Handcuffed To The Mafia Boss

Chapter Four

I didn't see the brown haired stranger again for a long time after we spoke about our little challenge. Giving him a smirk, I had walked off from the open area of the venue and returned inside to Samantha, leaving him there. I didn't see him inside for the hour after that. An hour or so of drinking later, I stumbled into Justin again.

"It's you," he had smiled familiarly when his gaze set upon me, and I returned the gesture with equal enthusiasm. "You're here."

"It is me, yes." 

"Natasha Lopez, right?"

"Absolutely." I answered as I leaned a little to my side onto the wall for support since he was doing the same. Justin had a charming smile on, and he smelled so strongly of hard liquor, combinations that were too expensive for me to recognise. "You were magnificent on the stage, by the way."

"You watched?" He raised a surprised eyebrow.

"Yes, of course I did," I answered, still smiling. It wasn't a lie. I did watch them perform, even if it was just for a few minutes. "Why do you look so surprised?"

"That's because it is surprising." He pulled the smile back in his lips too, "Not a lot of actors are here to watch the show. They're usually here either just to socialise, or because their PRs asked them to be here."

"I can guarantee you that my PR didn't force me to be here." I told him, gently biting my lower lip.

"Hmm.." he teased, "So you came here to socialise?"

I chuckled. "How did you know I'm an actress?" I asked him, purely curious. The posters of the movie weren't out yet even, and I genuinely doubted Justin Brown had the time to read newspaper articles about a newbie cast across Michael Geller.

"Are you kidding me?" He asked retort-fully, his tone flirtatious. "A face like that... you had to be an actress. If not, I would have spent the night convincing you to consider acting."

I chuckled, slightly looking away before looking back at him and passing him a genuine grin. "It's a nice party."

"What?" He asked, scrunching his nose, leaning a little closer. "I can't hear you."

"Oh." I murmured, realising how loud the music was. I wondered if it was just me or had it just gotten louder. "I said... nice party!" I shouted over the music, leaning a little closer to him too. 

He grinned. "You haven't seen the half of it yet." He seemed extremely confident about how it was going to get better, and proud even. "Meet someone interesting yet?"

The second his words registered in my brain, my mind went back to the brown eyed stranger and my last conversation with him, and how I'd accepted the challenge but there was simply no trace of him. How was I even going to make him apologise?

"No.. Nope." I replied to Justin as casually as I could when I realised I had gotten lost it in my head for a moment too long. "What about you?"

"Ah." He clicked his tongue, tone flirtatious again. "Funny you ask. The party's been boring, and the only interesting person I met is standing in front of me."

"I'm flattered." I chuckled again, shaking my head to myself before asking, "Did your brother come?"

"My brother?" Justin's eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

I did remember correctly, didn't I? I met Justin at the bar or the backstage when he was waiting for someone.. his brother.

"Yeah, your brother. The bully? You were waiting for him at the backstage.." I reminded him despite knowing I'd be very embarrassed if my half-drunk brain was remembering everything wrong.

"Oh yes!" Justin nodded in realisation, and I left out the breath of relief I didn't remember holding. "Yea, he came. Surprisingly, if I might add. He hates events like these."

"Talking about me, little brother?" I heard the stranger's voice again, and much to my surprise, i did turn to my side to see him standing with a smirk and looking at us.

My eyes slightly widened. He was Justin's elder brother? He?!

Also, how did he manage to hear us over the music? We were barely being able to hear each other.

"Eavesdropping again?" Justin raised an eyebrow to his brother, my brown eyed stranger, and I suddenly saw the similarities between the two. The same skin tone. Dark hair. And muddy brown eyes. Not to forget, they were both tall. And very, very handsome. A treat to the eye. 

"I didn't mean to," He defended himself, "But you can't help but overhear when you hear your brother call you a bully."

"He also called you a d*ck." I added with a half smile, all sweet and full of sarcasm of course, "To which I absolutely agree."

"Ouch, Juliet. You never fail to hurt me." His expressions twisted to a look of feigned hurt, and my sarcastically sweet smile just widened before disappearing completely as I huffed.

"Ain't I glad about that." I rebuked. 

He was everywhere.. Almost as if he was omnipresent or something. Ugh.

I looked back to Justin who was looking back and forth between me and his elder brother with amusement in his eyes. "Looks like the two of you have already met."

I blew some air from my mouth. "Something like that."

"Yeah," the stranger agreed, "I wouldn't exactly say we 'met', as miss Juliet here basically made herself my problem."

I furrowed my eyebrows. "I made me your problem?!" I asked, voice full of utter disbelief. "More like.. you insulted me and made all of this a problem for yourself."

"And you said you didn't find anyone interesting."  Justin mused from beside me.

"Oh, I wouldn't call this man interesting." I ridiculed in return.

"Now Juliet, I take that as a personal insult." He– the brown eyed stranger– Justin's elder brother– intervened.

I passed him a mock smile. "Then maybe you can add it to the tab of apologies I owe to you?"

"Rest assured I will, and you will apologise for all of it at once."

"In your dreams." I answered to him before turning to Justin, "He is your brother?!"

Justin nodded with a feigned sad face.

"Y'all are related.. by blood?" I asked again.

"Unfortunately."

"God." I huffed, "I feel sorry for you."

"Right here." The stranger intervened.

I added, my eyes fixed at Justin, "No wonder he was such a d*ck to you."

"Still right here." The stranger intervened again.

"Thank you." Justin remorsefully nodded, and I passed him a sympathetic smile before looking at the stranger with a piercing gaze and shaking my head before walking away.

Of course, when I least wanted, he followed me. And by he, I mean the stranger. Not Justin. 

When I was absolutely confident that he was, in fact, following me and not just walking his own way which happens to be in the same direction, I stopped and turned to face him. "Why're you following me?" I asked directly.

He furrowed his eyebrows. "You realise, you're the one who was all about how 'you will talk to me with respect or not talk to me at all'," he mimicked me in the worst possible way he could, making me frown, "and for a girl with that morales, you talk to me a great deal with no respect." 

"Respect is a two way path," I say obnoxiously, mostly in disbelief. I couldn't believe he would try to turn this on me.. "You cannot expect me to respect a man who judged me on the basis of my dress length, mistook me for a prostitute and then asked me to keep quiet when I tried explaining to him that I was not who he thought I was, absurdly implying that I should come with him to his room while completely disregarding all my efforts of telling him that I was not his call girl for the night, just someone trying to return that girl's phone." 

"Wait...." He blinked his eyes rapidly, "What?!"

"What?" I repeated after him. Was he really playing dumb when I called him out?

"I knew red hairs were fierce, but you are outright dumb." He commented.

I flush thinking about how the ginger hair were not my real hair colour but something I had to die my hair for my first movie, but I huff in disapproval the immediate second. "And you stereotype me... again."

Shaking my head in disappointment, I look away, and the look at the huge placard to my right. I may be very buzzed, but if I wasn't wrong, the explicit graphics on that board looked a lot like adult graphics.

Eyebrows furrowing, I looked down to the table beside the board, and sure enough, the table was full of a lot of different thing. There were d*ck shaped plastics, handcuffs, ropes, ties, and so many others..

My eyes widened when I realised this is what Justin meant when he said I hadn't seen half of the party yet and it was about to get wilder... Oh my, God. I couldn't have imagined.

"Are you listening?"

As the stranger's foreign but familiar voice made its way to me yet again, I blinked rapidly as I looked at him again. "What?"

His lips parted in a mix of surprise and shock. "Were you not listening?"

I scrunched my eyebrows in confusion. "Uh.."

"Leave it, it's pointless. You are dumb." He commented in an exasperated tone, shaking his head and huffing as he turned to leave.

"Excuse me?" I asked, annoyance running in my veins. "You cannot just say whatever you like and then leave. We only met because I was, for once in my life, trying to be kind. And all you have done instead of thanking me is: insulting me, and then stereotyped me time and again. You owe me an apology!"

"I owe you nothing." He growled in return, "And look at yourself woman. Kind? You have done nothing but run to assumptions."

I was quick to retort, "Says the man who was a d*ck to his own younger brother." 

"Thank you. That just proves my point." He retorted, one corner of his lips tainted upwards in a smile that was just getting on my nerves. "You're an impulsive woman who has no control over herself."

"Apologise." I demanded, looking around in anger and the first thing my mind could comprehend, which for some reason was a handcuff.

Grabbing that in my hand, I stomp towards him to stand ahead and block his path.

"Apologise." I ordered again.

"Or what?" He almost laughed, "What are you going to do? Are you.. Are you threatening me with handcuffs?"

My nostrils flared. "Yes. Now, apologise."

"Threatening.." he mused, "me?"

"Yes." I repeated. Is he dumb? "Now.. apologise."

"With handcuffs?" He asked again.

Without thinking twice, I put one side of the cuff on his hand. What I didn't know was that he had inhumanly fast reflexes. Before I could comprehend, he had taken away his his second hand and grabbed my wrist to stop me, and in a sudden change of plans and a desperate attempt to prove myself threatening enough, I put my hand in the second cuff, locking it along with his.

And then, proudly, I looked up at him and smirked. "Now, apologise."

*