grazie per l’aiuto – thanks for the help
non dovevi farlo – you didn’t have to do that
stronzo – fucker
orrendo – horrible
bene – good
fratello – brother
informatore – informant/spy
carissima – dearest one
sei tu – is it you
vieni – come
mio figlio – my son
chi sei – who are you
la mia bella sorella – my beautiful sister
e possibile – is it possible
Papa, sono io – Dad, it’s me
veramente – truly
brava ragazza – good girl
Spanish
hermana – sister
amiga – friend (female)
Her face is on all the billboards, on every movie screen, at every awards gala. She’s bigger than life, and she acts every bit the diva.
Underneath her bratty facade, something secret lays dormant.
I can sense it, because I’ve got secrets too. But when I’m hired as her bodyguard, I almost refuse. I don’t want to tempt the demons in me. With her sinful good looks, and that laugh that drives me wild, I know I’m in for a hell of a ride.
But I can’t let her in. I won’t. No matter how determined she is, no matter how much she teases me. Until suddenly, her hotel room is under lockdown.
It’s just her, and me.
For hours.
On Christmas.
I’m falling for her. But can her light finally chase away the darkness that guards my heart?
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PROLOGUE
“J oe. Hey, it’s me. Listen, we’ve got a problem. You’re not gonna like it, and I think you know what it’s about. But I want--Joe, for god’s sake, calm down. Joe, I want to help you out, but we don’t got a lot of time. Someone’s on the way to your house now. As soon as I hang up, get into your car and drive west out of town until you get to the gas station by that billboard with the hole in it. I’ll meet you there.”
Joe’s still stammering out a few panicked words when I end the call and look at myself in the bathroom mirror, seeing the dark rings under my eyes. I brush my hand through my messy, dark hair, then run cold water and splash some in my face and into my short, scruffy beard.
I give myself one more look in the mirror, wondering if the face about to drive into that Vegas desert is the same man that’ll be driving out.
A minute later, I get into my car, give my shitty duplex one last look, and pull out onto the road, the headlights of the convertible being the only light besides the thin sliver of the moon in the sky.
I won’t be coming back here.
My rough hand grips the steering wheel tightly as I roar down the desert road, nothing but endless sand and the occasional dried-out shrub on both sides of me. There’s no music playing from my radio. No piping-hot coffee in my hand.
Just me and the weight of what’s got to happen tonight.
Joe was scared shitless in that phone call. Part of me wonders if he’ll listen to me and actually meet me out here. Part of me hopes he doesn’t. Hell, maybe that’s why I was so curt on the phone, in my subconscious.
The mob wants Joe Mackey dead. He’s in deep, deep debt, and they’ve realized they’re never getting their money from him.
In the passenger’s seat of my car is a bag full of a week’s rations, a forged passport with a fake name and Joe’s picture in it, and enough cash to last anyone a nice, long time. It’s the perfect package to skip the border and settle down in Mexico in relative comfort. It’s the best chance for someone like Joe to give the mob the slip and start over as a new man.
And in my jacket is the gun I’m bringing to kill Joe Mackey.
The bag is just bait to get his guard down.
I’ve been an enforcer for the mafia in Las Vegas for a long time. Longer than I’d like to admit. The money and the power I could wield even as just hired muscle would be tempting to any young man growing up in Vegas, but if I could have seen myself now, I wonder whether I would have still started agreeing to security gigs, then debt collection, then extortion. Now murder.
I’m about to cross a line I can’t come back from.
I reach the gas station and find that I’m alone. Either Joe hasn’t gotten here yet, or he’s panicked and fled on his own. I almost wish he has, but that’s selfish. It would take his blood off my hands, but he’s not a smart enough man to outrun the mob. They’ll find him if he’s on his own.
I park my car in front of the billboard I told him to meet me at. It’s a weathered old thing that hasn’t been touched in longer than the abandoned gas station has. It’s mostly rust and rotting wood, but the last faded, peeling picture is still up there.
It’s a picture of a woman with long, brown hair in a one-piece swimsuit. She’s turned so that her ass is facing the viewer, looking over her shoulder with a bright smile that looks downright eerie with all the grime of the years on it. I think it used to advertise the swimsuit company, but there’s a huge hole in it toward the bottom where the logo used to be.
While I wait for Joe to show, I stare up at the thing for a few minutes. It always amazes me that some people like the model and the people who run her brand are so close yet so far from the morbid business I’m about to do here.
They just live in this perfect little bubble over everything, never worrying about money, never wondering where the next paycheck or meal will come from, never having to turn to something so dark to survive.
The shine of headlights behind me snaps me out of my thoughts. Damn him, he’s coming after all.
It makes it worse knowing that the only reason Joe decided to listen to my offer is that I’ve known him practically all my life. Mom is a blackjack dealer and dad walked out when I was a kid, so I grew up in and around casinos. And that meant I saw Joe a lot. I remember when he only had a few gray hairs, but the Joe I see looking feverish as he brings his car to a stop beside mine is almost bald and starting to go white.
He drank the last traces of his youth away. That’s what got him into this mess.
“Wes!” Joe nearly shouts my name as he clambers out of his car, running a hand over his face before running up to me and shaking my hand vigorously. “Oh my god, Wes, I-I-I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t mention it, Joe,” I say, keeping my tone even. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“Shit, I know,” he says, sighing deeply. “I just... I knew you had contacts with these thugs, but I didn’t know it would let you see all my dirty laundry like this. You’re a good kid, Wes, I hate that you even have an ear to this kind of situation. It was a damn hospital bill when I was young, it put me under so much strain I had to turn to the booze, and the bills just kept coming and I kept drinking and-and-”
“None of that matters anymore, Joe,” I say, putting a hand on his shoulder and smiling while I hold back the sadness in my heart. He smiles back at me, and it wrenches a knife into my soul.
“Come on, I’ll show you what I’ve got.”
I move to the passenger’s seat and pull out the bag, setting it on the hood of the car. I look him in the eye.
“Food. Passport. Money. Your new name is Harold Smith. Skip Mexico City, there should be enough in here to get you all the way down to Merida. I hear it’s nice. The drive will be rough, but it’s not as rough as what the mob will do.”
“Wes…” Joe says, incredible relief on his face, “I...I don’t know what to say. Where did all this come from?”
“Don’t worry about it. Trade cars with me. This one’s clean.”
He takes a breath.
“Thank you, Wes. I...I’ll never be able to repay you for this.”
“I know,” I say. “We don’t have much time.”
“Right,” he says, and after a moment’s hesitation, he takes the bag, turns, and starts to walk back to
the car.
It’s a perfect shot.
In a fluid motion, I reach into my jacket and draw my pistol.
He hears it cocking and freezes.
There’s a moment of silence between us.
Finally, I break it with a few calm words.
“Get on your knees, Joe.”
In disbelief, he obeys, slowly getting down and setting the bag aside before he puts his hands up.
“They...they told you to do it, didn’t they?”
“They did, Joe.”
I step toward him, gun trained on the back of his head. His hands are trembling. He turns his head ever so slightly, and I can see that his face is pale. “Wes, you don’t have to do this.”
“It’s better this way,” I say. “I’ll make it quick and clean.”
“You don’t want to do this, Wes,” he says, a tremble in his voice. “You’re a good guy, Wes.”
My jaw sets, and I take a breath, leveling the sights right where I know the shot will be painless.
My finger rests on the trigger, less than a second from that point of no return.
Hours later, dawn is just starting to break over the desert horizon, painting the sky beautiful shades of blue and pink mixed together.
I’m not driving back to Vegas. I never will again, and I’ll never look back to that life. I’m headed west, toward California.
I know how the mafia works. This job was supposed to be a test, and they expected me to come back with news of success, and they’d discuss a promotion for me--something more permanent.
But that’s not going to happen. This was the last errand I’d ever accept from the mafia.
By about 6:00 AM, I pull out my phone and call up the one and only contact I have out west.
After a long wait, he picks up the line, and a groggy voice answers.
“...Wes? What the fuck do you want calling at ass-crack o’clock?”
“Cody,” I say, my voice gruffer than usual. “I’ll buy you breakfast to make up for it. I’ll be in LA in about an hour.”
“The fuck? Shit, man, what are you coming all the way out here for?” There’s a pause. “You’re not dragging that shady shit my way, are you?”
“On the contrary,” I say, watching the skyline of the city start to come into view, “I’m doing exactly the opposite. I’m calling in that favor you owe me. I need a place to crash until I can get my own place.” I take a breath. “...And I’m going to have to find a new line of work.”
MOLLY
“Have a holly, jolly Christmas! It’s the best time of the year!”
No, thank you. I reach out and press a button on the car stereo.
“Feliz navidad!”
Double no, thank you. Click. Silence.
“Much better,” I murmur to myself, heaving a sigh. I look to my left, through the tinted window of my cherry-red Lexus RX. The beach is virtually deserted, the white sand smooth and undisturbed by footprints.
If you squint and suspend reality just a little bit, you can almost believe it’s snow.
But it’s not.
Because this is Los Angeles, and even though it is December, the thermometer on my dashboard tells me it’s barely less than seventy degrees outside. Yeah, it’s going to be one those winters. Most people here love the fact that it never gets too cold, but this December, it would almost be nice if the weather could match my current mood.
I’m driving back from possibly the second-most uncomfortable one-on-one meeting I’ve ever had. I met with my newly-hired lawyer, Arthur O’Connelly, attorney to the stars, to discuss the awful situation I found myself in last week.
I still can’t believe this is happening.
I have read in the gossip columns (yes, even I have my weak moments) about many actresses and musicians having to break their contracts suddenly, and the scandals that come to light as a result. It happens so often, I’m actually surprised nobody in my family has gone through it yet.
After all, we are probably the definition of what you might call Hollywood royalty.
My dad, Kenneth Parker, is a semi-retired producer and director. He’s made over fifty films during his career and garnered all kinds of prestigious accolades, hosting award shows, being asked to guest-star on variety shows, taking interviews on talk shows. He’s well-respected and well-known, a permanent fixture in LA history.
My mom, Pamela Franklin, is an actress with almost the same amount of star power as my father. She’s starred in so many movies, she starts to lose count of them, often forgetting which movie was filmed where and when. I can’t blame her. My mom is a workaholic to the extreme. Hell, even when she was pregnant with me and then my little sister, she kept working right up until the days we were born.
It bothers me when people say my parents don’t deserve what they have. They’ve worked their asses off to give my sister Andie and me a wonderful life.
And to their credit, they’ve shielded us from much of the pain and stress of being in the public eye, even despite the many times we’ve been photographed and editorialized, with or without permission granted. They’ve always had a pretty tight grip on controlling how much media exposure we got as kids, wanting us to have the most normal childhoods possible, considering the circumstances. I can thank them for not turning me into some bratty, spoiled princess who refuses to work for what she wants.
No, as much as the media would love to portray me that way, I won’t let them. Besides, how boring is that? Can these journalists really not come up with a different angle than the whole overdone “entitled rich girl riding on her parents’ coattails” scenario?
Don’t get me wrong, I fully admit that my parents’ connections and insider knowledge of the industry has helped me, given me a leg up on the competition. But to make up for it, I do work really hard. My career is everything to me.
I want to be respected not for my famous family legacy or my last name, but for my talent and ambition. I may be following in my mother’s footsteps by becoming an actress, but I refuse to be typecast into the same roles she was. Not because I don’t think my mom isn’t an incredible actress who has played really cool parts, but because I don’t want everyone to constantly draw comparisons between us.
We’re two different people, with different talents and interests.
If it isn’t already abundantly clear, I really, really don’t like when someone slaps a label on me before they even know who I am. People tend to judge me based on my appearance. I understand why. With my thick, mahogany brown waves of hair nearly down to my ass, swimsuit-model body, glittering smile, and big amber eyes, I look like an understudy to a Bay Watch character.
Add to my looks a famous family name and you have a recipe for a gossip-column darling, a favorite of paparazzi and serious journalists alike. I don’t know what it is, but people are obsessed with the children of celebrities.
When I was born, the paparazzi staked out the hospital, then our family home in the Hollywood hills. I know my parents were overwhelmed, terrified that overexposure would mess with my head. So they kept a tight watch on Andie and me, tightened their security, threatened legal action against those photographers who got too close and pushed their boundaries. But my parents are also pragmatic. They understood that the public’s fascination with their kids was potential source of profit.
So when I was eleven, I posed with my mother for Vanity Fair. I recorded my first commercial for some insurance company when I was thirteen. From there, I springboarded into other minor roles in print and film advertising as well as the occasional part in soap operas.
I’ve always been interested in fashion, and my mom made sure I was constantly dressed to impress, which paid off--photos of my outfits ended up in magazine features almost monthly. At sixteen, I landed the cover of Teen Vogue. I had a recurring part as the face of a shampoo company for a year or so. At age eighteen, I skipped my senior prom to walk in a fashion show-- closing for one of my favorite avant-garde designers. And in the front row of that fashio
n show sat a casting director who scouted me for my first major big break-- the lead female character in a dystopian teen drama called The World Enders.
Directly after walking across the stage at my high school graduation, I hopped on a plane to Vancouver to shoot the film, in which I played a cheerleader-turned-survivalist who uses her leadership abilities and athleticism to head a group of teens during an apocalyptic war. It was a little over the top, a little cheesy at times, but it was wildly successful. Critics loved it. The public loved it. And ever since I played that role, I have received scripts and offers on a near-daily basis.
It became a lot to sort through on my own, so my parents hooked me up with one of their oldest friends, a fast-talking agent called Eddie Arnold. He’s been a friend of the family since before I was born, and I always thought of him as a kind of uncle.
Or at least, I used to.
Anyway, the point is that I have poured my blood, sweat, and tears into my career and my reputation, which is why it’s so scary that I’m having to put it all on hold right now.
And it’s not even my fault.
I roll my eyes and grit my teeth, forcing myself not to break down and cry.
“Come on, Molly, you’re stronger than that,” I whisper to myself as I turn the corner and drive up to my cozy condo in Marina del Rey. I parallel-park on the street and, slinging my workout bag over my shoulder, head down the street to my neighborhood gym. This gym is the main reason I pay as much as I do per month for my condo, because it’s right up the road.
In my line of work, it’s vital that I keep my body in tip-top shape. People don’t hire me solely for my skills--at least, not yet. Right now, they hire me because I’m pretty and because my particular style--my brand--is really hot at the moment. This year, this month, this day, I am exactly what those Hollywood executives are looking for. When I walk into a casting room, I can see faces light up at the sight of me. I am the answer to their questions.
I know this probably makes me sound a little arrogant. Too full of myself. But trust me, there isn’t a single part of my existence I take for granted. I know how lucky I am to have inherited my father’s wealth and prestige along with my mother’s beauty and talent. But my competition is often just as rich, beautiful, and skilled as I am. I need to have the edge. That one thing that makes me stand out, makes me more valuable to the crew.
Bound in Love (Bound to the Bad Boy Book 3) Page 19
