All the puzzle pieces finally come together, so I see the whole picture at last.
I’m so stunned, I’m numb. I can’t feel a thing. I don’t know if I’m happy, sad, or crushingly disappointed. I’ve got an abandoned Western town of tumble weeds and rutted mud roads inside me, with empty buildings and no signs of life except for the vultures picking over bleached bones.
My desk phone rings. I answer with something that could be, “Huh?” but I’m not sure because my brain isn’t working.
“Hullo, lass.”
His voice is low, but it’s enough to make every cell in my body wake up from their comas.
I hunch over my desk, clutching the phone to my ear, my heart pounding like mad. “You.”
There’s a pause, then Killian says, “Aye. Me. Who were you expecting?”
Though he can’t see me, I wave my hand frantically in the air to dismiss the small talk. Speaking in a combination of a whisper and a hiss, I say, “I figured it out!”
His voice sharpens. “Figured what out?”
I open my mouth to answer, but realize with a cold snap of fear that it might not be in my best interests to let him know what I know. In fact, this call might even be being recorded. The FBI could be listening in on all his communications.
Then something else—something far worse—occurs to me.
What if this hot pursuit of his hasn’t been about me at all?
What if the romantic gestures and Shakespeare quotes and aching vulnerability have all been part of an act, part of a much bigger web designed to catch a much bigger spider than me?
A spider, for instance, like my father.
“I’ll handle your father. I’ll ask him permission to marry you, and we’ll work it all out.”
Those were his exact words. His exact insane, ridiculous words.
All his insistence that I trust him, that we tell each other nothing but the truth, that I give in to our intense chemistry and “let it be,” that I tell him I belong to him…all of it could be with the ultimate goal of getting closer to me so he could get closer to Antonio Moretti.
Because how better to bring down the head of the New York mafia than by using his own daughter to get to him?
I see it all in horrifying, crystal clear Technicolor, like a movie playing on a screen inside my head.
He gets me to fall in love with him. He gets me pregnant. He insists on arranging a reunion with my father, insists that we should patch things up…then he slithers in like a snake into the heart of my family and hands us all to the government on a platter.
Bugs. Surveillance. Tracking devices. He’d deploy all his specialties to catch my father and his associates in his trap.
And I’m just collateral. A means to an end.
A tool to be used and discarded like a dirty Kleenex.
A strangled noise rises from my throat. I think I’m going to be sick all over my desk.
Killian says, “Juliet?”
I slam down the receiver, disconnecting the call, and sit there staring at it, shaking.
The baby. Oh my god. What if I’m pregnant?
What have I done?
I think back to the first time I saw him in the bar at La Fiesta the night we stole the truckload of diapers from him. I remember the look on his face.
That smug, self-satisfied look.
How he and his FBI buddies must have laughed at my stupidity. After all, it was me who started the ball rolling. I broke into his warehouse. What a gift that was to them! What a fantastic turn of events! They’d probably been trying to find a way to bring down my father for years, and there I came, waltzing in like an oblivious idiot, the perfect solution to their problem.
I remember every time Killian looked deep into my eyes as he made love to me, and an animal sound of anguish breaks from my chest.
I barely make it down the hall and into a stall in the restroom before I throw up.
26
Jules
I manage to get through the rest of the day at work. My desk phone rings intermittently, but I always let it go to voicemail. No one ever leaves a message, but I know who it is.
I throw my cell phone into the trash chute at the office, smashing the SIM card before I do. On the drive home, I pick up another at a kiosk inside the mall, along with a pre-paid card for minutes.
Back at the apartment, Max is home but Fin is still out. I put my finger to my lips and point at the ceiling, making a circular motion in the air with a finger. She nods, goes into her room, and returns with an electronic device that sweeps the place for bugs.
When the sweep comes up clean, she looks at me. “You know I do this twice a week already, right?”
“Make it twice a day from now on. I’m not taking any chances.”
She examines my face. “You okay?”
“No, but I don’t want to talk about it. Just assume for the time being that we’re under heavy surveillance. Get a new phone, new email address, new everything. Wipe your hard drive. Burn anything incriminating. We’re going full dark.”
“We’ve been on full dark since you started dating GQ Gangster,” she says gently.
“Oh. Really?”
She nods. “If anyone’s on the cops’ radar, it’s him. So yeah, really. If they decide to take a look inside this apartment, we’re squeaky clean.”
I heave a sigh of relief. At least one of us has her head screwed on straight. “Okay, great. Thank you.”
I give her a hug, then head downstairs to go have a talk with the driver of one of the black SUVs.
When I knock on the window, it’s the handsome one named Declan who rolls it down.
“Well, isn’t this a nice surprise,” he says, smirking. “Good to see you, Your Royal Highness.”
I decide to skip the pleasantries, because I hate his boss. “I’m gonna need you guys to clear out. Right now.”
Declan raises his dark brows and looks me up and down, his baby blue eyes sparkling with amusement. “I’m sorry, were you operating under the mistaken impression that you’re in charge here?”
I anticipated that. Gangsters aren’t generally known for being accommodating.
“If you’re not gone in two minutes, I’ll call Channel 5 News and tell them that Killian Black has some SUVs filled with mobsters parked on Mount Vernon street and give them the license plate numbers. Maybe they’d like to ask you a few questions about your boss’s unusual and abrupt release from federal custody last year.”
Declan’s smile vanishes. I think he’s angry about the threat, but then he says with quiet astonishment, “He told you his real name.”
“He told me a name. I have no idea if it’s the real one or not.”
“Oh, it’s the real one, lass,” says Declan, gazing at me with furrowed brows. He doesn’t look as if he approves of this development.
“If you’re worried I’ll tell anyone, don’t be. I don’t care if he wants to call himself Jabba the Hutt. I don’t care about anything to do with him at all. I just want you guys to leave. And stay gone.”
Declan cocks his head and narrows his eyes at me. From his jacket pocket, he produces a pack of cigarettes. He shakes one out, sticks it between his lips, puts the cigarettes back into his pocket, and fishes a Zippo out of another pocket.