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It had been a year since Heart Burger reopened. Fadel had a staff of three cooks and two servers besides himself. There was a consistent stream of customers every day. The place had even won an award for Best New Restaurant.
The minute the award was announced, Style burst through the door of Fadel's apartment and launched himself at Fadel. They went three rounds before stopping to eat dinner.
"We should go out to celebrate," Style said, dragging his fingers down Fadel's bare sternum.
Fadel hummed in question, enjoying the sensation.
"I was thinking a concert."
Eyebrows furrowing, Fadel said, "But you don't like heavy metal."
Style shrugged and, like it was no big deal, said, "But you do, and it's your reward."
A rush of warmth ran through Fadel and he leaned forward to start round four.
…
…
The next day, Fadel waved goodbye to his staff and locked the front door to Heart Burger. The plan was for Style to meet Fadel here, as usual most days, before heading back to Fadel's place to get dressed for the concert. And, as expected, when Fadel turned around from locking up, there was his boyfriend crossing the street, already waving.
No sooner had the edges of Fadel's lips begun to curl up in pleasure than a van careened around the corner. It barely missed hitting Style, and screeched to a halt just behind the young man. Alarm bells went off in Fadel's head, and he was running before he fully processed what he was seeing. The back door of the van flew open and two sets of hands reached out, grabbing Style by both arms and ripping him into the dark interior of the vehicle.
"Hey!" Style shouted. "What's your deal?"
"Style!" Fadel called, his hand going to his hip and cursing when he found no weapons.
The van doors slammed shut, and the wheels squealed as the vehicle took off out of sight. Even though part of him knew it was pointless, Fadel gave chase, down the street and around the corner where the van had gone. But by then, the van was too far ahead, leaving Fadel in the dust.
Skidding to a stop, Fadel cursed again. His eyes were still on where he'd last seen the van when he pulled his phone from his pocket and speed dialed his brother.
"What up, Fadel?" Bison asked. "I thought you and Style were—"
"Style's been taken," Fadel broke in harshly. "I need your help."
…
…
The worst part about Style getting kidnapped was that it happened right in front of Fadel. He'd been trained for years to be fast and efficient. He should've been able to do something.
Well, he was doing something now.
In all their jobs, Bison and Fadel had never needed to track someone's license plate before. They'd trailed vehicles to new locations to learn a target's patterns, or staked out places their targets were known to frequent, but mostly they had used what Lilly gave them and simply planned the method of the killing itself.
And, technically, when they went to prison for five years, part of the deal was that they gave up any tech they had that could help them to continue committing crimes once they were out again. But, also technically, the tech they were using didn't belong to them.
It turned out, Style didn't just know someone who could make fake passports and paperwork. He had once fixed the car of a woman who used to work for the police and who liked playing vigilante on people who drove dangerously. No deaths, of course, but Style had taught her how to fuck up their vehicles in ways insurance wouldn't pay to fix. All it took was calling her up and telling her that Style had been kidnapped—by reckless drivers, even—and she couldn't look up the plate fast enough.
The van belonged to a man named Noh. A little, perfectly legal digging showed he worked for a company called Sakura Tech. Fadel and Bison didn't even need to research the company to know it. It was run by a woman named Keiko, and Lilly had often referred to her as 'competition.' While Lilly had never specified if that competition was in her legal company activities or her illegal ones, the fact that one of her men had kidnapped Style answered that question easily.
Almost as soon as they had figured out who had Style, Fadel's phone dinged with a new message.
'Your mae stole a lot of money from me. Now I'm taking it back.'
There was an image attached—Style, tied to a chair in what looked like a closet, a bruise already forming at the corner of his mouth. He'd been punched. Text across the picture listed a truly ludicrous amount of baht that neither Fadel nor Bison had ever owned, even combined.
"Fuck," Bison cursed. "We killed mae. Why does she keep coming back to haunt us?"
"I don't know," Fadel muttered, glaring at his phone, at the bruise on Style's face. "But I'll kill her too if I have to."
…
…
The plan was: Bison would sneak into the building while Fadel walked in the front door. Keiko was expecting him, after all. Bison would be armed with guns from a secret stash the cops hadn't raided. Fadel would have his necklace and a knife in his boot.
The address sent to Fadel's phone was for a house in the woods, like a rich person's vacation home. Fadel was met on the front porch by two men, both with guns at their hips. One of them patted Fadel down but missed the knife. Rookie. Then he was led inside and to a den, where an aging but still beautiful Japanese woman with long black hair tied in a braid over her shoulder sat on a couch. She put down her drink when he was brought in and gave a cold smile.
"Hello, Fadel. I hope your night has been good so far," she greeted.
Fadel glared at her. "I don't have the money." He kept talking even as Keiko's expression went dark. "Lilly never trusted us with her fortune, and if you think she did, you didn't know her very well. I don't even know where she kept it."
There was a moment of silence, and then Keiko narrowed her eyes. "How unfortunate," she said in a low voice.
She would not back down. It didn't matter if she believed Fadel or not. She wanted her money, and she thought Fadel was her key to getting it. They were going to have to fight their way out.
With a sigh, Keiko leaned forward to pick up her glass again. "You can keep your pretty necklace on," she said flippantly before taking a sip. "I have no intention of letting you poison me the way you did your late employer."
That meant at least one of the men working for Keiko was there the day they killed Lilly. It was Fadel's turn to narrow his eyes. "If you let Style go, I won't need to."
At the mention of Style's name, Keiko's expression went sour. "The mouth on that man," she said like a curse. "If I wasn't using him as bait, he'd already be dead."
That sounded like Style. Fadel's heart rate tripled in his chest, but he did his best to hide it. If Style was upsetting his kidnapper, he was probably hurt.
"No," Keiko said, "He's not leaving until I have my money."
A fight it would be.
In one swift movement, Fadel crouched down to grab the knife, then swung back up and around the man standing closest to him. He pulled one of the man's arms up behind himself and pressed the knife to the man's throat, but glared at Keiko instead of looking at his prisoner. Aggravatingly, she didn't look worried.
"Kill him, then," she said with a wave of her hand. "There are six more of him on the ground floor of this house alone, not to mention the countless others on my payroll."
Why were she and Lilly like this? Why did they not care at all about the people who worked for them? Even those close to them? Fadel glared at her. He wanted to kill her. In his mind, he could see it all play out so clearly. He would slit this man's throat and then throw his knife into the chest of the second guard in the room, currently aiming a gun at him. Before the other men could be alerted to the problem, he'd be on the couch with his hands around Keiko's neck, choking the life out of her. Once she was dead, he could retrieve his knife and make his way through the house, helping Bison dispose of every hired hand, until they found Style. Hell, he might even burn the building to the ground when they were done.
A gunshot rang out from upstairs, and then a familiar, if muted, voice shouted, "Fadel?!"
"Style," Fadel let out, his eyes lifting to the ceiling.
The barest movement in front of Fadel brought his attention back down just in time to dodge a second gunshot—this one from the other guard in the room. The bullet hit Fadel's hostage instead and Fadel clenched his teeth and jumped behind a cushy chair before the man could shoot again. It was a shoddy shelter. Bullets would go through it easily enough, and all it would take would be the gunman taking a few steps across the room to have Fadel in his line of sight. His best plan would be to try and make a break for the hallway so he could put distance between them, but Fadel had no way of knowing where the other henchmen were in the house, and he was likely to get shot before he made it anyway.
"A child's mistake," Keiko admonished, referring no doubt to Fadel getting distracted by the sound of Style's voice.
The front door chose that moment to burst open, and men in police uniforms flooded inside. They kept their drawn weapons pointed at everyone in the room—even Fadel, even the shot man on the den floor. For an instant, confusion reigned, and then Fadel understood.
Bison had called his boyfriend, who had called the police. Captain Christ loved getting to bag a big bad criminal mastermind, after all. If someone else did the work of finding and taking that person down? All the better.
As if summoned, Captain Christ entered the room. He waved for his men to stop pointing their guns at Fadel, and they did. "We meet again."
Fadel didn't even deign to respond to the greeting. Even as he pushed himself to his feet, he said, "Style is upstairs."
He led the charge despite having no weapon. Two men were lying on the ground just at the top of the stairs. Bison was sitting on the back of a third, his arm wrapped around the man's neck to cut off his air supply. Even when he saw the cops, Bison didn't let go. He just nodded toward a closet halfway down the hallway.
Fadel nearly ripped the door off its hinges in his haste. Inside, Style winced in the suddenly bright light. Or maybe it had to do with the blood dripping down the side of his face, the several bruises forming on his face, shoulders, and visible arms.
"Style," Fadel breathed out, then squeezed around Style in the small closet to get to his bindings. The knife made easy work of the rope, and then Fadel was kneeling in front of Style, his now empty hands reaching up to probe at the bleeding wound on Style's head.
Style winced at the touch, but laughed. "They don't like my jokes as much as you do."
"You're lucky they didn't kill you," Fadel snapped.
They could've killed him. Again, Fadel could've lost the man he loved. All it would take was Style saying one wrong thing too many. All it would take was for Keiko to be a shade more cruel. And there went Fadel's entire heart.
The thought of how close he'd come to losing Style had Fadel surging forward to kiss his boyfriend, heedless of the bruise at the corner of Style's mouth. Weakly, Style kissed back.
Then, in true Style fashion, he said, "Kissing? Here? Now? What is it? Is the blood doing it for you? I'm not kink shaming you or anything, but just…let's not explore that one, kay?"
His words were slightly slurred, and his irises were somewhat blown—though that could've been from being kept in the dark. He probably had a concussion.
Fadel shook his head and gently held Style's face in his hands. "No, you idiot. I don't have a blood kink."
"Cool," Style murmured, his eyes shutting for a moment. "I have an adrenaline kink, you know. Not—Not like this—But we could, uh, we could try some stuff later."
Fadel leaned forward and pressed another kiss to Style's lips just to shut him up. Yeah. He knew Style got turned on with a little danger or competition but 'not like this.' He liked adrenaline pumping activities, a hint of danger—not being kidnapped and beaten, and he wasn't a masochist. But talking to Style when he had a head wound would be like talking to a sleepwalker.
"Later," Fadel said against Style's lips.
First, the cops had to finish rounding up Keiko and her men. Style would need a hospital, and Fadel and Bison would be questioned—again—about Lilly and her connections. It would be morning, at least, before they were allowed to go home and rest, let alone hash out their kinks.
The heavy metal concerts would have to wait a few weeks until Style's concussion healed. In fact, maybe he shouldn't be around heavy car parts either for a while. Maybe Fadel should have Style come work for Heart Burger until he healed.
Actually, no, scratch that. Heart Burger had won an award for its flavorful burgers and friendly yet professional staff. It would be a shame to lose that so soon.
…
…
fin