Stealing Candi Read online

  Stealing Candi

  Loki Renard

  Copyright © 2019 by Loki Renard

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Also from Loki…

  About Loki Renard

  Chapter 1

  Candi

  “Time to pay.” Three words are growled at me and they consume my world. Every sense I have, every fibre of my being is focused on one man: the speaker of those words.

  His eyes are locked on mine with an intensity that makes every single part of me quake with carnal, primal fear. They don’t make men like this in my world. The men I know wear cashmere sweaters and talk about golf handicaps. Some of them have promising careers as Internet video creators. Most of them will go into finance at their fathers’ firms.

  Those men are far away; entirely unaware of what is happening to me. Right now, there are thick concrete walls between me and the outside world. Where I find myself is big and open and cold. There are hooks hanging from the ceiling, sharp, cruel looking things built to carry dead weight.

  This isn’t necessary. Not for a good girl like me. This is a misunderstanding. A silly mistake. The rope winds down around my waist, wrists, shoulders, and between my thighs where it finds the tender parts of me and grinds against them with every panicked movement I make. It’s been wrapped around me like a harness, big hands pulling rough hemp around my tender body with a terrifyingly practiced touch.

  I am hung up like a sacrifice, my toes dangling two feet from the floor, my heart pounding, adrenaline flowing uselessly. All these natural physical mechanisms for escape are pointless. There’s no getting away from the massive, tattooed, aggressive monster of a man who ripped me out of my safe little life. I am entirely at his mercy.

  He looks nothing like the men I know. They have swept back hair, soft hands, and opinions on the weather. I don’t think this guy has ever had a conversation about the weather in his life. His eyes are dark, not just in color, but in intensity. When he looks at me, I feel like I’m being swallowed by a void. He is wearing a black singlet, his massive arms showing extensive tattoos of all kinds of aggressive imagery flowing into one another. Nature made him terrifying, but apparently being well over six feet with the kind of hard warrior face which makes him look like he’s going to tear everyone he sees apart wasn’t enough.

  He’s wearing tight dark jeans, heavy boots. He folds his arms across his chest and his muscles bulge out even bigger, the tattoos expanding with his skin to form a brightly colored and utterly terrifying display.

  “I can pay! I can pay! How much do I owe you? A hundred bucks?”

  His head lifts a little.

  “Five hundred?”

  The brows go up.

  “A thousand? How could it be that much? It was just whiskey.”

  He lets out a dry replica of a laugh, completely devoid of any humor. “You owe me 3.4 million dollars, blondie.”

  “Three… million? You’re not serious!?”

  “What about this tells you I’m not serious?” He gestures around himself, then back at me, trussed up here in my predicament.

  “I don’t have 3.4 million. I don’t have one million. I have no millions.” My voice is starting to crack as I panic.

  How the hell did I get myself into this?

  Earlier…

  “Oh my god, Candi! You’re so random!”

  My best friend, Steffy, is screeching at the very top of her lungs. I’m grinning so wide my face hurts, and music is pounding out the open windows of the car my mom surprised me with right before I went to college. It’s one of those smart cars, a little thing she thought would be good for whipping around the city, but right now that just means its packed even more than usual, stacked with three boxes of whiskey I just, uhm found out the back of the liquor store we cruised by.

  “You just robbed a store!” Steffy shrieks.

  “I didn’t! I just borrowed some stuff. We’ll like, I don’t know, give them some money later.”

  “They left the boxes right out in the open. It was like they wanted someone to take them. Maybe they did want someone to take them. Maybe they were like, you know, the things you can get for free? People leave them on the street?” Steffy suggests.

  “Exactly,” I say. “I mean, there was a sign two blocks down saying people could take that old couch on the corner. I bet it was the same for those boxes.”

  “Nobody leaves liquor on the street,” Miranda says. She’s the voice of reason, and she is not happy right now. “You just made us all an accessory to a crime, Candice.”

  “Nobody is arresting us,” I say. “We’re college girls. Nobody arrests college girls.”

  “You’re so entitled,” she rolls her eyes. “It’s like you think you’re untouchable. You can be arrested too, Kimberley, and then you’ll go to the same jail everyone else goes to.”

  I love Miranda, but I hate how she always uses my full name. Can-di-ce. She draws it out, accenting every syllable, even adding new ones that aren’t there just for the sake of being able to draw my name out. Miranda likes to be precise about everything. She’s going to be a lawyer in a high-powered firm and make millions one day. Maybe become president.

  “I’m majoring in classical studies. I’m not going to jail.”

  “Yeah, that’s not how any of this works.”

  Miranda thinks she knows how the world functions because she spent a summer volunteering in the inner city. She came back all worldly and even more self-righteous than she was to start with, which was plenty.

  “Uggghhh, Miranda, chill!” Steffy groans, rolling her eyes. “We're not going to get arrested. It’s just a few bottles of liquor, and we’ll go back and pay them once we get some money in from the ‘rents.”

  She means once she gets money from her family. Steffy’s parents are loaded. She’s at college to hang out and party and she does both really well. A+ in both those things, not so much in her actual classes. Not that she or her parents care. There are always guys hanging around her. She’s not actually dating any of them, but that hasn’t stopped her from getting two marriage proposals in the first six months of the year.

  “We can’t keep taking your money,” Madison says, frowning. She’s got the least of all of us. Her mom is a single mom and she has half a dozen scholarships keeping her in school and the rest of us won’t let her pay for anything, which just pisses her off, but the four of us have been best friends since first grade. We’ve done everything together, all the way through school and now into college. We even decided to skip the dorms and just get an apartment together. We don’t mind pitching in a little to make sure she doesn’t get left out.

  “Uhm, yes, you totally can,” Steffy says. “What else am I going to do with it? Buy more shoes?”

  We pile out of the car and lug the cases into the house. Most of the party is already set up, and we do have some cheap wine from last time ready to go. To be honest, we didn’t really need the whiskey, it was just an impulse theft, I guess. I’m going to have to watch that tendency. I mean, I take stuff from stores all the time, but I don’t want to be called a klepto again.

  “Let’s make punch,” Steffy suggests.

  “Punch is so high scho
ol,” Miranda complains. She’s obsessed with appearing mature. “But maybe if we put that whiskey in?”

  “That will make it rocket fuel, not punch.”

  “I think we should hold the harder stuff until later,” I suggest. I have to admit to myself, I know what I did was wrong, and now I’m a little nervous about the prospect of serving stolen liquor. What if the police come? None of us should be drinking anyway, there's not a single twenty-one year old in the place. What if the police come and arrest me for alcohol theft, and then what if they arrest everyone else for underage drinking, and what if I get a criminal record and…

  “Here, taste this!”

  Steffy is tiny, blonde, and the fastest punch mixer in the world. She’s shoving a red plastic cup under my nose and I’m taking an obligatory sip.

  I love my friends so fucking much. We’ve been through everything together for as long as I can remember, and within a few sips, I’ve stopped worrying about the whiskey. I’ve almost forgotten about it. We’re running up stairs, trying clothes on, borrowing make up, drinking more of the punch, putting on music, talking about who we want to come and who we don’t want to come.

  I can’t say how bonded I am to these girls. We were cheerleaders all through high school. We took turns being captain of the cheer team, though I was captain twice, including our senior year, which counts for more. I can’t say that, of course. We’ve all tried out for the college team this year. There’s a lot more competition than high school and some of us might not make it. There’s a pact that none of us will go on it, but I don’t know how that’s going to work. I hope we all get selected. There’s going to be so much drama if we don’t.

  Soon people are coming over. Our place is popular for parties, because we’re freshmen living off campus, unlike most of the kids who are in the dorms. They can’t drink or smoke weed or do anything, but we can do as we please thanks to Steffy’s dad signing the lease on this place.

  The party is a great one. The jocks from the frat houses have made an appearance and Steffy is in a circle of them, dancing on a coffee table while they get their shirts off. It’s decadent as hell and I love it.

  Even Miranda is having a good time, and Miranda never has a good time. She’s cornered some of the nerds in what she calls ‘the library’, but is actually a bookcase in a nook in the wall. Guys love Miranda. She’s very serious in the way she conducts herself, but she’s also absolutely stunning, with long legs and long red hair and bright green eyes. Miranda has no idea how incredibly beautiful she is, or if she does, she does a really good job of hiding it.

  Madison is probably the cutest of us all. She has curling blonde hair, though she’s straightened it tonight, blue eyes and the most adorable freckles spotted all across the bridge of her nose.

  Me, I’m like a taller version of Stephanie. I have shoulder length blonde hair, brown eyes and I’m pretty enough to be cheer captain, which says something. Everyone here is hot, though, it’s that kind of party. Guys and girls from eighteen to twenty, getting crazy, spilling out of the house and onto the front lawn where somebody has manifested a keg.

  “Uhm, Candi?”

  “Yeah?” I swing around, red cup in hand.

  “There are some guys here,” Miranda says. She doesn’t look happy about that.

  “Cool. Are any of them hot?”

  “Er…”

  “They don’t look like they go to our school,” Steffy observes, coming up on the other side of me.

  “You have to stop saying that. It makes it sound like we’re still in junior high,” Miranda snipes.

  “Well they don’t look like they go to our college, then,” Steffy rolls her eyes.

  She’s right. The guys who just showed up really don’t look like they go to our college. They look like they don’t even go to our whole fucking universe. These aren’t college kids. These are men. They look like they're in their thirties at least, maybe older. They are massive, tattooed grown men with muscles bulging beneath short cut leather vests.

  “Did someone put up a flyer for this party at a biker bar or something? They look dangerous,” Miranda frets.

  “They look hot,” I murmur to myself, taking a long swig of my punch. I’ve never really gone for college boys. They’re cute, but I don’t find them hot. These guys are different. They move differently. They look at the world through serious, narrowed eyes, glaring at everybody who gets in their way, which is a lot of people because this is a party and most of the attendees are too many drinks deep to notice a few extra dudes.

  I notice something strange about them as we watch. They’re moving through the crowd, not partying, but looking. It’s like they want something. Or like they’re looking for someone.

  “We should do something,” Miranda says.

  “Like what?”

  “Like, ask them to leave?”

  “I don’t want them to leave,” Steffy smirks. “I love tattoos! Jason was going to get one, but his daddy said he’d cut his allowance if he did, so he didn’t.”

  “I don’t think these guys have daddies who give them allowances,” I murmur. Miranda is right. They do look dangerous. The punch in my belly makes that seem like more of a good thing than it probably is.

  The three of us stay hovering around the punch bowl, just watching as the guys wander through the party. Some of them stop to chat with girls. They ignore the guys. I notice that they’re paying more attention to the blondes. Maybe they have a type.

  Aside from Miranda, my friends and I are all naturally blonde. It was one of the first things we noticed about one another when we met thirteen years ago. We used to get mixed up and mistaken for each other all the time back then, we were so similar and we went out of our way to make sure we looked as much like each other as we could, at least, until we hit our teen years and Madison wanted to be a goth. Then it was three blondes and a raven-haired creature of the night.

  “Where is Madison?” I’m looking around, and I suddenly realize that I don’t see her.

  “Did she take someone up to her room?”

  “Maddy doesn’t take guys to her room.”

  None of us do. Well, Steffy, maybe. But she’s standing right next to us.

  “Let’s look for her,” I say. I have a bad feeling about this.

  We split up. This isn’t that big of a party. Even with it spilling all over the front lawn, it’s not exactly a massive area to cover. I keep sipping my drink as I walk around. We get separated all the time once the drinks start flowing. It’s worse when we go out to bars. Sometimes we lose one another for hours and only find each other the next day.

  Madison could have gone home with someone. It’s not like her, but we’re teenage girls on our own in a college town and every week we do something that’s not like us. Like robbing a liquor store. We should really open that whiskey soon. This punch is good, but I’m ready to move onto the harder stuff… I run my eyes over the nearest newcomer who is walking nearby, his bicep coiled with a snake. Oh yeah. The hard stuff sounds amazing.

  Just then, Steffy hurdles a couple lying on the ground making out and runs up to me. Her little round face is as serious as I’ve ever seen it. She grabs my arm and whispers in a harsh voice.

  “Oh my god, they got Madison!”

  “What do you men they got Madison?”

  She drags me across the yard, around the side of the house where it is darker. There’s a dumpster back there. We haven’t really used it, because we don’t know when it gets picked up, or even if it gets picked up. It might belong to the landlord. It might belong to the city. Right now, it belongs to the group of gangsters who have it surrounded. It takes me a minute to see the flash of Madison’s blonde hair. She’s so short compared to them, and so much smaller.

  They’ve picked her off from the herd of co-eds like a gazelle and they have her pinned up against the filthy dumpster. I didn’t realize how many of them were here. From the porch, it looked like there were maybe three our four of them, but there’s more than
a half a dozen. They must have been out back waiting for whatever this is. Oh god.

  “What do we do?” Steffy whispers the question I’m trying to answer.

  We could call the police, but there’s no way they’re going to get here in time for… whatever is happening. I look around back to the party. It’s carrying on without interruption. Nobody notices that there’s some kind of gang hijacking taking place.

  “Should we scream?”

  “Do you think that will help?”

  Madison looks like she wants to scream, but one of them has his hand over her mouth.

  “I mean, I’m seriously thinking about screaming,” Steffy whispers.

  We’re not though. We’re standing there, frozen, doing absolutely nothing, staring as Madison is threatened. It’s only a few seconds, but it feels like forever.

  “You took something that belongs to us,” one of the dark shadowy tattooed men growls. “We want it back now, chica.”

  He pulls his hand away from her mouth and Madison starts talking.

  “I didn’t do it! I swear! I didn’t do it! It was Candice!”

  Shit. She’s screaming my fucking name out. Goddamnit. It’s not that I blame her; it’s that now I’m completely torn between wanting to save her, and wanting to run the hell away.

  “Oh shit. She just ratted you out,” Steffy narrates.

  “Which of these bitches is Candice?”

  They all start looking around like a pack. And the first thing they see is Steffy and I standing there, staring at them all.

  “Not them! Leave them alone!”

  Madison starts screaming. Someone across the other side of the party starts screaming too, not because they’re frightened but because the tap just popped off the keg and there’s beer spraying everywhere. The sounds of Madison’s fear mingle with the sounds of excitement and the musical declaration of someone having let the dogs out.