“My eyes are wide open, Reynard. Sometimes I wish they weren’t, because life would be easier, but they are. Now here’s something for you to think about: what if Capo knew the diamond was fake? What if he set me up to fail? You want to talk about motives and endgames? Let’s talk about Capo’s. Let’s talk about what he really wants, because we both know it isn’t more jewels!”
A buzzer sounds. It’s a smoke alarm. Ryan finally breaks his statue impersonation and jabs his index finger into a button on the hood above the stove. A fan starts to suck the smoke from the burning bacon into a vent, lifting it in eerie, ghostly whorls.
It reminds me of the way the smoke rose over the avocado fields the night my parents were murdered.
I can’t sit any longer. I jolt from the chair and start to pace around the table, chewing my thumbnail as I go.
“You have forty-eight hours to get that diamond and get back to London,” Reynard says flatly. “Capo’s expecting you. If you don’t arrive, he’ll kill me. That’s not so alarming, I’ve been expecting it for years, but what should alarm you is that he will hunt you down, using all his considerable reach and power to find you. And when he finds you, my darling…” His voice darkens. “He’ll take his time with you. He’ll make you beg for death long before it arrives.”
My hand lifts to my throat. I think of the girls with collars, the red stains on Enzo’s handkerchief, and all the blood drains from my face.
“You’re suddenly so interested in trust?” asks Reynard, chillingly soft. “Trust that. Trust in the dependability of evil, because unlike lust and infatuation, it will never fade. It will never let you down. Unlike handsome American Marines, evil always keeps its promises.”
I inhale a soft, shuddering breath, my entire body going icy cold.
Ryan finally turns from the stove. He takes one look at my face, and thunderclouds gather over his head. He strides over to me, holding out his hand, his eyes burning.
“Gimme the phone.”
“What?” I say, startled.
“Woman. Give. Me. The. Phone.”
I decide now isn’t the time to be my usual sassy self. I silently place the phone in his hand.
He lifts it to his ear and growls into it. “Listen up, you snobby motherfucker! I don’t care how much Mariana loves you. If you ever say anything to her again that makes her look like she does right now, I’ll break both your legs!”
My lips part, but the man has rendered me incapable of speech.
On the other end of the phone, Reynard says something unintelligible. All I hear is a bark.
To which Ryan barks back, “Yes!”
He listens for a moment, shifting his weight from foot to foot, then thunders, “You better fuckin’ believe it!”
I drop my face into my hands and groan.
A pissing contest. Divine.
After a moment, when I don’t hear any more barking, I peek through my fingers. Frowning furiously, Ryan listens to whatever Reynard is saying. He nods, says a curt, “Mmhmm,” huffs out a breath, looks at the ceiling with his nostrils flared, then nods again. Then he proceeds to answer what must be a series of rapid-fire questions with a series of rapid-fire answers, punctuated by jaw-clenching pauses.
“None. Yeah. Yep. I do. I will. I know.” Then, more irritated, “Despite what you think, dickhead, I didn’t fall off the back of a fuckin’ turnip truck!”
Then, just to bake my brain completely, he breaks into a grin. “Okay, man. Will do. Good talk, brother.” He ends the call and looks at me.
After a while, I manage to speak. “What the hell was that all about?”
Ryan shrugs. “He doesn’t like me much, but we’re workin’ it out.”
I stare at him in blank disbelief, all the cogs of my brain frozen.
“Okay, look. I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m not perfect. Don’t make that face, it’s true. I’m fuckin’ stubborn, and I’ve got a hair-trigger temper. I curse too much, I don’t exactly have finishing school manners, and I can be overbearing. And overconfident. And a bunch of other unflatterin’ words that start with ‘over.’ I’m also opinionated, sarcastic, easily frustrated, more than a little conceited—”
“This is quite the list,” I say.
“I could go on for days. My point is that I’m aware of my shortcomings. Because I know I’m not perfect, I don’t expect other people to be perfect, either. The only thing I demand from anyone—whether they like me or not—is that they’re real. Whatever and whoever they are, they own it. They don’t make fuckin’ excuses. I hate excuses.”
When it becomes evident he’s done speaking, I venture a hesitant, “Okay?”
“Reynard is worried about you. More worried about you than he is about himself, which I dig. Means he loves you, which is good, ’cause I know you love him. So no matter how much he doesn’t like me, I’m gonna respect him because he’s bein’ real with me. Understand?”
I squint at him, hoping it might make things clearer. “Um…”
Ryan reaches out and gathers me in his arms. He lifts my chin with a knuckle so I’m forced to meet his level, serious gaze. “Chalk it up to another one of those things about me you’ll eventually understand. The more important update here is that you told him you decided to trust me.”
He waits for me to answer, his eyes glowing bright blue with emotion, like a pair of sapphires held up to the sun.
I flatten my hands over his chest, loving how hard it is, how wide and warm, how his heart thumps strong and steady beneath his sternum like it’s confident it will never fail. I run through a dozen different explanations in my mind before distilling my decision down to its essence.
“You’re worth the risk.”
For this, I’m rewarded by the sight of a big, badass Marine getting all choked up.
“Angel.”
His voice is raw. His eyes glimmer. He wears the euphoric expression of someone who’s just been granted his dying wish.
This is how I know my gut is on the right track, even if my brain is trying to stomp on the emergency brakes. I smile at him and stand on tiptoe to kiss him gently on the lips.
“I keep telling you my name is Mariana.”
“Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “But you’re my angel, so that’s what you’re gonna get called.”
Now I’m the one getting choked up. “I’m no angel, Ryan. I’m trouble with a capital T. You have to know that. However this all turns out with the diamond…I’m no good.”
“You’re not trouble, you’re in trouble. Two different things.”
“I’m a fugitive from the law.”
Unimpressed with my evidence, he lifts a shoulder. “The law’s overrated.”
My brows arch. For a smart man, he’s utterly failing to grasp the general concept of our predicament. “Is prison overrated? Because if I’m caught—”
“I’m gonna take care of that.”
Examining his face gives me no clue as to what he could possibly mean, so I prod an explanation. “‘That’ being…”
“Your record. The rap sheet of one nameless, international thief known as the Dragonfly. That’s all gonna go away.”
Because my brain is incapable of directing any of my bodily functions in the aftermath of that outrageous statement, my mouth falls open and expels a small, astonished breath on its own. It takes every ounce of focus and determination I have to form a coherent sentence, and even then, it’s only three sputtered words.
“Th-that’s not p-possible!”
In his supremely casual, confident, infuriatingly-vague-yet-dripping-with-overt-sexual-innuendo-Ryan-like way, he drawls, “You just worry about how you’re gonna show your gratitude when your man’s done fixin’ all your shit that’s broke, okay?”
He kisses the tip of my nose and makes a move to turn away, but I grip his biceps and give him a hard shake, which fails to move him even a single inch. This time it’s his brows that arch.
“Stop it! Just stop with the random, over-the-top, incompre
hensible pronouncements! How are you going to fix it?”
He produces a dazzling smile that, if it showed up on anyone else’s face but his, would inspire me to commit homicide.
“That’s what heroes do, baby. We save the motherfuckin’ day.”
When it becomes apparent that that’s his idea of a reasonable explanation, I say between gritted teeth, “I will kill you where you stand.”
“Damn, you’re gorgeous when you’re angry.”
I close my eyes and inhale a deep breath while mentally adding another few choice words to his list of faults.
“Ryan. Please. This is my future we’re talking about. My life. No more jokes. Tell me.”
He strokes the pad of his thumb over my cheekbone, following its path with his gaze. “I made a deal with the FBI to get the charges against you dropped. I’m gonna give ’em somethin’ they want a lot more than a jewel thief.”
My heart slams against my breastbone, sending my pulse flying, my blood roaring through my veins. The FBI? A deal? He can’t be serious. He can’t possibly be speaking the truth.
“What are you going to give them?” I manage to ask past the roaring in my ears.
The wolf slips back into Ryan’s eyes and is there in the growl in his voice when he answers.
“A monster.”
Twenty
Ryan
Mariana stares at me, breathless, speechless, her eyes wide and her face bone pale. For a while, I’m not sure if she’s happy or angry, but then she releases my arms, stumbles backward, and drops heavily into a chair.
Gazing up at me like I just arrived from outer space, she breathes, “Capo?”
“Yeah. Vincent Moreno, aka Capo, head of the European crime syndicate, head of a transnational human and drug trafficking organization, head of a big fuckin’ violent snake that specializes in suffering and exploitation. Your boss.”
“My jailor,” she corrects vehemently. “My master. The man who holds my leash!”
I force myself not to react to the image those words invoke of Mariana on her knees, the man from the limousine with the dead eyes gripping the chain to the choke collar around her neck. But rage has a way of making itself known in spite of all efforts to contain it. In this case, it’s the flush of heat climbing my neck that gives me away.
She glances at my throat and sniffs in disapproval. “If all it takes are those few words to get you mad, you’ll never be able to take him down. He’s a siphon for negative emotions. He’ll feed off anything—anger, fear, shame, doubt—grow stronger from it, and turn it around and use it against you.”
The heat on my neck flames hotter. “There you go underestimating me again.”
Mariana looks into my eyes. Her shock has vanished. Now she’s simply practical, all business, her tone as flat as her expression.
“Put your ego aside, cowboy. That wasn’t an attack on your manhood. It was the truth, gained from years of experience earned the hard way. If you’re even a little bit serious about getting close to him, you’re going to have to do it surgically, methodically, without an ounce of feeling to mar your perspective. And even then, you probably won’t be able to pull it off.”
Does this woman have no idea that she can crush me with her words? “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence,” I snap.
She shakes her head, annoyed with me. “This isn’t a street thug we’re talking about. Vincent Moreno is a psychopath with hyperactive paranoia and a genius-level IQ. He’s filthy rich, vastly powerful, and extremely connected. Everyone who’s anyone in the crime world owes him favors. He’s a god among bastard kings.”
Her voice grows softer. “And he owns me.”
“Not for long!” I growl.
She shakes her head again. “You don’t understand what I’m saying.”
“Then make it fuckin’ clearer!”
After a frigid beat, she speaks. “Number one: use that tone with me again and you’ll be missing a cherished body part. I won’t make it painless. Number two: I’m Capo’s favored pet. I can go places you can’t. Whatever your plan to get to him is, it has to include me.”
This entire conversation has veered off into unexpected and extremely unwelcome territory. I stare at Mariana, my blood boiling like a cauldron of poisonous witches’ brew in my veins. Quietly, with deliberate enunciation, I say, “That is out of the fuckin’ question.”
She gathers herself, inhaling and sitting up straighter in the chair, then leans back and folds her arms over her chest. “Fine. Let’s hear your plan.”
It sounds like a challenge, like she’s already decided whatever I’m gonna say will fail big time, so of course I get more pissed off, even though she just told me to can it.
“My plan,” I shout, “is to let him know I’ve got the Hope Diamond, and if he wants it, he’s gonna have to meet with me, and when he does, the FBI’s gonna swoop in and bust his ass, and then he’s off for a nice long soak in a sensory deprivation chamber before bein’ interrogated by a bunch of agency spooks who get off on roughin’ guys up as much as he gets off on sellin’ little girls into sexual slavery!”
My fevered rant is met with a cavernous, icy silence, timed by the hollow ticking of the clock on the wall. Then, in a voice an executioner might use to call up his next victim to the gallows, Mariana says, “Repeat the part about the Hope Diamond again? The part where you said you have it?”
We stare at each other with open hostility, like pistoleros in a Mexican standoff. I wonder if the vein pulsing in my temple is in imminent danger of bursting, it’s throbbing so hard.
“Yeah,” I say gruffly. “I’ve got it. The real one.” Acidly sarcastic because I’m bent by her reaction—I was expecting gratitude and got attitude—I add, “Surprise.”
Her jaw works like she’s chewing on something that’s really, really tough to swallow. Saddle leather, maybe. And I’ve never seen a pair of brown eyes glow so fucking bright, like they’re lit from within by hellfire.
With perfect control, her voice Arctic cold, she says, “And how, may I ask, did that come about?”
If I were a smarter man, I’d probably be getting real nervous right about now, but I’m obviously not that bright a bulb, because all I’m getting is more and more pissed. “It came about,” I repeat mockingly, “when I asked the guy I know who owns it if I could borrow it to snare a snake.”
She does this thing that brings to mind a cartoon tea kettle right before it explodes. All the shaking and rattling, bolts popping off like popcorn, steam escaping, sounds like train whistles and splitting metal screeching in the air…yeah, that’s what my girl starts to do, only it’s a helluva lot more intense.
“I planned that job for a week,” she says, rising from her chair, her voice shaking, her eyes flaming incinerator hot. “I lived in a shitty, cockroach-infested motel room for seven days, working twenty hours a day on research and logistics, listening to junkies tripping and hookers howling through fake orgasms and homeless guys fighting over cigarette butts they found in the street. I sweated every detail, had nightmares about what would happen if I failed, risked my neck breaking into that museum.”
Her voice rises to a shout that could disrupt flight paths with its thundering vibrations. “And the whole time you had the diamond?”
She takes a step toward me.
I’ve stared the grim reaper down a hundred times in as many different ways, yet the look in her eyes still makes me take a step back.
“In my defense,” I say placatingly, hands held up, “we weren’t on speaking terms at the time. You’d ditched me again, remember? Sheets out the window? Vanishing act? Any of this ringing a bell?”
“Oh, I hear ringing bells all right, cowboy, and they’re tolling for you.”
I get that’s some kind of reference to death from a Hemingway novel, but can’t remember specifically which one. Not that it matters, because she’s advancing like an M1 assault tank, and I’m about to get ripped a new asshole. Among other things.
“Honey,
now stay calm—”
“Too late. That ship has sailed. Now we’re taking a nice, long cruise on the SS Cut A Bitch. Guess who’s the bitch? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not me.”
My laugh sounds nervous. “Jesus. And I thought I was temperamental.”
“Oh, smart. Insults and sarcasm are a great choice right now. Just keep digging that hole, cowboy.” Mariana nods slowly, her eyes pinwheeling in full serial killer mode. “Because I’m about to shove you over the edge and bury you in it.”
She’s still advancing, I’m still retreating, and I’m starting to sweat.
I had no idea that five and a half feet of female could be so terrifying.
Maybe she’s about to get her period?
In fear for their life, my testicles scream at me in no uncertain terms that I shouldn’t make that observation aloud. Instead, I start to toss out rationalizations like a nervous zookeeper might toss raw meat into the alligator moat, hoping to pacify all the snapping, ravenous teeth.
“It’s not like I could waltz into the fleabag motel and interrupt your planning! Knock, knock, who’s there, it’s your kinda-sorta boyfriend who you keep runnin’ out on! Hey, look, shiny object, you don’t have to hit the museum after all!”
“That’s exactly what you could’ve done!” she retorts hotly, steam billowing from her ears.
“You ran out on me!”
“You crossed an ocean to find me!”
“You needed time to miss me!”
She rears back with an expression of shock and horror, like I just shoved a big, rotting rat corpse under her nose. “What?”
At least she’s stopped advancing.
In my best macho-dude-who-is-NOT-intimidated-by-his-woman impersonation, I fold my arms over my chest, brace my legs apart, and peer at her down my nose.
“You heard me,” I say, then exhale in annoyance, wishing I didn’t sound like somebody’s elderly, prissy aunt.
Birdlike, Mariana cocks her head. “You wanted me to miss you?”
I narrow my eyes at her suspiciously rational tone. “Well…yeah.”
“Why?”
Now the heat crawling up my neck is embarrassment. Trying to maintain a shred of masculine dignity, I say stiffly, “I wasn’t sure if you would.”
Wicked Intentions: The Wicked Games Series, Book 3 Page 17