“There’s no deal and there never will be one.”
Pari made an agitated buzzing noise as she absorbed the fact Aria wasn’t joking around. “You going to color that in, yeah, because I’ve got an unpaid invoice from the synthetic diamond makers that makes ‘fuck size zero’ sound like a lullaby, taste like, I dunno, roast swan or something freaking exotic and horrifically expensive. We could probably buy one of those islands that might sink for the cost of the fake.”
Aria sat on the end of the bed and kicked her packed carry-on. It bulged from all the shopping. She had serious expenses to pay and nothing to pay them with, and not four hours ago she’d almost told the man responsible for that problem she loved him.
“Cleve Jones happened.”
He’d dropped from the sky like some dark wizard and entranced her. Older, sexier, more masterful than he’d been the first time he’d short-circuited her brain. Then she’d been on a mission to fuck with her father and he was the perfect candidate to aid in that. At first glance she’d decided she could use him and have fun doing it, only to discover he’d rather remain alive than play into her scheming. It’d taken two years to thaw his resolve, two years of what she recognized now as extreme foreplay. No wonder she’d never gotten over him.
No wonder he’d gotten one over her.
“Your Cleve Jones? The Cleve Jones your dad trained? The dude who goes by the Shadow? That Cleve Jones who you hate with the passion of a million gunshot wounds?”
She sighed as Pari laid it on as thick as possible. They’d known going into this who their most likely competitors would be, and Cleve was king of the list.
“Yep, that bastard.” It was surprising how close on a continuum love and hate were. From kiss to kill and round and round again until it all dissolved into a clutter of worthless emotion. That’s what she was now, an aching chaos of blame and guilt and fear.
“Are you okay, babe?” She would be. Eventually. She had no choice. “What did he do?”
“It’s what I did.” She rubbed her face. Tiny bits of hair were caught in her lashes and clung to her cheeks. “I fucked him and then he fucked me back by taking Celestia. It’s my fault. I knew better than to trust a thief.”
Pari shrieked with ou
trage. “He beat you? He tied you up? Babe.”
“No, no. He didn’t hurt me.” Not that you could tell from the outside. From inside it felt like she’d had a major organ extracted and been left to bleed out. “He waited till I fell asleep and he stole Celestia.” She’d been exhausted, incapable of staying awake and he had to have planned it that way, used sex to flatten her defenses, just as she’d planned to do to him. “He knows how to move like a fucking wraith. I didn’t hear a thing. I’m so angry I trusted him.”
“That mangy, scavenging fuck bag.”
“I’ll find a way to pay your cut and the supplier, I promise.” Somehow, because it wasn’t like Cleve was going to send her a money order in the mail. He’d had expenses too, a whole crew to pay, and all his talk about a partnership was part of his ruse. Being had like that stung so badly, worse than it otherwise might because she’d fallen for him all over again.
“Vegas?”
“I have another idea.” It was probably a dead end, but what if...
“Don’t do anything too stupid.”
“I think I’ve already got that covered.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with at my end. There must be some too skinny rich bitch I haven’t sold a couple of hundred thou in shoes to yet. Stay in touch.”
Aria’d need another cell to do that. She trashed this one—and the yakuza-designated cell, as well most of her stash of fake passports—and jumped a cab to the airport, where she boarded an Aer Lingus flight to Boston, travelling as Echo Serenata and using a fake credit card to fund the ticket. Eight hours later, she stood in front of the two-level, six-bedroom, seven-bathroom Cambridge Square colonial manse that had once been her home, and wondered if it truly still was.
It looked the same, white paint, neat front garden. She’d already learned that by Googling the Irving Street address. There’d been no sales listed, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been shifted privately and some other family wasn’t living here. Still, she half expected her father to stomp out on the porch and shout at her for cluttering up the path and lowering the zip code value. Cleve had to be lying. But she had to know.
Before she bothered knocking, she checked the mailbox. Inside was a lone flyer for a gardening service running a hedge-trimming special, which wasn’t helpful. There were no excuses not to go hit up that brass knocker and meet the happy homemaker. She knocked, stood back from the door and waited.
And waited.
The curtains were closed, so there was nothing to learn from trying to peer in. She could break in easily and learn everything she needed to know before the silent alarm triggered, but she might not need to go as far as breaking a window. She still had keys. They’d been in the bottom of her bag when she’d fled, and because of the diamond-studded keychain—a gift from Cleve; stolen, of course—she’d never tossed them.
The key went into the lock without resistance, turned as if it expected her. She pushed the door and it opened smoothly, revealing the entry foyer with its honey-gold polished floorboards. They gleamed, not a scuffmark to be seen. She dragged her suitcase in and parked it. The same red alarm light blinked. Her birth date punched into the keypad disarmed it.
All of this had an eerie bad dreamlike quality about it.
The house smelled the same, floor polish and old books. Her pulse thudded. It wasn’t breaking and entering if you had the keys and codes, but it felt like it. She left the door standing open and walked into the house. First door off the wide hallway was a sitting room. Same carpet. Same lounge setting. Same tidy bookshelves with a row devoted to Tolkien. You could sell a house with its furniture and never change the locks, but would the newcomers have the same books, put them in the same place?
Directly across the hall was the study. She put her hand on the doorknob and a shiver of anticipation raced up her spine. Cleve was a lying, cheating, thieving, conniving jerkwad. This wasn’t her house anymore.