"Case? Now what are you going on about, darling? How did we go from my--admittedly stupid--screwup to murder?" There was that reasonable voice again.
How much had he been gaslighting me in the past? "I heard you two, cabron. No one's celebrating my murder in Aspen this year."
Julia was unraveling. "I told you this one was trouble!"
I sneered to her, "With a capital fucking T, Julia." Back to Edward. "How did you kill my mother? And what's in the case?" I cocked the pistol, movie-style, and aimed it at his groin. "Try lying to me again."
He narrowed his eyes. "You won't shoot me. If you do, all your money--now my money--will go to my heir. You signed over everything to me a year ago."
"Then you're right. It doesn't make sense to shoot you." I turned the gun to Julia. "I should shoot her. She'd be your heir, no?"
"Ana-Lucia!" His breath left him, his voice scaling higher as he said, "Don't hurt her. Please."
The most shocking revelation of the night? This monster truly loved her.
"Don't make me hurt her! Answer my questions."
Staring down a gun barrel, Julia said, "I will answer them for you. We can talk about this. In the case, there's a syringe. It was the last injection given to your mother. She was dying anyway, but we hastened it."
My lips parted. Julia had confirmed murder.
She continued, "We targeted you for the land. Charles--Edward--knows how to break the trust."
Shock muffled my thoughts, but I needed to stay sharp. What incentive did Julia have to admit these things? I gazed at them through watering eyes. The two were farther apart from each other. While she stalled, he'd been sneaking closer to his dresser!
He must have a gun in there. "Stop where you are, Edward." Keeping the pistol trained on them, I sidled toward the dresser. "You got a gun? I'll be taking it, as well as the key to that safety-deposit box."
I pulled open the top drawer, taking my gaze off them for a split second--
Lightning blazed; he threw a lamp at me. Everything happened so fast.
I deflected with my arm. The old pistol went off. BOOM!
A dark spray arced across the room toward me, splattering my face and chest. Blood? From Julia's throat??
Her hands clamped her neck to stem the spray, but it kept welling up in spurts. Her body collapsed.
Edward dropped to his knees beside her, frantically clutching the wound, as if trying to put the blood back in. Coated in crimson, he yelled over his shoulder, "What have you done?" Dimly I realized his accent had changed again. "You bitch! What have you DONE?"
Julia made ugly, wet sounds. Until she . . . didn't.
Dead.
I just killed someone. I just killed someone. Six hours ago, I'd been hoping it would stop raining so the race wouldn't get canceled. I am covered in someone else's blood. It dripped from my jawline and fingertips, from the gun. I had to swipe my sleeve over my eyes.
He howled with grief, rocking her head in his lap, sobbing. "She was everything to me! She was my LIFE! You KILLED her!"
Edward had already been prepared to take me down for one crime. Now he would see to it that I fried for two murders.
I backed away from the gruesome scene. As I ran from the room, he bellowed, "Prison's too good for you!"
I stumbled, nearly falling down the stairs. Still clutching the pistol, I bolted to my Mercedes. I laid the gun on the floorboard like it was a live bomb.
As I reversed past Julia's Jaguar, my headlights caught Edward's face. A nightmare. His crazed green eyes were stark against his own mask of blood. Trickles of it ran in the rain.
He raised a gun! Shit! I couldn't back down the winding drive. Three-point turn. Shit, shit!
He shot at me! Missed. My scream was loud in the confines of the car. He bellowed, "I will BUTCHER you! I will cut you into pieces while you live!" He aimed again, missed.
Forward, forward! My tires spit up the pea gravel, spinning in place. Before I could speed off, I heard him yelling, "Go to the police, and you go to jail! COMING FOR YOU, WIFE--"
Lightning forked out over the ocean; I blinked repeatedly.
I wasn't back there. My sweating palms weren't white-knuckling a steering wheel. I was safe up here in this tower, with a powerful lover and bodyguards. In time, I caught my breath, and my pulse leveled out.
When Edward had vowed to butcher me, I'd seen the madness in his eyes. I'd seen my future if he ever got to me.
That night, once I'd calmed down enough to think, I'd weighed scenarios. Best case: He turned me over to the cops to fry for two murders. Worst case: He made good on his vow.
The only path open to me? Living to fight another day. So I'd disappeared.
Vanishing from the grid was easy--all you had to do was cast aside any possession you ever valued, expect nothing to replace it, shed your identity, and sacrifice any connection you'd ever made.
By the time I'd gotten to Texas, I'd started to wonder if I should fight for my life back. Though I'd always considered myself brave, I was letting my mother's murderer live in her goddamned house?
I should at least know what my options were. So I'd pawned my watch and my simple gold wedding ring to get a decent lawyer. The lady had been perplexed by my story. There was no warrant out for my arrest. No missing persons report on me. No death of a woman named Julia. Edward had covered it all up.
He truly was coming for me.
My prospects had been grim. To try to reclaim my inheritance, the attorney required a fat retainer. To divorce Edward, I'd be forced to create links. I wouldn't be hidden from him--the well-respected closet serial killer who was bent on revenge.
Plus, there was the safety-deposit box. He couldn't access it without me; I couldn't without my ID and the key. I imagined it as a land mine we both circled.
My risk/reward analysis said: You're fucked. You'd better come up with some rules to try to stay alive. Good luck with that.
I shook my head hard to dislodge the memory of that night, just for a little while. Just until the next storm.
It happened. It hurt. Better things awaited me. One day. Hey, maybe I'd outlive Edward.
I took a deep breath, then returned inside, grabbing my phone out of my cash-filled purse. After unlocking the code, I checked my messages. Ivanna never texted--her long red nails made it impossible--but she had left a voice mail: "Call me! I'm dying!"
Anthony had left several: "Hi, Cat, it's Uncle Anthony! Welcome to the agency, sweetie. Call me about tonight." "Phone Uncle Anthony, girl." "Still waiting on a call. . . ."
I'd have to deal with that later.
There was also a threatening message from Mrs. Abernathy. "Cat, you need to confirm for cleaning on the thirty-first. I'm having a party, and I'll need you. None of this nonsense about quitting, or I will make that call."
INS. Besame el culo, puta. Kiss my ass, bitch.
When I passed the coffee table in the sitting area, I frowned at the sight of Sevastyan's briefcase. Hadn't he and I sat on that couch, looking at papers, sometime late last night? My eyes went wide. He'd shown me test results that said he was all clean. My own all-clean results had been right beside his. Fucking e-mailed to him.
Ivanna had insisted I go to the "agency physician" for my exam. I'd thought it was cheaper or something. But why should I expect privacy when I was a paid-for thing? I'd never felt more commoditized.
Sevastyan had said, "This is what I wanted to discuss with you. I want us to be able to do anything to each other, whenever we want, with no barriers between us. I'm dying to taste you. Will you let me?"
"I don't know," I'd said, drunk and annoyed. "I'll need to think about this." But my annoyance had disappeared when I'd realized I could give him head without a condom--and utilize all the tricks I'd picked up in high school or read about or learned from Ivanna.
BBBJNQNS? Gracias, yes.
Now my face flushed. I think I'd told him, "I really want to taste you too. If there was ever a cock that deserves to be tongue-wors
hipped . . ." Then he'd pulled me in for a kiss, and my thoughts had gone on hiatus.
I tried to recall more, but all I managed was the start of a headache. So I used a guest bathroom to wash off, brushing my teeth with a complimentary toothbrush. I was tempted to sneak away and not deal with the aftermath of last night. But when I crept back to his bedroom, I found Maxim had turned on his side, arm outstretched--as if reaching for me.
I crawled back under the covers with him. In sleep, he wrapped an arm under me, covering both of my breasts as he pulled me close. When he held me like this, my will dissolved, my worries, my blood-coated memories. . . .
Sometime later, I woke again to his husky words in my ear: "I now understand the appeal of waking to a lover." With a long exhalation, he slid inside me.
CHAPTER 13
"I slept for five hours?" After sex, he'd risen, frowning at the clock. "This is a record. I feel like a new man."
"You look ten years younger," I told him as I stretched. "Now I'd put you at mid-twenties."
"I just turned thirty-one."
"Yes, but you looked thirty-five before."
He raised a brow. "You won't ask why I don't sleep? I've had insomnia for decades."
I sighed. "Why wouldn't you? You're in a high-pressure job--which might be dangerous--and you're running a billion-dollar empire."
He chucked me under the chin. "I don't know if I'll quite be a billionaire today, querida." When he strode to his closet, the lines across his back saddened me anew. He returned wearing broken-in jeans, with an undershirt for me. "Here. Arms up."
I hopped from the bed, raising them, and he pulled the shirt over me. It swallowed my body.
He grinned down at me. "Almost as fetching as you were in that dress."
"The smirky attendant downstairs ought to have a field day with my appearance now. Fuck knots in my hair and a T-shirt hem under my coat."
"You're not leaving."
"Pardon?"
"I've decided to book you until the twenty-eighth."
Stay here with him for ten days? A vacation in paradise with a sex god?
No, no, no! I'd be breaking rules one, three, four, and even six to a degree. "Oh. That's a lot to decide." Besides the fact that I was leaving town on the twenty-second, I feared growing used to hooded blue eyes and mind-blowing sex.