Tell Me Your Fears

Chapter 1: Robyn

It's moments like staring at the tiny bathroom window contemplating cutting off a limb so I can fit through that tell me that I was fucked.

Complete and utterly screwed sore by the ass, and not in a good way.

I have to get out of here. Fast. Peralta suspects someone stole his Rolex and is practically flipping over furniture in the dining hall trying to find it. You'd think a millionaire wouldn't make a fuss over an insignificant accessory being right in the middle of his niece's wedding.

Except, it wasn't just a Rolex. It was also a custom made Luis Morais ring he'd been bragging about all day in the car, a zippo lighter, and a Cartier bracelet.

All of which are sitting comfortably inside the invisible pouch strapped in a vice-like grip around my right thigh under my long red silk dress that cost me a fortune to rent out.

Okay, maybe the zippo was a tad too much considering I don't smoke. But judging by the weight and its authentic looking custom emblem, I'd bet my rusty Honda this at least have worth at the local pawn shop. So, really, you can say all the fuss outside was my fault.

I don't want to imagine Peralta's face when he comes home tonight and realizes his investment in my company is a sham. Now, that is not my fault. Peralta was the one who decided to put money into a non-existing company account of his own free will. Well, to his credit, he didn't know it was a sham, so he's only half responsible. Which makes me three-fourths at fault out of the whole.

Still pretty good, better than being wholly at fault.

. . . if, in any indication, it matters. Which, hiding in the women's bathroom to avoid his men patting me down, tells me laying blame isn't important right now. Peralta's many things, and unforgiving was one of them.

Over the years I've been deluding men like him who've built themselves a tower from blood money, I've never been this close to having shackles on my wrists. Sure, there may have been some close calls and dangling from a four-story building, which wasn't my fault mind you, but never being cornered like this. Thorough planning—and great acting—is the building block for the success of my profession and safe to say, I didn't plan an escape route for when I'm trapped in a bathroom surrounded by a hundred men. Now that's my fault.

Responsibility aside, I needed an escape and walking out of the bathroom door would be walking into Peralta's trap considering he had forced the wedding guests to be subjected to a pat down—yeah, fucker actually orchestrated a mandatory secondary security check for something so replaceable—at the dinning hall of the wedding venue, a woodland mansion he rented out for five days to accommodate guests who wanted to stay overnight and enjoy the scenic nature.

I ready myself to make a run for it. To where, I don't know. I could steal a car, but drawing more attention complicates everything.

My pacing stops when I hear a knock on the door. I don't answer.

"Doll, you in here?" I resist the urge to gag at his mundane pet name as if I was merely a shiny object with the purpose of flaunting around by his side to make people jealous. And I tell you, you'd be surprised how popular that hobby is, probably even surpassing pretentious golfing.

Despite the erratic throbbing of my heart, I brave my voice to come off light and airy. "In a moment, darling."

"Well, you have to hurry up. Folks are almost done with my men. You and the bride and groom are the only ones left."

Of course, he'd single-handedly ruin his niece's wedding by suspecting them of thieving the benefactor of the whole ceremony. I'd be offended if I was one of the cougars with a penchant for killing their husbands in the middle of the night and take their inheritance money to spend at a lofty resort in the Bahamas. But, alas, I was the most obvious suspect in this case considering the wedding was small, with only personal business partners and close families attending. I was merely a plus one who had no relations with anyone except a "run in" with the bride's uncle at a private gym wearing the skimpiest shorts that manage to make me blush the deepest shade of crimson red there is.