Gia reached out for Carlo’s hand, and held it. He squeezed hers back. Finish her off, Stephen, she thought. Be done with this!
But nothing was hurrying him now—Rowe apparently had more to say.
“Look at what you did to me,” he said as she stared up at him in fear. “Just when I was this close to being CEO and Chairman of the Board at Wenn Enterprises, you decided to hold that press conference of yours and ruin me, not only in front of the world, but also in front of my friends, my family, and my colleagues. You secretly taped me when I threatened your life—which I didn’t even mean! You revealed that we’d made a sex tape—which was private and only ever should have remained between us! And you gave it all to the police and to the press knowing that both would take me down. It was as if all I’d done for you had meant nothing to you. Not a fucking thing. And that’s why you’re going to die today. That’s why I’m going to kill you.”
He turned to Carlo. “Hold the back of her chair,” he ordered him. “She can easily kick herself over, and she knows it.”
As Carlo walked behind Janice, Rowe unexpectedly stalked behind them and walked over to a small table at the rear of the warehouse.
What is he doing? Gia thought.
And then she saw.
He dipped his head down to the table, picked up a small glass tube, and started to snort what had to be cocaine. And not just one line of it. As Gia moved closer and watched him in shock, she saw him snort four lines before he lifted his head in a weird kind of triumph. Smiling at her, he wiped his finger beneath his nose, and then ran that finger along his upper gums.
“Sorry, baby,” he said to Gia. “I’d give you some if I could, but I just ran out.”
“Stephen,” she said to him.
He pointed the knife at her. “Not one word,” he said. “Not one fucking word. I’m finishing this now.”
Gia retreated and wondered what would come next. She glanced at Carlo—who was holding Jones steady, with his head tilted toward Gia in such a way that their eyes could meet—and then she turned back to Rowe. “If you touch my brother, I’ll kill you, Stephen.”
When she said that, Rowe stopped and stumbled in a kind of hysterical bewilderment. “Touch your brother?” he said to her in disbelief. “Why the hell would I want to touch your brother, Gia? You two have the Wenns to kill for me tonight! I need you both alive to do that for me!”
As the cocaine railed through him and seared his brain, he inexplicably fanned out his arms and twirled twice in the bluish haze sizzling above them. He then came up behind Carlo with the knife held low at his side. Gia watched his every move, preparing to jump him if he tried anything.
But he didn’t.
He slapped Carlo hard on the back, gave a hearty laugh as he pressed his cheek against Carlo’s shoulder—and then went absolutely silent as he grabbed hold of Jones’ ponytail and yanked it back, exposing her throat to him as she let out another muffled scream.
“How do I do this again, Carlo?” Rowe asked. “Where do I cut her so that she bleeds out as slowly as possible?”
“You cut her there,” Carlo said as he traced a short line across Jones’ throat.
“That’s all it will take?” Rowe asked. “Just a little slice right there, and then all of this will be behind us? Just one simple cut, and then I can get back on my plane, and get back to wherever I came from—which neither of you will ever know. Janice will be dead then, right? And then the Wenns will be dead. Everyone who hurt me will be dead. I’ll finally be happy and able to move on with my life!”
He looked at Carlo. “But life isn’t that simple, is it, Carlo?” he said. “Sometimes life takes detours. Horrific little detours that no one sees coming. Tell me—did you bring a change of clothes?”
Carlo furrowed his brow at him. But before he could ask Rowe what he’d meant by that, Rowe let go of Jones’ ponytail and came around to face her as tears streamed down her face and muddied her mascaraed eyes. With one brutal rip, he tore off part of the duct tape covering her mouth.
“Convince me to stop, Janice,” he said to her. “Convince me why I shouldn’t kill you.”
“Because I’m sorry!” she blurted out. “Because we were once great together! Because I made a terrible mistake! Because I’m still in love with you, for God’s sake! Don’t you know how much I love you? You must know!”
“Liar,” he said as he got in her face. “But you’ve always been a liar, haven’t you, Janice? You’ve always been nothing but a former stripper hustling to get off that pole. You never loved me. You don’t even know what those words mean. Instead, you just betrayed me, like the cunt you are. And here’s what you get for it.”
Before she could respond, he slapped the duct tape back over her mouth as his eyes grew huge with the thrill of a pending kill. Gia watched him lift the knife high above his head before he plunged it deep into one of her breasts, leaving a viscous mixture of silicone and blood to seep onto her white Spandex shirt and spill down her torso as she reared back in pain.
With ferocious speed, his knife sank into her other breast, but this time, he twisted the knife hard as he pulled it out slowly in the vacuum of a thick, sucking thwap. Carlo tried his best to keep the chair as steady as he could as Jones bucked, hurling her body from left to right as her life was chiseled away from her.
“Last June, you thought you walked away free, didn’t you?” Rowe shouted at her. “You thought that you’d ruined me! You thought that you’d won!”
“Stephen,” Gia said.
“Shut up!” he said to her. “If you want my money, this is how she dies!”
With his mind riding high on the toxic fumes of cocaine, Stephen Rowe turned away from Gia and started to hack into Janice Jones’ body.
Realizing that this brutal attack was what he’d been planning all along, Gia found herself speechless. She watched him cut her throat to the point that he severed her trachea. She watched him stab her deep into the abdomen and then rip the knife upward toward her sagging breasts, gutting her. She watched him criss-cross the blade across her once pretty face, turning it into something that resembled mincemeat. He didn’t stop until he hit an artery in her neck and a funnel of blood hit him and Carlo squarely in the face, sending each of them reeling backwards. Rowe fell on his ass as blood ran into his eyes, and Carlo crashed hard against the warehouse’s back wall.
“She’s dead!” Gia shouted. “Enough!”
“Take her pulse!” Rowe demanded as he wiped the blood from his eyes. “I want to know for sure that she’s dead! Take it!”
She looked over at her brother, who was flinging the blood off his face and chest. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Take her pulse,” Rowe said in a low growl of anger. “Do it before I lose my temper.”
Although Jones clearly was gone, Gia still went through the motions in an effort to end this madness. She took Jones’ limp right hand into her own and felt for a pulse that she knew wouldn’t be there. She looked at Stephen, who was getting to his feet.
“She’s dead,” Gia said.
“Are you sure?”
Is he fucking kidding me...?
“Look at her, for God’s sake. Look at what you did to her face—to her breasts. To her abdomen. I think it’s fair to say that she’s dead, Stephen. But please, if you insist, feel free to check on your own.”
“I’m not touching that bitch,” he said as he started to remove his clothes. “I’ll take your word for it.”
Gia stared at him as he pulled off his shirt, then his pants, and then his underwear. He was standing naked before her when she said, “What are you doing?”
“You’re going to hose me down, Gia. Then, I’m going to change into that clean set of clothes you kindly told me to bring with me. And after that? I’m going to get the hell out of here, because if you remember, I’ve got a plane to catch.”
He held out his hands at his sides.
“Do it,” he said. “Wash her blood off me. When you’re fi
nished, I’ll dress and leave.”
When Rowe was clean, dry, and dressed, he nodded at Jones, whose lifeless, slaughtered body hung slackly in the chair. “Do whatever you want with her, but don’t let her get in the way of what comes tonight,” he said. “I expect you to finish off the Wenns. I want this over with.”
“We do nothing until you wire the rest of the money to us for Jones,” Carlo said. “I’m giving you two hours to make that happen. If you do, then we’ll take care of the Wenns for you, Stephen. But not until you’ve paid us for this job.”
“You’ll get your money, Carlo. But don’t expect a dime from me if you fuck up again with the Wenns. Tonight ends our relationship.”
“We’ll kill the Wenns,” Carlo said. “But just so you know, Stephen, expect to be hunted down if you don’t pay us for those kills. If you stiff us, Gia and I will root you out and kill you ourselves. You can bet on that. You can also bet that your death will make Jones’ death look as if she died in her sleep.”
“Whatever,” Rowe said. “The money is yours—just get the job done.”
He turned to leave.
“I’m out of here,” he said as he moved toward the warehouse’s side door. “Sorry if I didn’t stick to the script today, but she deserved everything she got. If you’re upset with me for misleading you, I have a feeling that you’ll forgive me for all of it once the money hits your account.”
He opened the door and squinted into the daylight before leaving.
“Don’t disappoint me tonight,” he said over his shoulder to them. “You’ll get your money.” He shrugged at them as he walked away. “All you need to do is kill Alex and Jennifer Wenn.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TWO HOURS BEFORE KATE Stone’s gala, Blackwell, Bernie, Lisa, and I were in the makeshift dressing room on Wenn’s fifty-first floor when a familiar voice called out.
“Hola? Hola? Epifania is the here, the cookies! Where you at? This place deader than my ex-husband, Chuckie—an’ he pretty fucking dead, just so you know.”
When Epifania spoke from the main office, which was empty now because it was a Saturday, Blackwell whirled around on me with a look of betrayal on her face that made me wince. As Bernie straightened my hair with a flat iron and Lisa gave me a look of pity before downing the rest of her champagne, Blackwell bent her lips down to my ear.
“You invited her here tonight?” she hushed.
I didn’t turn to her. I didn’t look at her. Instead, I just kept staring straight into the mirror as Bernie worked on me.
“I might have,” I said.
“You clearly did. And now how are Bernie and I supposed to focus on getting you two into shape for Kate’s gala with that woman in the room? The human wrecking ball known as Epifania Zapopa is within inches of us. Nothing good will come of this!”
“Oh, settle down,” I said. “You’ve come to like her. I thought it would be fun to have here tonight because she’s also going to the gala. You know how she is. She’ll turn this place into a party.”
“The party from hell,” Blackwell said.
“Looky, looky—Epifania is here, the cookies! Hello? Hellllllooooo! Oh, hell, maybe I on wrong floor. Sheet. Knowing me, probably wrong floor...”
“We’re in here, Epifania!” I called out.
“Yennifer?”
“Follow my voice!”
“Heyzeus Cristo, and here I thought I got wrong floor. Why you no answer first time?”
“I was taking a sip of my champagne,” I lied, not wanting to hurt her feelings. “Come inside. Have a glass of bubbly with us!”
“Wait until you see what Epifania the wearing!” she singsonged.
“Let’s just hope it’s something I found for her,” Blackwell said. “Because if it isn’t, God only knows what’s about to come through that door.”
“I hear that, the Barbara—and you gonna be the happy.”
“We’ll see about that,” Blackwell said. “Step inside. Reveal the awful truth.”
But when Epifania moved into the room, the truth was that she looked stunning.
“Oh, my God,” I said as she strode toward us in a shimmering, metallic-gold gown that had a slit up to here, and a neckline that plunged down to there. Her dark hair hung down around her shoulders in soft waves, her makeup was bright and fresh, and the canary yellow diamonds at her ears, neck, fingers, and wrists were to die for. The whole look was spot-on. “You look amazing.”
“Tonight, I bring the glitz and the glam,” Epifania said as she twirled in front of us. “Because God help me—I’m gonna land a man, and that man is gonna be my Rudsy. He gonna be mine again. Epifania feel the heat smoldering in her little meow-meow for him again. I’m gonna turn on all the faucets tonight. We gonna be couple again!”
“Turn on all of the what?” Blackwell said.
“All the faucets—you hear me, lady. What’s a matter? You deaf?”
“Who knows?” Blackwell said. “Generally, I have the capability to hear a person’s mind working. But when it comes to you, dear Epifania, I somehow hear nothing.”
“Why you think that is?” she asked innocently.
Blackwell moved to speak, but then her shoulders fell and she just waved a hand. “Nevermind. What you meant to say is that you’re pulling out all of the stops tonight—not the faucets—and I have to admit that you are.” She walked over to inspect Epifania. “Smart choice on the gown. Well played.”
“You peek it out for me. Of course you think it smart.”
“Do you disagree?”
“Oh, no! Epifania hearts it.”
“Don’t speak in emojis—it’s beneath you.”
“Beneath me? Look, the cookie, Epifania might be worth the five-hundred million, but she never forget her sordid roots, OK? Look at my sorry life story, for Christ’s sake—from living naked on a tobacco leaf in Cuba to washing up in a leetle beety rubber boat in the land of the free to riding a streeper pole with my good friend Yanis Yones until I meet the Chuckie. You can take Epifania out of the rubble, but you can’t take the rubble out of her mouth.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Blackwell said.
“Then consider yourself lucky, the honey pots, because when you born at the wrong end of the street, like I was, it mean nothing good.”
I looked at Epifania in the mirror while Bernie took another thick strand of my hair and began straightening it. “Speaking of Janice, Lisa and I recently ran into her at the St. Regis, Epifania. We were having cocktails at the bar when she came in. I went over to talk to her.”
“She told me,” Epifania said. “I had lunch with her yesterday—I been trying to get our old friendship back on the tracks. She said she had wrong opinion of you. She said you were very nice. I said that Yennifer is always nice.”
“I haven’t seen her since the press conference,” I said. “And that was on television. I felt that I needed to go over and thank her for what she indirectly did for Alex. And for how she stood up to Rowe. We all know that that must have been difficult for her.”
“It was, but she know she made right decision that day, and she appreciate that you took the time to talk with her. She been kinda down lately. I been trying to pick her up! Ever since that press conference, Yanis has been yudged unfairly by everyone. She always seen as the other woman—the one who ruined Stephen Rowe’s marriage to Meredith. But he lie to Yanis. He fuck her over. Sure, she make her share of mistakes. But at her heart, she got a heart of gold.”
“I sensed that. When we talked, I could feel how much she felt betrayed by him. How much she’d loved him.”
“She loved him more than you know. He was her world. But Yanis is a tough one, the cookie. She’ll bounce back. You’ll see. Money is tight for her right now. So, if I have to, I’ll give her a million or so to help get her back on her feet. And you know why? When I first came to the States and had no choice but to streep for a living, Yanis always had my back. She never yudge me. In fact, she only help me. Epifania n
ever forget sheet like that. I determined to see her happy again.”
“You’re a good friend, Epifania,” Lisa said.
“Agreed,” Blackwell said.
“Epifania just got the lucky,” she said. “She nothing special.”
“I disagree,” Blackwell said. “Strongly. But before we wallow into those weeds, let’s see the dress, my dear. Turn for me—that’s right. Bernie, darling, in case you were wondering, this is an Alexandra Vidal hand-beaded, hand-embroidered silk gown. Look at the back—completely open. And how the silhouette is fitted—too sublime for words. And how the hem falls straight to the floor, but with just enough leg exposed to catch anyone’s eye without appearing sleazy,” she said. “J’adore. Who did your hair and makeup?”
“Alessandro did. I call him just like you told me to do.”
“He’s second only to Bernie.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Bernie sniffed.
“Well, he is good,” Blackwell said. “You have to admit that.”
“I suppose he has a whiff of talent. Though there are others—in third-world countries for instance—who have more.”
Blackwell rolled her eyes at him and turned to Epifania. “Did Alessandro come to your house?” she asked.
“Yeah, he come to my house—and while I’m happy with the end results, that man had the nerve to take the mother of all sheets between doing my hair and makeup.”
“Excuse me...?” Blackwell said.
“You heard me. It was enough to make me gag. What in the holy hell did he have for lunch? I’ll tell you what he had—the beans. Because when you’re from the barrio like I am, you know that smell from a hundred yards away. That man had a mother fucking chalupa or something, and when he used my toilet? I’m here to tell you, the cookies, that that man refried everything that came out of him. I had all I could do just to breathe.”
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