh
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ITHREW BACK ANOTHERshot and waved down the bartender to top me up. I was sure as hell not done drinking tonight, and the buzz was only just starting to set in.
“Can you get me one, too?” the girl hanging on my arm asked me, fluttering her lashes in my direction. Truth be told, I couldn’t even remember her name, but I nodded and grinned.
“Anything for you, sugar.”
She beamed at me, pressing herself against my side enthusiastically. She was tall and willowy, with long brown hair and olive skin and a dress that cut off just under her ass to show off her long legs. She was hot, sure, but her conversation hadn’t been up to much. Who cared? It wasn’t like she was hanging out with me for the scintillating chat.
“I’ll take one, too,” Tommy added, leaning over to catch the bartender’s eye. I could feel the girl next to me eyeing him, looking him up and down as though she wanted to take a piece of him. Women often did. When it came to us twins, he was the one who looked a whole lot more respectable than me. The one who would have been the sensible choice for most girls.
I slipped my arm around her waist and pulled her in a little closer. Yeah, it wasn’t like we had much of a connection, but she was with me, and I wanted it to stay that way. She smiled up at me as she reached for the shot I had just ordered her, tossing it back as delicately as she could. I could already see she was starting to wobble slightly on her heels, and I wondered how long she had been drinking here before she had spotted us coming to the bar and decided to make me her target for the evening. Someone needed to keep an eye on her, anyway.
This was supposed to be a chance for us to blow off some steam. We’d been working so hard to try and stay on top of everything, I wanted to make sure I took this chance to have some fun.
Tommy didn’t take a whole lot of time off work, and he didn’t want to, either. He knew the best way to impress our father was to dedicate himself to the business, and he had done everything he could to endear us to the people who mattered in this city. He would never have admitted it, but he liked the lifestyle it afforded him, enjoyed how much he could do with his status and his name attached. Sometimes, I agreed, but other times, I found myself wondering what it would have been like to be utterly invisible to the world at large.
A cluster of our friends were around the bar, taking up almost all of the space—I could see a few patrons lurking behind them, clearly annoyed they weren’t going to get served anytime soon, but I didn’t let it bother me. They could wait. They always would. Some of them might have the nerve to get a little pissed off, but they wouldn’t dare do or say anything to put themselves in our way.
One of the bonuses of being a Falcone. One I’d never get tired of. Yeah, it came at the cost of being able to blend into the background, but people would do what we wanted when they figured out who the hell we were. They didn’t want to cause trouble, they didn’t want to be the ones who landed in a mess for making issues for us. They would hold their hands up and get the hell out of the way as soon as they found out who we were, and it was something I’d been used to my entire life.
“Hey,” the girl murmured into my ear, close enough that I could feel her breath on my skin. It had been a while since I had gotten laid, and I would have been lying if I said I wasn’t a little horny at her presence. But there was something about her that wasn’t clicking with me. Maybe she was too drunk, maybe she was just a little too boring. I wasn’t sure. But I wasn’t tempted to take her out of here already, get her home so I could show her just what she had signed up for tonight. Normally, when I found a woman I wanted, they’d know about it in a matter of minutes, but she wasn’t doing much for me. I was more going through the motions than actually interested.
A couple of the guys with us—Toby and Matthew—had women at home, but they were already hitting on girls here at the bar. Same way it always went. No matter how committed they seemed to be to the girls in their lives, there was always a new piece of strange they wanted to try out. No matter how much they should have known better, they would always let it get the better of them, a few drinks in, a pretty girl flashing them a smile from the other end of the bar. I could have said something, but their personal lives weren’t of enough interest to me to care. Not like their women didn’t know what was going on out here, anyway. They weren’t stupid. They knew the kind of man they were involved with, and they would have been idiots to think they could demand that kind of change.
I didn’t have anyone to go home to, but I preferred it that way. This life, it was tough for anyone to get into without getting lost in it, and if I was going to bring a woman in, I needed to know I could trust her totally. I had never met someone who had convinced me they could actually handle the reality of all of this, no matter how much they thought they could. Most would get close and then back off when they realized what they were going to have to ignore to survive it. They couldn’t just hold back and pretend they didn’t see it.
Tommy took his shot and leaned up against the bar as he checked his phone. No matter how much I told him to leave it at home and give himself a break, he would always turn around and pull it out whenever he got the chance. Didn’t want to miss anything that was happening, he told me, just in case Dad needed us. I was sure he was right to stay so vigilant, but sometimes, I wanted to forget it all and focus on having some fun instead.
I saw his face cloud, and at once, I knew something was wrong. He lifted his gaze and locked eyes with me, his mouth set into a hard line. I didn’t know what had shifted his mood so quickly, but it was obvious he was serious.
He took a step toward me, not even looking at the girl hanging on my arm. What the hellwasher name again? Nina? Dina? Something like that. She would be pissed as hell to know I’d already forgotten it, but I was having a hard time caring. When my brother got a look like that on his face, I knew something more serious was going on than some girl.
“I need to talk to you,” Tommy told me, tilting his head toward the door. The girl tightened her grip on my arm, as though she could tell she was about to lose me. I fought the urge to just brush her off, make it clear I had more important things to do than pander to her ego, but she didn’t have any idea how serious this was.
“Josh?” she asked me, her voice taking on a whiny edge. I sighed and looked down at her.
“I’ll be back soon,” I promised her, though I doubted it was going to be resolved that easily. I could tell from the look on Tommy’s face this was going to be serious, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to deal with whatever was on his mind right now. All the tipsiness seemed to have vanished from his face, just like that, his system clearing out the alcohol to make room for whatever shit was going on outside of this bar.
The guys had noticed the shift, too, and they had drawn their attention away from the women they had been chatting to all this time. There was a wariness in the air, as though they could all tell we might need them for something a little more important. Whatever was going on, it was going to need all of our attention to get through it in one piece. Tommy didn’t have to say anything for me to get that. Call it a twin thing, but I could read him like nobody else, his dark brown eyes fixed on mine as his mind raced behind them.
“Outside,” Tommy told me, jerking his head toward the door. I thought about ordering another drink to take with me, but something told me I was going to need to be clear-headed for this. I had no idea what was going to happen when I left, but I needed to be able to tackle it head-on. Not clouded with booze.
I rose to my feet and brushed off the girl who had been hanging on to me all night. I had no idea if she was going to wait for me, or if she would go find herself someone else now that I had proved to be a washout. Honestly, I didn’t much care either way. I just needed to get to the bottom of whatever was bugging my brother so much.
And pray it wasn’t as bad as it seemed right now.
