I felt like a spy from a movie.
Well, a really bad spy. I tugged at the hem of my dress, frowning to myself, as I slowly walked across the crowded bar.
I felt eyes drift across my body. I didn’t know anyone here, and nobody knew me, which was dangerous. I was in the middle of the hornet’s nest, way behind enemy lines, and I was totally exposed.
Of course, that was the plan. I’d wanted to wear my sexiest dress, wanted to get attention. I’d thought it all out, went over emergency plans, even brought some pepper spray in my little clutch just in case.
Which was probably stupid. As I nervously took a seat at the bar, I realized that pepper spray wasn’t going to do a damn thing against these men.
“What can I get you?” the barman asked me.
“Um, white wine?”
He nodded and walked away. I nervously glanced at my phone and then took a deep breath.
I had to get myself together. I had a job to do after all. I crossed my legs and took the glass from the barman, smiling at him. He nodded and left as I took a sip.
Just one drink. I’d sit and listen, maybe talk to someone if they talked to me, and then I’d leave. I wasn’t going to expose myself any more than I had to.
I’d been working on this story for so long now that I was beginning to forget I had a life outside it. I had family and friends and coworkers, and I wasn’t just an undercover journalist trying to solve the problem of human trafficking in Chicago.
Or maybe not solve it. Maybe I could at least shine some light on it, write about the major players, get some public support behind the cause. That’d be good enough.
I felt like I was getting close. I’d interviewed dozens of people, but the real breakthrough came a month ago when I met Dasha.
She was intense. Tall and beautiful, Dasha used to be a human sex slave. She told me the story of how she was taken from her village when she was only sixteen, and two years later she ended up addicted to heroin and working in a brothel in the city.
She told me who to look at. She told me to try this bar.
It was a mafia bar, she said. Everyone there would be mafia, more or less. She said I needed to be careful.
I was being careful. I sipped my drink and strained to listen, but the conversations around me were all pretty mundane—sports, stocks, business, the usual boring stuff. The men were loud and some looked like wise guys, but it was really hard to tell.
When I first started, I didn’t know anything about the mafia, but now I felt like I was intimately acquainted with the Barone Crime Family. I didn’t know all the members, but I knew the key ones.
Arturo Barone was the leader and an awful man. Lucas Barone, his son, was an up-and-coming leader. There were other men, like Vincent Mori and Gian, bosses in their own right.
But for as close as I felt to the mob, there were still huge gaps in my knowledge. As I looked around, I realized that I didn’t recognize a single face in the sea of faces, and that was probably bad.
I should have known at least one person. I was supposed to be an expert on this stuff, and yet I didn’t know a single person while sitting in the mob’s own bar.
Just then, I felt someone sit down next to me. I glanced over and then back to my drink, and then I did a double take.
He smirked at me. Green eyes, handsome face, stern and delicious lips. He was tall, easily over six feet, and covered in muscles. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing intricate tattoos.
“You’re looking around like you’re lost,” he said.
“I’m not lost.”
He shrugged. “Good. This isn’t the kind of place you want to get lost in.”
“Why’s that?”
He gestured at the barman and ordered a whisky.
“Lots of bad men in here. But I think you knew that already.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
He nodded at me. “That dress. The way you’re sitting alone, looking around. Are you looking for bad men?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
He smirked again as his whisky came and he sipped it. “What’s your name?”
“Jessica,” I lied, using the name I had chosen in advance.
“Jessica, I’m Rafa.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“I don’t think it is nice to meet me. You don’t know me yet, girl.”
“Are you a bad man, Rafa?” I asked, leaning toward him.
He laughed. “Depends on what you think is bad.”
“What do you think is bad?”
“I think you’re a fish out of water, and that interests me.” He leaned toward me. “You’re going to be mine tonight, whether you know it yet or not.”
I blinked, surprised. Coming from any other man that would have been so offensive, but for some reason Rafa just . . . pulled it off. I couldn’t explain it. When he said it, I believed him.