Closer to the Edge

“Father, is this. Is this a joke?” Paul asked, his dark eyes wide as his father paced in front of him in the large office.

His father, Anthony, stopped pacing to look over at his son. “You question me?”

“No, father,” Paul recovered. “I question the success of your plan. And I also question its motive.”

Anthony smiled softly.

Paul knew that smile. It wasn’t one from humor or jest, it was one of malice. His father was a very intimidating man, from his six foot four stature to the scar through his left eyebrow. His father was the type of man that caused others to back down and run from fear. When Paul was younger, he used to admire his father, but that was when he didn’t know any better. Now? Now, he knew better. Now he didn’t admire his father. He despised him.

“I never execute a plan without thinking it all the way through, Paul,” Anthony told his son before taking a seat in the leather chair behind his desk. He rested his elbows on the smooth marble as he gauged his son’s reaction.

Paul’s jaw clenched but he knew better than to protest. He had learned long ago to not express his thoughts about his father’s ideas. His hands were clenched at his sides but he hoped his father didn’t notice. “I believe that you’ve thought it through, father, I just wonder why you want me to do this instead of…anyone else.”

“Because the Delvecchios won’t be expecting you. They’ll be expecting a hired gun,” Anthony explained.

And maybe Paul was used to just complying with his father—doing as he asked without questioning it. But all the other tasks—business dinners, business “meetings,” business trips—were just that: business. They didn’t usually include kidnapping the daughter of his father’s biggest business rival.

That wasn’t, well, an everyday, ordinary task.

And Paul wasn’t exactly an expert on kidnappings. In fact, he really didn’t know anything about them. Sure, his father had initiated them before. But they were usually old friends who had made one too many empty threats against his father or clients who refused to pay up. And that, maybe Paul understood that. His father did it to protect his family. But kidnapping Rowan Delvecchio? Yeah, he didn’t see the point in that. He didn’t see how that was going to help anything. For years, his father had professed to wanting peace between the two families yet, at every turn, he did something to anger them and cause peace to, well, fly out the window.

“Paul?”

Paul looked over at his father and he knew he wasn’t hiding his emotions as well as he wanted to. Even after years of practice, there were still occasions when he failed. This just happened to be one of them.

“You know you don’t have a choice.”

“I know,” Paul said quietly, his tone clipped. It was a tone that he had perfected at a young age—calm and collected, which was the exact opposite of what he was feeling inside.

Anthony reached into the drawer to his left, pulling out a folded slip of paper and he opened it across his desk. “This is the layout of their house. They’re having a huge event on Friday. You’ll do it then.”

“Friday? As in three days?” Paul asked, his eyebrows shooting up.

Anthony looked up at his son, a blank look on his face. “Yes—as in three days. Is that a problem, Paul?”

“No,” Paul quickly corrected himself. “I just… How am I supposed to break into their house, during a party, and take their daughter…by myself?”

“I have faith in you,” Anthony said. “That, and you know what will happen if you fail.”

Paul swallowed the lump in his throat. “I don’t understand how I’m supposed to do this alone.”

“You want assistance?”

Paul nodded, hoping his father wouldn’t laugh in his face.

“Okay,” Anthony said with a nod of his own. “I’ll let Roberto know—“

“No!”

Anthony cocked an eyebrow and watched as his son leaned forward, stopping him from grabbing his phone. “No?”

Paul cleared his throat. “I can’t trust Roberto.”

“I trust Roberto.”

“Yes, you do. You can trust him—I can’t,” Paul said. “If I’m going to do this, I want someone that I know and trust to help me.”

“And who would that be?” Anthony asked.

“I want Martin to help me.”

Anthony frowned. “You want a mutt to help you?”

Paul scratched the back of his neck, biting back the witty retort he had planned—he knew his father would call his best friend a ‘mutt’ because he always did. “Martin isn’t a mutt, father. And I trust him.”

“He’s a half-blood—“

“Father, this isn’t Hogwarts,” Paul snapped.

Anthony bit back a smile; he wasn’t used to hearing his son talk back. And while he was slightly proud, he was also slightly annoyed. “His father married beneath him, Paul, which is something you’ll never do. And as much as I dislike his half-blood brat, if that is who you choose to accompany you, I will allow it…this time,” he added.

Paul nodded slowly. “Thank you.”

“If he fails,” Anthony started, leaning across his desk, “and causes you to fail? He won’t be able to cause any problems anymore. Do you understand?”

“Yes, father.”

Anthony smiled. “Good. Bring him over later and we’ll go over the details together. You can go now,” he said, waving his son off towards the door.

Paul nodded and turned around, walking out the door. He shot a small smile towards the two bodyguards flanking his father’s door before he jogged up the stairs and into his room. He slammed the door behind him, a curse falling from his lips. He dug his iPhone out of his pocket, dialing Martin’s number. This wasn’t a conversation he really wanted to have but, well, if he had to do it (and he knew he had to) he might as well have his best friend by his side.

”Hey, Poolie. What’s up?”

“You gotta come over, bro,” Paul said, sitting down on his bed. “I gotta run something by you…”

+

Rowan bit at her lip piercing as she glanced over the sketch. Her eyebrows knitted together and she shook her head slowly. “No. I want the back open, you know? Like hooked together at the nape of the neck, then opening to hook into the back of the dress,” she said, taking a pencil from the woman sitting to her right and fixing the sketch to her satisfaction.

The woman, Lydia, huffed before taking the pencil back and cleaning up the marks. She’d been a fashion designer for forty years and not once, not once, had some obscure sixteen year old girl fixed one of her creations.

“Rowan, honey, your father wouldn’t like—“

Rowan held up a hand to cut her mother off. “If I’m being forced to attend another one of his ‘business meetings,’ mother,” she said, using air quotes, “then I will be in a dress that I love. Not one of his stuffy high-collar, long-sleeve dresses that he thinks is suitable of a girl my age,” she told her. “Got it?”

Cristina sighed, her fingers rubbing at her temples where her crow’s feet were barely visible. She was a small woman for her age and position. She was barely five foot two, a sharp contrast to her five foot nine daughter, and even smaller at the waist. Her dark brown hair (with just a touch of gray throughout) was piled low on her neck and, while she may have been forty five, she definitely did not look it. “Rowan—“

“Mother, stop, you’ll give yourself a migraine,” Rowan snapped before turning her attention back to Lydia. “Will it be done in time for the party?” she asked.

“When is the party, Ms. Delvecchio?”

Rowan sighed, rolling her eyes. “Friday.”

“Three days, Ms. Delvecchio? That’s not a lot of time—“

“I didn’t ask for how many hours until the day, Lydia, I asked if it would be done,” Rowan said. “Will it, yes or no?”

“Yes, it will be,” Lydia said, nodding stiffly.

Rowan smiled. “Good. You’re actually useful for something,” she muttered, standing up and grabbing her back. She pulled on her cliché oversized sunglasses before turning to her mother and snapping her fingers. “Let’s go.”

Cristina stood up and followed her daughter silently.

As Rowan climbed into the back of the black Cadillac Escalade that was, well, her main mode of transportation, she couldn’t help but sigh. She didn’t exactly enjoy being a bitch to her mother (though, sometimes, she really did) but she didn’t try to act nicer. Her mother was a wonderful woman, just a weak one. A woman who had never stood up to her husband in the twenty five years they had been married. And a woman who didn’t bother standing up to her daughter, either. It was easier that way, Rowan thought, her mother didn’t have a back bone so it was easier to get her way. And it wasn’t even that Rowan always had to have things her way, it was more about the principle, she decided. The principle that involved her control-freak father who barely allowed her to speak in her presence and who would beat her at the first sign of noncompliance.

She loved her father, she did, and she would testify to that any day of the week. But he had never been a…dad to her. It was strictly business. And since he didn’t have a son, he was supposed to groom her for taking over. But it was an action that he had neglected for the first fifteen years of her life. But once she had turned sixteen, he had figured she might be old enough to start learning.

It was the age old story. A family involved in drug deals for years, decades even, masked as a coffee fortune. But Rowan saw right through it. In fact, she had seen right through it since the ripe age of eight. Which was possibly why she never had the heart to show any interest in what her father did. Because she knew it was shady, she knew it was immoral, she knew it was illegal. And while there was a tiny little part of her that found it thrilling, a larger part of her found it…scary.

“Your father wants you to see him in his office when we get home, Rowan,” Cristina told her daughter, her voice soft.

“I figured as much,” Rowan answered, trying to keep the icy tone in her voice that she had spent the past month perfecting.

Her mother saw right through it. “I’m sorry this is your future, Rowan.”

+

“We’re supposed to do what?” Martin asked, his jaw slack from shock.

Paul nodded slowly, his hands shoved into the front pockets of his black skinny jeans. “Yup.”

Martin scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t think I heard you correctly, bro,” he said, laughing lightly. “I could’ve sworn that you said that we have to kidnap someone.”

Paul nodded again. “No, you heard me correctly, bro.”

“Are you kidding?” Martin asked.

“No. Unfortunately I am not.” Paul dug his hands out of his pocket before walking over to his bed and sitting down. “It’s fucking insane, Martin, I know that. But…you know how my father is. You don’t really get a choice with him.”

“Which is why I’m surprised that I’m being included,” Martin told him, sitting down in the leather chair in front of his best friend’s desk. “Aren’t I, like, a half-breed in his eyes?”

“Okay, Cher,” Paul said, rolling his dark eyes,

Martin grinned. “Seriously, Paul. How am I included in this?”

“I told my dad that I could trust you,” Paul answered. “And if this is something I have to do, I want my best bro by my side.”

Martin laughed. “Way to bromance me.”

Paul scoffed. “I bromanced you years ago.”

“Sure, you did,” Martin said, rolling his eyes. They fell silent for a minute and he spun around in Paul’s computer chair. “So. Who are we kidnapping? The President? The President’s daughter?” he suggested, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

Paul laughed. “No, actually. Someone a little more local.”

“How local?”

“Right across town. Rowan Delvecchio.”

Martin paused. “Are you kidding me? How the fuck are we going to sneak onto her property?! Her father has, like, landmines planted every two feet!”

Paul shrugged. “We have to go over the details tomorrow,” he told him.

“Your father is fucking insane if he thinks we can pull this off, Paul,” Martin told him, his tone suddenly changing. “There’s no way this is going to work!”

“We have to try, Martin,” Paul said. “And it has to work. Because I don’t have any other choice.”

Martin sighed. “We’ve never even met this girl. We don’t even know what she looks like. How are we supposed to pull this off?”

Paul pointed towards the black MacBook sitting on his desk. “The Internet works wonders for getting to know someone.”

Martin smiled in spite of the situation and he opened the laptop, quickly typing her name into the Google search engine. His eyebrows shot up. “If I wasn’t practically married to Aislynn…”

“Shut up,” Paul said, telling himself that he was studying the pictures a little too closely just for research. “She’s not that attractive.”

Martin shrugged. “If you’re into girls with three lip piercings,” he commented.

“My father practically ripped mine out when I got it. I swear he notices when I have the clear stud in, too,” Paul said quietly, his tongue subconsciously touching the edge of his lip piercing.

“You really think we can pull this off?” Martin asked, looking over his shoulder to meet the dark eyes of his best friend.

Paul nodded. “Like I said, we don’t have a choice.”

Martin sighed. “So. When do we do this?”

“Friday night.”