The Night of Seven by Nadia Siddiqui (each kindness read aloud .TXT) 📗

a seat, sinking into the comfortable leather and is almost instantly brought a drink of what looks to be a mimosa, and his brunch order is taken. A second stewardess comes to him with a folded note, sealed with a pressed wax seal that Sawyer is now familiar with resting on a silver platter. It’s so elegant, the whole process. “Thank you so much,” Sawyer says and lifts the paper, waiting for them to walk away from him before opening the letter and viewing the tidy scrawl inside of it.

Beneath your seat, Mr. Sawyer is a gun.

It’s time for you to start earning that fancy paycheck I gift to you. I’ll see you when you touch down in Vegas.

A gun.

There is a gun on the plane.

A gun inside of this pressurized cabin that if it’s shot, will cause the plane to tear apart and kill all of them. That’s what happens in all of the movies. How did he get a gun onto an airplane? More shocking still is the connotation that he is supposed to do something with it. Sawyer has never held or shot a gun in his entire life. What exactly, is his new employer going to have him do? He can’t want him to hurt anybody, can he? What will he do if that’s exactly what he’s going to be expected to do? Could he shoot somebody? Could he kill somebody? All he possesses is perfectly average hands...are they capable of hurting somebody? It’s for the safety of his family. It’s for his son’s college fund. It’s to pay off their house and never be in danger of losing it again.

Yes. He thinks so. For his family. He thinks that he can.

Chapter Six

O livia

These are Olivia’s favorite weekends. Madden comes to town and makes everything better. Sure, she knows that she’s the other woman; it’s not like she likes the title of mistress, but she likes knowing that she can make him happy in ways that his wife can’t. He’s not like her other boyfriends. Olivia has had loads of boyfriends; she doesn’t like to be single. When she can manage it, she’ll even have two or three boyfriends at the same time. She likes the attention; she likes having somewhere new and exciting enough to go each and every night. Olivia likes it whenever they buy her things and take her to fancy places and get her to try all sorts of foods that she never would have been able to afford otherwise. They all promise that they want to make an honest woman out of her, but really, she knows that they just like the way that she looks on their arm. Each and every one of them uses her for the fact that she’s young and beautiful. So, Olivia feels that it’s perfectly acceptable for her to use them for the assets that she deems to be the most interesting out of all of them as well. It’s only fair really. Besides, she’s also well aware that she’s only going to be this young and this hot for so long. She knows that women are only good to men for as long as they can be visually alluring, and she knows that with her exotic features that she will be able to at least ride all of that generosity to what she hopes is a very decent retirement fund before all of her looks are too dried up to use anymore.

Really, she should have taken her dancing talents and gone into stripping, then she would not need to have as many boyfriends at the same time. Though, Madden isn’t like the others. He’s the only one that has actually taken the time to listen to her talk. Besides, she likes the way that Madden can manipulate her body until her eyes roll into the back of her skull, and her soul leaves her body. She’s never had to fake it with Madden, and for that reason and that reason alone, she feels that he might just be the one for her. It’s a shame that he’s already married, but Olivia figures that they will just cross that bridge whenever they get to it. In the meantime, their arrangement is working out very well for both of them, at least in her opinion. It’s obvious enough that she has a nice, rent-free spot at the front of Madden’s mind by the number of times that he contacts her throughout the day, and Olivia has come to realize that she doesn’t mind so much anymore that he likes to check in on her. In fact, she thinks that she might actually like the guy.

So much so that she actually cut ties with her last boyfriend. It was something that she was really nervous to do because of the powerful connections that he had. She told him that she needed to focus more on her dancing, that she really needs to commit herself to her work if she ever wants to work her way up in the world. Besides her love for expensive things, dancing really is the only thing that she cares about. The only thing that she’s ever really cared about.

He didn’t take the news well.

But that’s okay. She’s used to being shoved around by men who don’t get what they want from her. It’s not like she’s never been shoved around before. It won’t be the last time, not with a mouth like hers.

But that was last week. This week, Madden is back in town and buying her fancy shoes and sending her such pretty little messages. While he hasn’t said that he will be, she knows that he’s going to come to the show tonight, which is why she took the money that he sent her this morning and actually spent it on exactly what she was supposed to. She purchased a cute pink lacy number that