by S. Ann Cole
“Damn,” Melanie mutters under her breath.
Markus eyes Jaxon and me with suspicion but tells me anyway, “I cannot discuss specifics until you’ve signed a few agreements and been sworn in. But I can assure you, you will never be in harm’s way if you work with me. My wife, however, cannot promise you the same.”
“Hey now,” Alessa says. “No need to play dirty.”
Oh, the irony.
Jaxon’s fingers creep under the hem of my blouse, touching skin. They drag and scrape. They make swirls. They pinch and whisper.
God…
I want to turn around and punch him in the face.
I also want to turn around and kiss him.
I want to move far, far away from him, but my traitorous body won’t let me. It likes him too much. I’m so damn weak.
I grit my teeth and bite out, “Gee, Mel, you’ve got your wish. Turns out you don’t need to grovel for your spot on the team. It was yours from the start. Con-gratu-lations.”
She scowls at me. Pissed.
Good.
Before today, no one would ever use the word bitch and my name in the same sentence. Well, other than Jo. Hell, I didn’t even know how to go about being a bitch. But hey, crappy circumstances are making me someone brand new. And I can’t say I’m hating it.
Being a bitch is freeing.
“What are you talking about?” Markus asks.
“Oh, you didn’t know?” I ask innocently. “Mel already planned on leaving me right after this meeting to join your wife’s gang.” I smile coldly at Alessa. “You didn’t need to hijack this meeting, after all.”
Melanie snaps, “Put a sock in it, Tim.”
“Why?’ I fire back. “Are you having second thoughts? Thinking about working for Markus, instead? Oh, so many lovely options. So, so many.”
Her lips curl into a snarl. “Stop acting like this isn’t your dream, too. You’re taking your anger out on me, but it’s not me you’re really mad at, is it? I’m your friend. I looked out for you. I warned you not to get attached, and you went ahead and got attached, anyway.”
“Mel, shut—”
She spread her arms. “I shagged Jo every day and was still able to walk away from her without a second thought. Because I didn’t get attached. Cardinal rule when pulling a con—Keep your bloody emotions out of it! You want to take it all out on me, but I’m not the one who messed up. You did. The moment you chose to let yourself feel something for your target.”
“I don’t—”
She jabs a finger at me. “You think I didn’t know you were lying? I knew you found the music box a long time ago. I mean, how stupid do you think I am? But you didn’t take it because you were falling for him.”
I clamp my mouth shut because we both know she’s right.
“What if he hadn’t hurt you?” she demands. “Would we still be there? Would you still be lying to my face every damn day? You might’ve gotten your hand on the prize, Tim, but you failed the real test.”
I bite the inside of my cheeks until I taste blood. My mind is one big jumble of bad emotions, confusion, and misery. I have to get out of there.
Now.
“Enjoy your new family,” I say. And before I can stop myself, I draw my foot back and kick Jaxon in the shin. Hard.
On a grunt, his hands let go of me. I power-walk across the room toward the lift.
“What are you doing?” Markus demands.
“Leaving.” As if it isn’t obvious.
He growls, “See? This is precisely why I begged you not to get involved with either of them.” He must be talking to Jaxon. “Did you do it to spite me?”
I scan my badge.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Alessa says, sounding bored and impatient. “Can’t you just make her work for you?”
The door retracts.
“She’s a U.K. citizen,” he says in irritation. “I can’t make her. She has to choose to serve our country.”
I stalk into the lift.
“That was some gamble,” she mumbles. “Investing in non-U.S. citizens on the off chance they might want to join your team.”
“She lives here. Her entire family lives here. Her sister sure as hell isn’t complaining about how rich and famous this country has made her.”
The elevator door closes, muting their words.
Thank God.
I swing around in the lift. My gaze collides with Jaxon’s. Melanie’s standing next to him, as if they’re a team. Except that Melanie is glaring up at him while he’s smirking at me.
His smirk is almost victorious. As if to say, “I got your virginity, and now I’ve got your best friend. Nah, nah, nah.”
As the lift starts to move, he throws an arm around Melanie’s shoulders.
And he grins.
Chapter Forty-Six
Philadelphia is two hours away from Brooklyn. I didn’t consider that before I flounced out of Markus’s office, forgetting that we’d been chauffeured here.
Not that I cannot get home on my own. They do have cars here, and trains run every hour.
I’m just a little thrown by the unfamiliar environment when I step out of the building. But the city is lovely, so I decide to meander a bit before I hire a car service to take me home.
Home.
Where is that now, anyway? Is home a home without Melanie? I’ve been apart from my family for so long that she has become home to me. At least, she had been.
But now, without her, where is home?
I love my best friend, but I’m also extremely mad at how okay she is with leaving me to join someone else’s team, with zero qualms, zero damns about my feelings. Except I shouldn’t be surprised, should I? She’s Melanie. An emotionless narcissist. I’m lucky she feels anything at all for me.
I don’t know what happens from now on, but I do know I’ll not be staying in New York City. It holds too many memories. Not just of Melanie, but of that SOB Jaxon.
As I’m strolling past a café called Rachel’s Café & Pastry with chocolate-drizzled doughnuts on display, I brake and peek inside. I’m not hungry. Indignation has banished my appetite. I’m also not in the mood for junk food. Haven’t been since…him.
But, I am feeling rebellious. Eating a chocolate-drizzled doughnut will represent me sticking it to the odious bastard. Not as if he cares what I eat, but I have been eating healthier because he eats healthy, and I enjoyed eating what he eats, as it somehow brought me closer to him. Mimicking him helped me to understand him sometimes.
Or, that’s what I thought.
Now that I know he was gaming me the whole time, I’m forced to accept that my progress with him was all an illusion. A manipulation. None of it was real.
Bastard probably got off on it. Off watching me fall hopelessly for the heart he doesn’t have.
I stomp into the café, emerging a few minutes later with a once-bitten chocolate-drizzled doughnut.
Ah, rebellion, how sinuous the shape of your ire.
As I lift the doughnut to my mouth to take another bite, a white Rolls-Royce Phantom stops at the curb, right at my feet.
I pause in mid-bite, and the back window rolls down, revealing the insultingly gorgeous Alessa King. She eyes my rebellious doughnut with revulsion. “I can see now why your nose is so oily.”
I feel my eyeballs knock about in their sockets as I lower the doughnut from my mouth. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“You? No.” Her voice mocks me. “But I can help you with a ride back home.”
“No, thank you.” I turn to leave.
“Oh. No, my darling. I’m sorry if I made it sound like you have a choice. I’m not my husband.” Her voice is a chilling wind, warning me she’s not to be trifled with. “Get in the car. Now.”
I stop and glance back at her uncertainly. Because, well, she’s frightening. And as bitchy as I’m feeling today, I also have a feeling Alessa King is not someone I want to piss off. “And what if I don’t?” I ask. Because caving imme
diately would let her know I’m a chicken.
“Hmm… I guess I would have to take my Choos off, grab you by those annoyingly frizzy bangs, and stuff you in here myself—seeing as I’m not allowed to harm you.” She actually sounds bored.
I still don’t move. These people are insane.
She rolls her eyes and sighs. “My son swears you are his future. And if you are his future, you are family. And in our family, we protect each other. Therefore, I’m not about to leave you on the street two hours away from your home.”
Future?
Family?
Did she seriously say…family? And future?
“You’re totally insane,” I mutter.
She ignores me. “Besides, even if I want to leave you—because, honestly, he could do much better for a wife—I love my son. I love my son, and I hate our fights. If he finds out I left you on the street, we will have a fight. He is spiteful and tricky, and I never win. So, throw that O of calories away and get in the car.”
I want to remind her with ear-splitting enunciation that her son and I aren’t together, we have no future, and I sure as hell will never be his wife. But I have a feeling it would only fall on deaf ears.
For a long moment, I hesitate.
She bristles with impatience.
Oh, what the hell. Maybe I can straighten out her ridiculous notions.
But first I adjust my glasses and bend to peer into car—just to make sure Jaxon isn’t hiding in there.
It’s just her.
“Fine,” I say. “But I’m keeping my doughnut.”
I wait for her to object, but she doesn’t. She just purses her lips in a moue. So, I go around to the other side and get in. By myself, since the driver doesn’t bother to open my door for me. He pulls into traffic before the door is even closed, as if I might jump out again, or something.
Deliberately, willfully, I take a big bite of my doughnut and stare straight ahead.
Alessa is watching me. After several long minutes, she says, “You know this is not over, right?”
Wrong.
“Pardon me?”
“My husband and my son are one and the same. Stubborn, and driven. Markus will not stop until you agree to work for him, and Jaxon will not stop until you’re barefoot and pregnant.”
A week ago that thought might actually have been appealing. Now it was just…nauseating.
Taking another bite, I speak with my mouth full on purpose. “Well, they’ll be not-stopping for a long time. Because I want nothing to do with you lot.”
She sighs. “You will learn, girl. You will learn.”
Once my doughnut is finished, and I’ve crumpled up the paper bag and dropped it on the floor out of spite, I ask, “Why aren’t you using this opportunity to convince me to work for you instead of Markus?”
She stares out the window for a long time without answering. At length, she says, “You are smart, and quick, so I assume you have already figured it out that I do not get a say in who makes the team. Jaxon does.” She pauses. “And he does not want you on the team.”
That makes two of us. But hell if her saying that doesn’t raise my hackles.
“Right. You two were working together to pull one over on Markus. Which I had no part in.”
“No need for sarcasm. Jaxon already knew, in the end, you would leave and your friend would stay. He figured out she wanted to be on the team—for real—a long time ago. We already had her. All that earlier was just for show.” Alessa turns from the window and looks at me. “We were not conning Markus, honey. We were conning you.”
And she has the gall to say it to my face. My God! What the hell is wrong with this family? They’re all twisted psychos. Why would I ever want to be a part of this? I’d never know what’s real and what’s not. Hell, I could still be in the middle of a con right this minute.
Hell, no. This is not a family I want to be a part of.
“So, Mr. Jaxon Almighty thinks I’m not good enough for his pathetic little band of thieves?” I can’t help the bitter bite in my tone. Despite everything, his rejection cuts to the quick.
“No. He does not.” Her thin, penciled brow arches up. “He thinks you are better than a field operative.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I give her my full attention, because this might be my one and only chance to hear what Jaxon really thinks of me. Unless, of course, she’s lying through her teeth. A distinct possibility.
She rolls her eyes. “He thinks you belong with Markus. Working in the lab. Not out on the streets. He believes you will be happier advancing technology and making cool gadgets, or whatever, for the government.” She makes a noise of distaste.
Disbelief surges through my whole body. Along with a spritz of genuine interest. “Gadgets?”
She studies me for long moment. “Hmm. I guess he was right.”
Embarrassed by my own budding excitement, I turn away. The traitorous nerd in me just did a KO on my inner bitch. My body is starting to hum wildly at the thought of making gadgets—spy gadgets? Computer gadgets? Scientific gadgets?—and it’s an enormous struggle to keep it from showing.
“You did not hear that from me,” she cautions. “I was not supposed to tell you. Classified, and all.” She flicks her fingers as if the word annoys her.
“But you did anyway,” I mutter. Utterly torn between wanting to smack her and wanting to hug her. It was getting harder to hang onto my fury.
She regards me seriously. “You’re planning to run. And I want you to know what you’d be running from. The future you’ve always wanted. Contentment. And—although I’m told you don’t care about money—the opportunity to surpass your sister’s net worth in no time.”
I chomp on my bottom lip, my fingers twitching with resistance. I want to say yes. I want to say yes so, so badly. But his stupid face keeps flashing across my mind. And it still hurts. Like crazy.
I can’t do that to myself.
I can’t work for Markus. Not anymore. From now on, whenever I see Markus, all I’ll be able to think about is his son.
“Tempting,” I say. With true regret. “But, no. I want nothing to do with your son.”
“That’s too bad,” she says with a tsk and a dramatic sigh. “Because he wants everything to do with you.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Too damn bad.
The Phantom comes to a stop outside my flat, but I hesitate before getting out. Not because I’m having second thoughts about working for Markus but because I want to make this exit final.
If I give Jaxon no reason to come after me, then he won’t. As it is, I’m still in possession of the key to the music box.
Letting go of the key would mean letting go of Jaxon, for good.
I know what’s in the box. I peeked, of course. So, I know that although the music box itself is worth a fortune, the box is not the real prize. It’s what’s hidden inside the box—the biggest blue diamond I’ve ever seen, mounted in a gold necklace.
Conducting my own unofficial assessment and authentication, I estimated the diamond to be about 21.87 carats, worth a hundred million dollars or more.
After much digging and researching on all the known blue diamonds, I found absolutely no history behind this one. As far as the internet is concerned, it doesn’t exist. Which leads me to believe the diamond necklace was smuggled into this country using the music box.
“Are you getting out?” Alessa prompts when I just sit there.
With a nod, I make my decision. I raise my hands to pop the first three buttons on my blouse. Wiggling two fingers inside my bra, to the makeshift pocket I stitched there the night before, I grasp the hidden necklace and pull it out.
With the chain dangling from my fingers, I face her. “I’ve no doubt he’s searched high and low for this. In case he wants to know why he couldn’t find it, I buried it in Central Park.” I hold out the key for her to take, and she slides it off my fingers. “Tell him never to hide all his secrets in one place.”
&nb
sp; Without a thank-you or good-bye, I slam out of the car.
Chapter Forty-Eight
I check into Ma’s hotel, two floors down from her. After getting back to the apartment, I’d packed as fast as I could, extended Monty’s food service, and got the hell out of Dodge. Ma is elated, because it means I get to spend more time with her before she leaves.
Or rather, more time with my nephew.
Within the first forty-eight hours, I’m receiving constant calls for help with Abel. Not that I’m complaining. I love being with the little man, and it’s obvious they’re struggling to keep up with their crazy schedule while carrying him on their hips. So, I volunteer to babysit for the remainder of their time here while they’re off doing whatever it is famous celebrities do.
Abel is a riot, and I adore his cherubic cheeks and pudgy fists. He’s the perfect distraction from Jaxon and his devious, manipulative family.
When Abel is awake, I focus wholly on him. While he’s asleep, I consider what my next move will be. The truth is, I’ve never been on my own before. It’s been Melanie and me since…forever.
With Mel, I’ve never had to make an important decision alone. Never had to live alone. And now that she’s gone, I feel so lost. I’m such an odd, odd ball—I can admit that—and it’s going to be one helluva challenge finding a new friend or fitting in anywhere.
It’s been five days since I moved. And for each of those five days, Markus has emailed me at 9 a.m. on the dot, begging me to reconsider. I know it’s just a matter of time before he pulls out the big guns and hunts me down. He is Markus King, after all. Hopefully, I’ll be oceans away before then.
As for Melanie, I’ve yet to receive a call or a text from her.
Nothing.
A clean cut on our friendship.
It stings. It really, really stings.
This evening, Ma is too tired to come out to dinner with me, and Jahleel, though equally tired, has a nightclub appearance. So, I end up sitting by myself in a vegan restaurant ten blocks from the hotel.
I take a book with me, because, well, I saw the title and couldn’t resist.
Psychopath Free: Recovering From Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People, by Jackson Mackenzie.