by Rebel Hart
“I know, but I needed her car in a pinch and it was the only option I had. I convinced her to stay in the car and listen in from her phone like a walkie-talkie. She got bored after five minutes and hung up anyway, so it’s fine,” Mariana explained. “Anyway, I’ve got him right where I want him, so it’s not a problem.”
I pressed the button again, ending the link, and my mother gave me a rare expression of shock. “You tapped her?”
“She dragged her cousin along to our meeting and had her phone on and connected to a call while we flirted over whiskey sours,” I said, unable to hide how cocky I was after such a roaring success.
Leaning back in her chair, my mother crossed her arms. “How did you know that?”
“Got to the rendezvous point before her and heard her tell cousin she was putting her on mute and putting her phone away. For an heiress who is supposed to be a master of espionage, she never even looks around when she enters a new place.”
“It makes sense. Very few people know she’s a Westun. She must be used to not being recognized when she’s out.”
I kicked one of my feet up onto my knee and shrugged. “Well, this will be an important, albeit late lesson for her.”
“So you’re not going to kill her right away?” my mom asked.
“I’ve got what I need to nail her on the MasCat deal. I heard her talking to her cousin and it sounds like they’re pretty close. Nique Havard. She’s Antonio Westun’s niece by his brother.”
My mom lowered her brow. “But her last name is Havard?”
“After her mom. To keep her unassociated with the Westun name. Her dad, Antonio’s brother Armin, took his wife’s last name. They’re a cookie-cutter, suburban family that wants nothing to do with the Westun legacy. One threat against them and Mari would backpedal pretty quickly.”
All at once, my mom’s posture changed and her expression turned sour. “Mari?”
Shit. I’d been telling myself all the way into my mom’s office that I wouldn’t make that mistake. “Yeah… Mariana prefers the shortened version of her name. Mari.”
Leaning forward, my mom’s voice got scary low. “Please tell me you aren’t trying to find a way around killing her because you want to continue screwing her, Bryce. You promised me you would handle this.”
“Mom, will you relax? Look, I’m not trying to be inappropriate, but your eldest is pretty suave. I’m not that desperate for women that I’d risk your entire legacy for this one. Relax.”
She nodded, seeming to take this seriously, which was a relief, though only a temporary one. Somewhere, in the very, very back of my mind, I had been toying with a scenario wherein I didn’t have to kill Mari. Clearly, I was going to have to let that go. “I just don’t want to kill her right now and waste the tap. Every time she meets with her dad or brothers, we can hear it. That’s invaluable.”
“Are you recording?” she asked.
“Every word is going straight into the cloud. I’ll spend each night listening to what I’ve gathered and giving you the goods.”
After taking a deep breath, she leaned back again, nodding her head. “Yes. This is good. I think—” Before she could finish her statement, a notification rang from one of her many devices. She lifted her phone and after clicking through it a little, she chuckled. “I just got a ping on you.”
“On me?”
She nodded. “Someone is looking into you.”
A smile slithered across my face, and I picked up my own phone. I navigated to Mari’s number and pressed it, flipping it to speaker and setting it back down on my mom’s desk.
“Hello?” Mari said, in a singsong tone.
“Well hello there, beautiful. How are you?” I asked.
A snicker broke out of her. “I’m okay. I was just thinking about you.”
“Were you?” I said. “Or were you trying to find more information on me?”
She went silent for a long time and my mom’s smile grew. “What?” Mari said.
“Mariana,” I said simply. “I know that you’re running a check on me.”
“I’m not.”
“Come on,” I said. “My mom has technology so advanced there’s stuff she won’t even release because she knows the world isn’t ready for it. She of course has international trackers set to constantly search for pings of anyone so much as typing our names into Google.”
An adorable, frustrated little growl came across the phone. “I should have expected as much.”
“I don’t understand anyway. Earlier today, we agreed to see each other. I’ve been honest with you so far. If there’s something you want to know about me, you could just ask.”
“I’m not stupid, Bryce,” she said, laughing. “There are things you wouldn’t tell me even if I asked.”
“I can’t think of any.” I winked at my mom and she stifled a laugh. I was showing off a little. It’d been quite some time since my mom beamed at me with pride. “We were supposed to get together tonight anyway. Try me. Ask me anything and I’ll tell you the honest to god truth. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Nothing?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing at all. For you, I’m an open book.”
“Fine. Meet me at Here, on the rooftop. Nine o’clock tonight and I’ll put it to the test.”
Though I had to hide it from my mother, internally, I was quite excited about the prospect of seeing Mari again. “I’m looking forward to it. Bye.”
“Bye.”
As soon as the call ended, my mom broke out into loud, jubilant laughter. “Oh you’re kind of a devil aren’t you?” Then she lifted an eyebrow. “You’re more like me than I thought.” She wagged her finger. “This way, you know everything she wants to know about you, while simultaneously making her think she’s got you wrapped around her little finger.”
“I didn’t spend all this time with you as my mom and learn nothing.”
“Oh, this is fun!” she screeched. “This must be what your father experiences when he watches football. Cat and mouse.” She sighed. “It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten to play.”
“Live vicariously through me.” I stood up then, scooping my phone off her desk and turning to leave. “Gotta go. I’ve got a date.”
“Bryce.”
I looked over my shoulder and she was back to her more serious self. “You’re smart, but so is she. Don’t get cocky and let your guard down.”
“I won’t. She’s already proven herself to be a worthy adversary. I’ve got it.”
“And,” she said. “Don’t get caught up in her. I saw that glimmer in your eyes when you heard her voice.” My heart started to beat a little faster. “Even if you don’t see it, you like her. Be careful.”
“Ma, I got it.” I waved a hand at her not to worry. “Love ya.”
As I was walking out though, concern did fill me ever so slightly. Mari had already thrown me off my game once. If I wasn’t careful, she’d do it again without batting an eye.
She was out to prove it with the outfit she wore to our date. The fake hair and eyes were gone, exposing her in her full glory. Unlike the professional, buttoned-up style of “Jade Meghan,” Mari seemed to prefer a darker style, much higher in heat, similar to the dress she’d worn for our first date.
Tonight, she was wearing a top and bottoms, but the bottoms were a flowing, gaucho style pant that opened up at her shins, revealing skin above strappy heels The top, to my delight, only covered her breasts, and was strapless, allowing for a full, delightful shot of her midriff, shoulders and neck.
As I approached her, I didn’t hesitate to wrap my arms around her and pull her against me for a kiss. She seemed a little taken off guard, but the official role I was playing was of a guy so into a girl that he was willing to make all of the dumb decisions to keep her around. It helped that I truly did enjoy getting my hands on Mari. Saying that she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known was far from a lie.
“You look great,” I said.
She
smiled. “Thank you.”
Her blonde hair wasn’t perfectly straight, nor was it curly. It had a loose bend to it and fell across her head in a way that looked wild while at the same time looking styled. A few pieces hung across her gorgeous, green eyes, but it only served to make them shine even brighter.
Here’s rooftop was closer to being a restaurant, as it had tables to sit and enjoy a meal, and a few waiters that roamed and took orders from a small, mostly appetizer-based menu. We ordered some chips and queso, and Mari ordered some quesadillas a little too excitedly, then we both ordered a couple of drinks and got comfortable.
“So,” she said, crossing one leg over the other. “You’ll really answer any question I ask you?”
“Of course. I’m not trying to hide anything from you. And now that neither of us is pretending we don’t both fully know who the other is, we can drop what’s left of the fake stuff and really get into the nitty gritty if you want.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not like you’re gonna tell me what your mom wants with MasCat?”
“I can tell you what I know,” I said. “What I told you on our date wasn’t a lie. I’m not that involved with family business anymore. My mom is using this as a trial run to determine whether or not I should be trusted again.”
“Do you think you’re doing a good job so far?”
I laughed. “I don’t know, but she’s ignored me for a year and a half, while you so far are giving me all sorts of good attention. Maybe I’ve decided that I’m more committed to keeping your attention rather than hers.”
Mari’s eyes slimmed, as if she was trying to determine if I was telling the truth or not. The joke was on her; my words were truths and lies intermingled to make them indiscernible. A trick I’d learned from the queen liar herself. “Okay. Then tell me what you know.”
I didn’t hesitate. “My mom has designed a software that, in short, accepts currency on behalf of any machine that needs it. There’s a lot of complicated, techie, mumbo jumbo that I wouldn’t care to know even if I could understand it, but it basically allows us to profit off of the machines’ profits. MasCat gets a dollar, we get a dollar, sort of thing.” Leaning in and setting her head on her hand, Mari’s eyes widened a little. She couldn’t believe I was actually telling her the truth. “Because nearly every casino here on the strip accepts currency in the form of points, chips, whatever form they use to track for gambling, there’s an opportunity—”
“For your mom to earn money off of every single casino machine under MasCat’s control.”
I shrugged. “Don’t need to be a genius to know the benefits of that.”
“What are you leaving out?” she asked.
“Probably a ton. If my mom were here, she’d be screaming at me about the nuances of technology and how there’s so much more to it than that.” I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know how they work. You’d have to ask her or my brother for that.”
“Is there a way to install the software remotely? You don’t need to be hardwired, and that’s what your brother has been doing in the casinos so far?”
“I guess? Supposedly there’s a way for him to do something similar, but it earns us significantly less money, and they have to be regularly serviced, so it keeps him in the casinos, which obviously our rivals don’t like. If she can get MasCat, he doesn’t have to be such a presence, and we won’t have to worry about being so… visible.” That time, I leaned in, bringing my face to hover just a few inches from Mari’s over the small table between us. “But that’s not what you wanted to know. You were looking into me personally. What were you hoping to find out?”
“Specs mostly. I know you can throw a punch, but that’s about it.”
“Specs? That’s easy. I’m 25, born April 27th. Boulder, born and raised, but came to Vegas because I’m a shit-head.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Yes, the hair is natural, and my parents are Gina and Drake Misterro. One sibling, my younger brother Baylor. He’s also my best friend, even though he’s about four years younger than me. I’m 6’3”, weigh 210. Stop me if I’m going too far.”
“You’re really in a probationary period right now?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
“What’d you do? I mean… I know that you caused issues and had to leave, but like… what happened specifically? Who’d you piss off?”
Cocky or not, that was a hard story to discuss. It showed more than one of my fatal flaws and really just reminded me how many things I prioritized above my family and our legacy. Still, the more I could convince Mari that she was getting the full truth from me, the better off I’d be. I would just have to remain on guard for her exploiting me by trying to put me in a similar position.
“I got cocky. All my life I trained to be good at following people and getting information, and an opportunity presented itself for me to rope in several big names at once by attending a meeting I hadn’t been invited to. My mom tried to tell me that I should stay away, that I was underestimating the skill of the people I was trying to go up against, but I didn’t listen. It was a high risk, high reward situation. I snuck into this meeting in spite of what my mom said, and I got caught. Almost immediately. Representatives from six different major crime groups in Colorado were there, and believing my mom had sent me in there, they decided on a temporary truce in order to all team up and take her down. In a single night she got shut out of every single business she’d worked her way into and there were about fifteen attempts on our lives in the span of about 48 hours, including someone setting our house on fire.”
“Wow.” Her eyes widened. “You weren’t able to take the blame on yourself?”
“I tried, but it only made things worse. My mom deliberately told me to stay home. She said she would handle it, but maybe I was guilty, or just more cocky. I dragged Baylor down with me trying to take care of things myself and nearly got us both killed. She had to max out her remaining favors to save us, but then the groups turned against anyone who helped her, which turned the last of her friends into enemies. Two decades of work, I threw in the trash in a couple of nights. So… yeah. She doesn’t really trust me right now.”
“Can’t say that I blame her,” Mari said, wincing. “I mean, what I’d gathered of you was that you were arrogant and problematic, but I had no idea it was… this bad.”
“Yeah, so I don’t know. My mom decided to give me this little task, but I’m a little… skittish.”
The look of understanding she gave me then told me that telling her the true story hadn’t been a mistake. She now had a valid reason to think I wasn’t lying to her when I told her I didn’t want to follow through on this task my mother had given me. Her thinking I was vulnerable made her more vulnerable. Giving a little to get a lot; it was an important part of what I was up to.
“Was that all you wanted to know about me?” I asked.
Her eyes flicked across my face before meeting my eyes. “One more question.”
“Okay?”
“On the yacht with those… binds and stuff…” Just the memory of it sent a jolt below my waist, but I tried to ignore it. “You called it a kink.”
“It is.”
“But it felt different from like… BDSM stuff.”
“That’s not my kink,” I said.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s your kink called?”
I got even closer to her face. “It’s called sensory deprivation. Deadening one or two of your senses to make the… sensations even stronger.”
There was no denying that it worked with Mari. The way she reacted was top tier. I’d never had any woman respond the way she did. “Is there more to it?”
“There is… that was just a tip of the iceberg,” I said. “Unfortunately, the only way to explain it any further is to show you… which I’m happy to do, of course.”
I saw the flash of excitement in Mari’s eyes and she shifted in her chair like she couldn’t wait to go. She closed the tiny remaining distance between us, pressing her lips to mine, but
then she pulled back and shook her head. “Maybe some other time.”
The smile that had been permanently plastered on my face since I walked in finally fell. It wasn’t just with Mari. I don’t think I’d ever had a woman turn me down before.
“Did you… just reject me?” I asked.
She set her lips on mine again before standing up, pulling her clutch with her. “Yeah,” she whispered in a seductive tone. “I did.”
After that, she sauntered away from the table, swishing her hips and not giving me even a second look back over her shoulder. She’d played me, which in any other situation, would make me angry.
But for some odd reason my smile was back, and I couldn’t wipe it off my face.
12
Mari
By the skin of my teeth over the course of the next couple of weeks, I managed to keep Bryce perfectly at arm’s length. We continued to date, meeting up here and there for dinner, drinks, even doing disgusting couples stuff like going to the movies or walking around the zoo. Despite trying to convince me that his relationship history was relatively short, Bryce was a romantic, and certainly knew how to up the ante from day-to-day. It took active effort not to go home with him most nights, but I needed that leverage to keep him hanging on in search of more. If getting me back into the bedroom was his end goal, then as long as I held out, he’d keep trying, and I could continue to exploit his stupidly innocent beliefs about honesty and not hiding anything from me.
“Yeah, that and the fact that you like him,” Nique barked at me one afternoon while I was getting ready for a lunch date.
I scoffed at her. “I do not like him. This is all a means to an end. A benefit for my family.”
“Whatever,” she grumbled. “I work a 9-to-5 as a means to an end for my family, and every day I walk out of here looking like a trash panda, griping about how irritated I am that I have to go, and every day I come wandering back in, looking even worse, cussing about how bad my day was. Your means to an end has you the most sparkly I think I’ve ever seen you, and you talk about this man like… all the time. I mean, who was the last guy that you dated this seriously?”
