by Cassie Wild
Fire
Deceit and Desire Book 2
Cassie Wild
Belmonte Publishing, LLC
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 Belmonte Publishing LLC
Published by Belmonte Publishing LLC
Contents
Reading Order
1. Kian
2. Suria
3. Suria
4. Kian
5. Suria
6. Suria
7. Kian
8. Suria
9. Kian
10. Suria
11. Kian
12. Suria
13. Kian
14. Suria
15. Kian
16. Suria
17. Suria
18. Kian
19. Suria
Tricks - Preview
About the Author
Reading Order
Thank you so much for reading Fire, book 2 in my Deceit and Desire series. If you’d like to read the complete series, I recommend reading them in this order:
1. Lies
2. Fire (This Book)
3. Tricks (June 6)
4. Heat (June 15)
5. Sting (June 27)
6. Blaze (July 6)
One
Kian
“Look, detective, I just want to know if there’s been any–” I snapped my teeth together as he cut me off, talking to me in a patronizing voice that made me want to put my fist through something.
“Now, son, I understand that you and your mother are frustrated. It’s awful, having these con-artists take you for a ride…” Detective Mercer talked on and on, his voice droning until it just became one meaningless rumble in my ear.
It was enough to make me want to take an ice pick to said ears just to dig the annoying sound out.
Finally, the droning paused, and I cut in.
“Have you made any progress with my mother’s case?” I demanded, gripping the phone tighter.
“Well, see…we get a lot of these, and not many of them ever go anywhere,” Mercer said, laughing a little.
Like it was funny.
Like it was funny that fake psychics conned people like my mother out of their money and got away with it.
“Is this amusing to you, detective?” I asked without thinking about it.
Dumb move.
“Now, listen here, son–”
“I’m not your fucking son,” I bit off. “It’s nice to know you give a flying fuck about that so-called serve and protect bullshit you cops bleat out.”
I hung up and spun around, two seconds from throwing my phone against the wall.
I managed to stop myself.
Barely.
It had been two days.
Two fucking days and apparently all the cops were doing was sitting on their collective asses.
It was a complete joke, but I wasn’t laughing.
As a matter of fact, I was done sitting around and waiting for them to stop laughing.
If they weren’t going to do jackshit, I would.
The traffic sucked and a drive that should have taken thirty minutes took over an hour, but that was Los Angeles for you.
By the time I pulled into the parking garage attached to the condos where Mom lived, I had something of a plan in mind.
Chances were, the woman who’d done this was betting on my mom not figuring out the truth. And if she did…well, she would count on my mom feeling stupid. Too stupid to make much of a fuss.
She wasn’t wrong. Typically, when my mom felt like she’d been fooled, she kept quiet over it. It was a dignity thing. Whoever had scammed my mother was a good judge of people.
But one thing hadn’t occurred to her.
While my mom hated to be made a fool of, she hated even worse to think about people being hurt. That made her mad. And now that she’d found her mad, she wasn’t going to sit by idly and just pretend nothing happened.
A lot of people might do that.
People like my mom had the kind of money to do that.
But this chick wasn’t counting on me.
I was going to find out who she was, where she’d set up her little scheme and track her down.
Yeah, Mom had said she’d gone by there, but chances were, the woman was just laying low. I could be patient. And it was entirely possible the woman had been at the house the whole time. They just hadn’t felt inclined to get her for my mother.
They’d be a lot more inclined to listen to me, especially once I told them we were going to the cops.
Con artists wouldn’t appreciate cop attention.
They didn’t have to know the cops weren’t paying us much attention at all.
“It will work,” I told myself softly. It would work just fine.
I found my mother sitting on the balcony of her condo, sipping her coffee and staring down at the gardens a few levels below.
“Don’t you have to be at the garage today?” she asked, giving me an absent frown.
“I’ve got a mom to take care of today,” I told her, bending to kiss her on the top of the head.
She caught my hand and squeezed it. “You don’t need to take care of me, baby. I got myself into this mess. I’ve already called the detective. I’ll keep calling him too.”
“Has he been helpful?” I asked in a neutral tone.
Her eyes slid away.
“Yeah, that’s about how helpful he was with me.” Sitting down in the seat next to hers, I braced my elbow on the table and waited for her to look at me. When she finally did, I held out my hand. She took mine and twined our fingers. “The cops aren’t taking this seriously, Mom. You know that, right?”
She huffed out a little sigh. “Yes. Yes, I know that. And that just pisses me off,” she said, her voice sharp. “What do they think we pay them for?”
“We probably just ended up with an asshole,” I said, lifting a shoulder. “But that doesn’t mean we’re going to just sit around and let them watch this just disappear. Where did you meet this woman at?”
“Why?” She pursed her lips, studying me.
“Because I plan on going to talk to her.”
“Oh, honey…” She got up, shaking her head. Taking her coffee, she turned to go inside the condo.
I followed her, watching as she went to the coffee pot and poured herself another cup. “Do you want one?” she offered.
I got myself a cup and poured it, taking a sip as I waited for her to work through whatever was going on in her head.
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to go out there,” she said softly. “What if they don’t like it? What if they take it as a threat?”
“It is a threat,” I said flatly. “They conned you out of thousands. I want the money back.”
It took some coaxing, but I finally managed to talk my mother into turning over a rather battered looking business card. Barely giving it a glance, I shoved it in my pocket to deal with later.
Giving her a kiss on the cheek, I lingered a few more minutes and finished my coffee.
“You’ll be careful, won’t you?” she asked for the third time as she trailed me to the front door.
“Mom, do you think your psychic is going to beat me up when I go confront her?” I asked, crooking a smile at her.
She didn’t smile back.
“I’m not worried about her beating you. But…she was so good at it.”
Frowning at her, I tugged the card out of my pocket and
slid a glance over it, not really seeing anything on it as I did so. “Mom, that’s why con-artists are called artists. They are good at it. They wouldn’t be worth much if they sucked, would they?
I don’t know what had me glancing back at the card.
But I did, and my gaze lingered on the address.
I had to read it twice before it clicked on why it seemed so familiar.
I’d been there this week – twice, actually. Just last night, to drive by the place, but it was dark.
Still, I had to be reading it wrong.
“Is this…the address on the card, Mom. Is that where you went to see her?”
Say no, please say no, I thought as I studied the swirling, stylized font used to spell out the psychic’s name.
The Mysterious Sirene, Fortunes Untold
I shook my head. I was seeing things because I was thinking about her so much.
“Kian?”
I glanced at my mother again, forcing a smile. “Ah, what did she look like, your so-called psychic?”
“Oh.” She huffed out a breath as she stood there, eyes squinted in thought. After a moment, she glanced at me and offered a rueful shrug. “It’s hard to believe she’s been doing this long enough to be so good at it, honey. She’s younger than you! She barely looks old enough to drink. Long dark hair, very curly. Short, really cute and curvy.”
A picture of Suria formed in my head as I slid the card back into my pocket.
It could be anybody, I told myself.
Anybody.
But did two people fitting that description live in the very same fucking house?
I was having a hard time believing that.
In a rush, a hundred questions she’d asked came rushing back at me. Questions not just about me either. She’d been slick at it too.
That’s why they’re called con-artists, Mom…
No shit, I thought sourly.
Bile churned in my throat, and I looked back at my car. “I gotta go, Mom,” I said, although I was more reluctant to leave now. If I went over there and found out it was really her…
How in the hell was I going to tell my mother that the woman who’d conned her had probably used me to do it?
Something in my chest crumbled a little, withered and blew away as I realized that was exactly what happened.
Suria had fucking used me.
Two
Suria
From where I sat on the small balcony our room boasted, I could see Joelle swimming laps.
As one day slid into two, and we hadn’t gotten caught, my sister began to relax.
Me, on the other hand?
I’d done the exact opposite.
I was wound up tighter than I’d ever been in my life. I couldn’t stop thinking about Kian. I couldn’t stop thinking about the picture I still kept tucked away inside my pocket. Nicco and Catherine. Part of me still didn’t want to think about who Nicco likely was, but at the same time, how could I not?
I had his address memorized by now.
It was like a neon sign flashing in my mind, replacing that old, worn down sign that had flashed in the window of the house I shared with Papa. Instead of Open, Open, Open, this sign buzzed, Nicco, Nicco, Nicco.
I had to find out who he was.
For sure.
I had to talk to him.
But Monterey was several hours from here, and I couldn’t leave Joelle alone. At the same time, I didn’t want to take her with me and tell her what was going on, get her hopes up only to see them dashed again.
Some part of me wasn’t willing to trust the idea of family anyway.
How could I?
My idea of family was a father who taught his daughter how to use tarot cards to con an old lady or to convince some widow that her husband was talking to her from beyond the grave.
Some family values.
As Joelle flipped to begin another lap, I made a decision. When she glanced up my way the next time, I gestured for her to get out. I waited until I saw her slip inside the hotel before I left the balcony, then I hurried inside to change.
Joelle and I were going for a drive.
The drive to Monterey became more beautiful the closer we got to the coast. The area became more rugged and hilly, fields of rolling green all around us.
Joelle all but bounced in her seat in her enthusiasm.
“So why are we going to Monterey? Can we go shopping? I want to go to Cannery Row. Is it still called Cannery Row?” she asked. One question after another tumbled from her and she didn’t even give me time to answer before the next one was hanging in the air.
It was a good thing, because I really didn’t have a whole lot of answers for her.
Except…
“No, we aren’t going shopping,” I told her. “We have to watch our money.”
“Are we thinking about moving to Monterey?” she asked. “It’s pretty far from LA, and I bet Papa would never think to look for us there. Oh! I bet you could sell some of your art there. It’s an artsy sort of town from what I’ve heard.”
I wish. I kept the comment back behind my teeth.
“No, we’re not staying in Monterey,” I told her. “I’ve got to talk to somebody.” Sliding her a sidelong look, I added, “Alone. Once we get there, you’re going to drive around a little bit and wait for me to call you. Once I do, you come get me, and we head back to the hotel.”
Joelle pouted, but it faded fast. She’d had her license for almost six months but rarely was able to drive. She’d taken driver’s ed at school. Surprisingly, Papa had allowed it, but we both figured out later it was because he liked to be prepared. It had nothing to do with allowing her to have some form of independence. But he’d done it anyway.
“Why can’t I go with you?” she asked.
“Because I need to see somebody privately,” I told her.
She made a face at me, but let it go at that. “How long do you think it takes?”
“Not very.” I doubted I’d want to stay long no matter what I found out. And if he is who you think he is and he’s happy to see you…what then?
I had no idea, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
“And you aren’t to stop,” I reminded my sister.
“I know.” She had her hands on the wheel and smiled sweetly at me.
“If you think somebody is following you, you go where?” I gave her a hard look.
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll google the police station on my phone and drive straight there, tell them that I’m from a Rom clan and that I’m only sixteen and that my father thinks it’s A-OK for me to get married to some old guy in his forties even though I don’t want to.”
She delivered the comment with such dramatics, I almost smiled. Biting it back, I said, “You promise you will, right?”
The teenage drama queen faded quietly out of sight at my persistence, and she nodded, tightening her hands on the steering wheel. “I hate to think of leaving you, but I don’t want to marry Ephraim, Suri,” she whispered, and she looked at me with scared eyes.
“I don’t blame you.” Ducking into the car, I kissed her cheek. “I wouldn’t marry him if he was the last toad available.”
She snickered. “Okay. Let’s get this show going. I’ll be back in forty-five minutes.”
“Sooner, if you get nervous,” I reminded her.
Once she was driving away in the opposite direction, I turned and started up the sidewalk.
All around me, fancy houses towered into the sky, making me wonder just how one Catherine Alexander had turned her luck around so completely.
I wanted to know the secret.
If she could do it, so could I.
I found the house with relative ease and walked right up to it, as if I had every right to. Once I reached the front door, some of my bravado tried to fail me, but I didn’t let it. Knocking briskly, I stepped back and shoved my hands into my pockets.
It was show time, right?
I pasted a polite smile on my face a
s I waited for an answer.
Ten seconds passed.
Twenty.
I knocked again.
Another ten seconds.
Twenty…
Just as I was getting ready to knock a third time, the door swung open.
The man who answered the door stared at me with curiosity in his eyes. Blue-gray eyes, I noticed. And hair as black as mine. His skin was the same olive tone too.
A faint, questioning smile curled his lips. “Can I help you?”
He had a deep voice, the kind that would sound amazing if he sang – assuming he could.
Gypsies love to sing, I thought weakly.
But I wasn’t sure yet if he was one of us. Maybe he didn’t even see himself as one of us – they’d run away, after all. And he’d been young.
“I…um…hello. I’m looking for Nicco Alexander,” I finally stammered out. I didn’t know why I bothered to say that. I was staring right at him.
The faint smile on his face widened a little. “You’ve found him. Can I help you?”
Every single practiced, rehearsed line fled from my mind. I couldn’t remember what I was going to say to him for the life of me. As he continued to stand there, probably thinking I was an idiot – or crazy – I floundered. Finally, I shoved a hand into my pocket and pulled out the picture. I hadn’t been able to let it out of my sight even once since I’d found it.
Shoving it up toward him, I said, “Is this you?”
Nicco’s gaze flicked from me to the picture, then back. After a long moment, he looked back at the picture and reached out, taking it carefully from me.
His eyes studied it, and I studied him.