Hating Beauty (The Vegas Titans Series Book 6)

by Loren, Celia

  Until I get my hands on that laptop.

  “We are a team now,” I murmur, as calmly as I can. I need her to need me. My survival depends on it. “For better or worse.”

  For better or worse? Why the hell did I say that? It’s like quoting a line from the wrong movie, totally out of place.

  Tatiana’s eyes trace down over my lips, and for a second I think she might kiss me. But instead of indulging my fantasy of playing that out, I give her a rough shake. It’s my way of shaking myself out of it, too. Apparently acting like an animal is my only defense against her.

  “Do you understand?” I ask gruffly. “No funny business.”

  Now her eyes flash, and I am reminded of the edgy Katja I met that very first night at Breslin’s party: the dangerous, mysterious Katja, the one that drugged me, robbed a powerful sociopath and started this whole crazy chain reaction. She’s perfectly capable of outsmarting me. The knowledge doesn’t ease my mind.

  But then she rolls her eyes at me, once again seeming like the young and vulnerable Katja: the Katja who told me her real name and became Tatiana, the girl who blushed at my erection and who asked for my help.

  I can’t keep up with this woman.

  Who the fuck is she?

  “Of course I understand, brrochi. Whose idea was it to work together in the first place? If it were up to you we’d have gone to Seventh Avenue and been arrested or shot. Why not thank me? Why not give me credit? How about instead of attacking me you cooperate, you idiot? Eh? Cadi yleebi mocove.”

  “God I love it when you call me names I don’t understand.”

  “I told you to go suck dick, you asshole. Maybe mine!”

  “You’re really hot when you’re mad, you know that? I’d let you suck my dick.”

  She groans and gently pulls her wrist out of my grasp.

  “Knox. Grow up. Take a cold shower. Get your head out of your whatever. And I’ll be back in the lobby in twenty minutes.”

  As I watch that perfect ass of hers disappear into the women’s locker room, I have no choice but to hope to god that I’ll see her again.

  In twenty minutes.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Knox Cole

  By the time Tatiana reappears in the lobby, I’m sweating and I think I may have developed an ulcer. The clock has ticked away thirty, forty-five minutes, and I’ve paced every inch of the floor. A security guard has explained to me five times that I can’t go into the women’s locker room, and I’ve come painfully close to punching him in the jaw. I’ve run through every possible scenario of what will happen to me without Tatiana and the laptop. They all end the same way and it’s not pretty.

  And then there she is, fresh as a daisy, standing before me with an innocent smile as if she hasn’t just caused my cortisol to spike through the roof.

  “That was not twenty fucking minutes,” I bark, hiding my relief in anger. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”

  Tatiana looks remade, fresh and clean, her skin bright, her hair blown out. She’s wearing makeup, sunglasses, and a baseball cap, and smells like fucking springtime. It makes me want to take her straight to bed, where I could smell every inch of her skin and drink her up until I’m full. It’s also not lost on me that she’s somehow produced a new outfit—a tight casual black dress that shows off everything I like looking at, complete with a pair of colorful, practical trainers on her feet. An army-green duffle bag is slung around one shoulder and brushes tantalizingly against her left hip with every step. It draws my attention to those hips, the way she moves, and that makes me even angrier.

  “So what,” she grunts. “I’m the first woman to take a long shower?”

  She laughs and loops a slender finger through the belt-loop of the jeans I’m wearing. Then her hand slides over the black t-shirt I’ve commandeered. The skin burns under my clothes where she’s touched me.

  “Where did these come from? They actually fit! You look human again.”

  I take a deep breath, willing myself to calm down and focus.

  “Jimmying open lockers is not exactly a tricky skill to master. I’ve had that down since junior high.”

  “I see I have the right partner in crime.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere. You have the laptop?”

  She frowns. “What is this obsession with the laptop? I have what we need for the next step. Come, let’s get going.”

  I grab her arm as she tries to walk past me. “Wait. What do you mean, next step? If there’s no laptop, we’ve got no leverage.”

  “We don’t need the laptop.”

  “What do you mean, we don’t need the –”

  I stop myself, my jaw locking in anger. Roughly, I snatch the duffel bag, not caring that Tatiana is still attached to it, and yank the zipper open. She stumbles after it with a gasp, closing the distance between our bodies as I rifle through the bag. I feel her weight against me as I search. Inside the duffle are papers, papers, papers. Nothing but papers! A folder. A passport. A small ornate box. A teddy bear.

  A teddy bear?

  “Shit,” I hiss. “Where is it? Where is Breslin’s laptop?”

  “It’s not here,” she says.

  “Obviously!”

  “I told you Knox, we don’t need it now. I have everything we need. We are ready for the next step. Trust me.”

  To say that I am angry is like saying The Incredible Hulk is Incredible.

  “Don’t try to play me, Katja. Dammit, I mean Tatiana. Fuck. What the fuck is going on? What next step are you talking about? Am I going to have to die because you think you have everything under control? Because I gotta tell you honey, you don’t have anything under control! You don’t even have me under control, and I’m supposed to be on your side, right? We need that laptop. It’s the only thing that we can use to bargain with.”

  In spite of my muffled barking, Tatiana blinks at me completely unruffled.

  “Why would we need the laptop, when I have a copy of everything on it?”

  She reaches into her bra, which causes a momentary reaction in my groin, and pulls out a slender flash drive. She twirls it in her fingers just long enough for it to glint in the light and connect in my brain, and then she slips it back into her bra.

  “Ok, crazy man? Now can you relax? You are stressing me out.”

  Of course she’d make copies.

  But I’m not fully satisfied. “Hold up. If it’s all about what was in the computer, why was Breslin so worried about getting his physical laptop back? All the data was as good as stolen as soon as the laptop left his apartment. Why does he care about the laptop?”

  Tatiana shrugs, but not before I catch the ghost of a twitch in the corner of her mouth.

  “Beats me,” she says.

  It’s a lie. I file it away as I watch her zip up the duffle bag and readjust it on her shoulder, realizing that I need a different strategy if I’m ever going to get a grip on this situation.

  “Okay,” I sigh, raking my fingers through my hair. “You win. We’ll do it your way. What are we doing?”

  Now she smiles, a sly, confiding grin. “Follow me, and I’ll show you.”

  Ten minutes later we’re in a Staples, at one of those pay-and-print computer stations, and Tatiana has whipped a debit card out of nowhere and powered up a session on a huge clunking dinosaur of a PC.

  “God, I haven’t used one of these since 1999,” I chuckle. “I didn’t know these still existed.”

  Tatiana taps her short fingernails on the plastic desk impatiently as the computer slowly boots.

  “Oh yes,” she murmurs, distracted, “In Europe, they exist everywhere. Everybody uses the internet cafes, all the time. Here, it is less. Nobody uses.” She sweeps her hand around to indicate the empty workstations on either side. “We are the only ones.”

  It’s the first time she’s said anything, however vague, about where she comes from. And I notice that when she’s not paying attention, her accent grows thicker. I watch with interest as she pu
lls up an email account on hotmail.

  “Hotmail? Seriously, who still uses hotmail? What are you, forty?”

  Her eyes flash at me. “No. Not forty: foreign. Hotmail is still hot in Europe.”

  “Where in Europe?”

  She ignores me, typing furiously. Soon she digs in her bra, produces the flash drive, and plugs it in. While it loads, she turns to me.

  “Listen, Knox,” she says. “Here is what I am doing. You talk of leverage with Breslin. It’s no good this leverage idea, it’s not enough. At this point he knows what I have on him, and he probably knows what I can do.”

  “That makes one of us.”

  She smiles. “It’s no good trying to negotiate with him, your boss. You of all people should know that. Even if we pleaded and bargained he wouldn’t hesitate to kill us anyway, no matter what we promised in exchange for our lives. The only thing that makes sense to do, is exactly the thing he is hoping to prevent.”

  Biting back my annoyance at her lack of specifics, I decide to humor her.

  “Which is…?”

  “We have to win.”

  Now I’m the one rolling my eyes. “No shit, Sherlock. Do you have a fucking plan, or are you just stating the obvious for your own amusement?”

  She glares. “Yes, I have a plan. This is the plan. Look. Read it. You’ll see.”

  She leans back from the computer, eyeing me defiantly. It’s an email, with several attachments—must be the documents from the flash drive. The body reads:

  “Rachel, Jeanne, and Melissa;

  You have all said you would be able to run the story we discussed if any of us could unearth any hard cold evidence. Well, I have. Here it is, straight from Jasper Breslin’s personal laptop: emails proving insider trading within Breslin’s company, spreadsheets tracking laundered money in Swiss accounts, names and dates, records of payments to FBI-identified sex and drug traffickers, addresses and financial records of brothel buildings that have since been raided and shut down. It clearly shows that Breslin runs the largest sex-trafficking ring in New York City, and has a self-documented record of sexual encounters with under-age girls.

  And, most horrible of all, a list of young women’s names, dates, and a code that I have not yet cracked but believe to be a clue to their present status and whereabouts. Half of the names are directly traceable to federal missing person’s files starting in the year 2009. Several have been found over the years, dead. The first name on the list is Sunny D., my sister’s nickname. She is still missing. I believe she is alive.

  It is for her, that I have risked my life in getting you this information. Please do what you promised, call the police chief I told you about in the Bronx—he will confirm everything and point you to other authorities that will help. I have already sent copies of these documents to the Manhattan D.A., my private lawyers, and my contact at Homeland Security. Homeland Security has already responded, to let me know that they are incorporating this data in their ongoing investigation of Breslin. Their contact information is enclosed, so that you can confirm.

  Time is short, not just for me, but for the girls on this list. Please publish this quickly, but of course, not the girls’ names. Who knows—perhaps some are still alive and can be saved. This is what I will find out now. But publish the rest. Publish it for my Sunny, my dear Keto. Publish it for me. Publish it for all of the innocents that Jasper Breslin has destroyed. Once this hits the stands he will be crippled, and at least one empire of evil will crumble. The world will be a better place. Your journalism will have made a difference.

  Sincerely,

  T.”

  When I come to the end of the email, I let out a deep breath. It explains everything and nothing. Why Tatiana hates Breslin. Why she’s after him. Why she’s so obsessed, so relentless, so determined. But still—if I am reading between the lines correctly, this tells me that she’s working on her own. That she always has been. That this is the culmination of her efforts, her big reveal. She may be poised to strike a terrible blow against a bad guy, but what comes after she throws her final punch? She’s got no support. No backup.

  No chance.

  “Jesus,” I whisper. “Baby girl, you are in some deep shit. Is this true? I mean, I don’t doubt what you say about Breslin, but can you actually prove any of it?”

  She nods. “Yes.”

  “With the stuff you found on his laptop?”

  “Yes. This is why he cared about his laptop and wants it back. It’s his prized possession, his sick trophy for himself. Like all evil men, Breslin laid the path for his own destruction. What is the word the ancient Greeks had for lethal pride before the gods? Hubris? This is Breslin. He has hubris. He kept records of everything, for his own pride, foolishly believing no one would dig deep enough. But I did. And now, I am finally one step away from finding my sister. An eyewitness. Maybe there will be a few others, if we are lucky. If we are fast.”

  I shake my head. It sounds exactly like something Breslin would do, keeping explicit, obvious records of illegal shit, believing that even with a paper or digital trail no one would be able to touch him. He’s just that wonderful of a guy.

  And just that rich.

  Hell, he was rich and invulnerable enough to wipe my slate clean, and offer me a job when no one else would dare to touch me. He was immune to all my dirty laundry, able to absorb the infamy and scandal and come out unscathed. He picked me up out of one gutter and then chained me in an even dirtier hole. He was the only one powerful enough to erase my mistakes, like a fucking Dark Messiah. And the price was my soul—the thing that Tatiana is stirring back to life in me—against my better judgment.

  And now Tatiana is so hopeful, her eyes blazing with fervor and youthful zeal. I’m loath to crush her dreams of justice. I chew on my tongue, thinking.

  Tatiana continues, “Even in one short day after taking his laptop I was able to fact-check a lot. It all stands. The dates, the raids, the figures—much of it is in public record, but this links everything straight to Breslin for the first time. My press contacts, they have been waiting for this. It is a huge story. Once it breaks, his company will stagger to its feet, lose money. Lose face. It will bring Breslin to his knees and put him on the run.”

  While my brain strains to absorb all of this new information and find the best angle, I glance over the email addresses in her recipient list.

  “Rachel Lee at New York Times,” I read, “Jeanne Kane at Wall Street Journal, Melissa Anderson at USA Today. Jesus. Tatiana, this is big. You understand? You send this out, they publish it—I mean, there’s no going back after that. There’s no talking him down.”

  “No negotiating you mean.” She fixes her eyes on me. “What did you think, that I have come all this way and risked this much just to apologize to Breslin, to ask him to forgive me for upsetting him? My father used to have a saying. You don’t negotiate with rapid dogs. You shoot them in the head.”

  “Sounds like a warm guy, your father.”

  “He wasn’t. But he was right.”

  It’s hard to explain why I have such a weight on my chest right now. It’s not just my survival instincts objecting to getting myself deeper in the hole with Breslin, it’s something more. It’s worry.

  About her.

  “Look Tatiana,” I say, “I’ve got no love for Breslin, but I sure as hell respect the power and position that he holds. That is why I know that even if this does come out, he’ll find a way around it. His business might collapse, but he won’t. Not Breslin. At worst he’ll escape to some island paradise and leave a few cleaners behind to wipe out the people that hurt him. He’ll never let it go. That’s just the way this stuff works.”

  “Not even he can escape the law forever. Not even he can outrun God.”

  “It’s not about forever, Tatiana, it’s about who survives the longest. What are you, the avenging angel?”

  “Maybe!”

  “You’re not, you’re just a kid, Tatiana. A smart kid, but you’re alone.”

&
nbsp; Her eyes shimmer, filling with unshed tears. “You don’t have to tell me I am alone. Believe me, I know that. I know that more than anything. I know your being with me for one day hasn’t changed that. I’m not stupid.”

  Guilt pumps through me, and I clear my throat, toning my voice down a notch. “Listen to me, Tatiana. I know someone is going to die over this. It won’t be the reporters or anyone directly connected, no one in the public eye that would make him look bad. No, it will be the anonymous source, the leak. It will be you, Tatiana. And everyone close to you.”

  I don’t bother mentioning that this now includes me. Instead I take a deep breath, knowing this next part is uncomfortably true.

  “And I don’t want you to put yourself in that position.”

  Tatiana smiles, but it’s a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

  “Too late, Knox Cole,” she says. “He’s already got everyone close to me. I was in that position before we met.”

  Before I can say anything else to convince her to wait, to think, she flicks the mouse and clicks. I worry in vain as the email sends.

  It’s done.

  “Okay,” I whisper, my gut clenching with dread. “Okay. We’ll figure this out. We’ll just have to move fast, make sure he can’t find us.”

  “We have to be very fast now,” Tatiana says. “Follow my next clue.”

  I watch her nervous movements as she pulls something shiny and jagged out of the folder in the bag. It’s a broken-off piece of thin, silvery metal plate. She hands it to me, and I frown.

  “It’s a piece from his laptop,” she explains. “The bottom plate cover. He carved two addresses into it. The first is downtown, near Broadway and Lafayette. That’s where we are going now.”

  “And the second?”

  “That I don’t understand yet. But downtown –”

  Her voice cracks.

  “Hey, shh…it’s ok.”

  I don’t know why. But it triggers me. My hand reaches out with a mind of it’s own, tangling my fingers in Tatiana’s hair, caressing her neck, drawing her in to my side protectively. She curls in to me, and I feel some of those unshed tears silently wetting my chest. I can’t stand it, her tears. I can’t stand her closeness.