“Gabe, at the Rainbow Disco?” I shrilled.
“That’s the one,” she muttered, no longer seeming very focused on the conversation. “He told me that the Battistas and the Castillos are opposing forces in South Florida. You know, like, hm, Coke and Pepsi. Or, mm, The Simpsons and Family Guy. The Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync.”
I scoffed and tossed my hair, turning. This wasn’t worth my time. “I can’t believe you,” I muttered, trudging toward the stairs again, not letting her get under my skin. I bulged my eyes and shook my head. “Whatever.”
“I know, right? ‘N Sync was so much better than The Backstreet Boys. Can you believe how well Justin Timberlake is doing? And here I really thought I was going to marry that sexy bastard. He’s seen me topless, you know.”
“No, Maddy, I MEAN, I can’t believe you’re telling me this shit, trying to throw me off my game,” I snapped, whirling. “You know, I always thought your bitchy side was hilarious? But I never had to see it face-to-face. It’s actually pretty ugly.”
“Is not!” Madeline said. “I’m being totally legit, Sofi, and you’re just butt hurt because I’m offending your million and fifth boyfriend! Think about it!” She plunged the brush back into its bottle and closed it with one tight flick of the wrist, twisting on the sofa and standing with her ankle cocked and her wet toes flared out. “Maybe it’s not realistic to just assume that two families fighting in the same business world would be all Capulet and Montague, but it’s also not entirely innocent to approach one of the members of that family and poach her. All I’m saying, Sofi, is that something is up.”
I swallowed. “Maybe you’re jealous,” I suggested. “Because I’m excited about my life and you’re just doing the same things you’ve always done.”
Madeline crossed her arms in front of her chest and pouted at me. “My life is awesome,” she sniffed.
“I know you want Leo,” I told her. It was a guess, but a well-educated one. Madeline was the spoiled and self-centered daughter of busy billionaires. She expected everything she wanted to be delivered to her on a satin pillow, and she was wholly numb on the inside, after being bounced from one nanny’s lap to another until she was old enough to send away to boarding school. It wasn’t just Leo she wanted. It was anyone and anything that seemed to be making someone else happy, something that she could never be.
Madeline shrugged with one bony shoulder. “I was super high last night,” she said. “I was feeling bold, but whatever, I did not actually care if he wanted to get weird or not, just fyi.”
“I knew it,” I said, turning from her. “Knew it.”
“Whatever, Sofi! Sex doesn’t matter! It’s JUST SEX,” she called after me as I pounded up the stairwell. “Would I have partied with Leo? Um, hell yes! But you’re not just partying, Sofi, and that’s something totally different. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you since we met those two bozos. Something is not right, and it’s not just partying, not just sex. You trust him. But I don’t. Something is going on. He has his own family, you know?” I rounded the corner of the bannister and headed down the corridor toward the guest room where I was staying. “Why did he come shopping for an accomplice from his enemy’s family?”
I closed the door loudly, hoping that she would get it. I was closed.
Collapsing onto the guest room bed, I sighed, loud and long, to get out all of this gross feeling inside me.
Don’t let her just get in your head like that and crawl around, I commanded myself. She’s just fucking with you. She’s bored. She wants to play with you and Leo so she has something to do, and because she’s jealous, being left out of everything this week.
Still. I put my face into my hands.
It made sense. Why me? The dancing thing was no good. It had to be more than that. I’d begged to go on campaigns with my family, but had only managed to occasionally stow away on small scores from the fringes of their operation. It wasn’t a level of experience worthy of poaching. But I’d been willing to let it go, because I hadn’t really cared; I’d been excited to start. Yet if Madeline was being honest, if Gabe had told her that our families were enemies, then why the hell HAD he invited me in on this campaign? That made no sense.
But maybe that was why he’d been so strange, there one minute and gone the next, deep inside me and then icy and distant, tender and then bruising and then slipping off.
What if there was nothing really between us at all, and he just wanted to build trust with me—and I was stupid and needy enough to fall for it?
I bound my arms around my pillow and buried my face into its feather down. There was an awful weight on my chest, a pressure about to snap any minute, and I hated myself for it, but then tears beaded into my eyes and slipped. I let out a groan of sorrow, muffled by my damp pillow, and felt a little better, so I opened the dam completely and just cried.
What an idiot. What an IDIOT.
Damn it, it had happened again. Every time I believed in someone, I’d find a smokescreen, and a complete stranger hiding behind it. How could I be so naïve? Why did I always have to move so fast and feel so goddamn much? And all I had wanted was to be part of this score.
No. All I had wanted was Leonardo Battista.
10
Leo
I whistled to myself as I tied a black-and-red striped tie around my neck, examining my reflection in the mirror. Of course, it was just a dinner, a business dinner—but still. A man needed to always look his best. I slapped a little aftershave onto my jaw and went to affix my watch to my wrist, whistling without consciously realizing it. I smoothed my hands over the front of my suit jacket and felt a little ridge in the front pocket. Hm. I’d left an old cigarette in there. And the old Leo, who hadn’t quit, wouldn’t be able to stop himself—but I didn’t need it anymore. I felt great.
“Uh, can you fucking hear yourself?” Gabe called from further down the hall. I ducked my head out of the bathroom and saw him loping down the stairs in sweats, a pair of comically large headphones strung around his shoulders.
“Of course I can fucking hear myself,” I answered snappily.
“Oh, great, because I was worried that you didn’t realize it.”
I hesitated and frowned, resistant, yet I knew that I had to bite. Because I had no fucking clue what he was talking about. “Realize what?” I asked flatly.
“That you’re whistling that song they put into every movie from the late ‘80s to the early ‘90s,” Gabe sneered. “Walking on Sunshine. Blugh.”
“I was not,” I denied staunchly, though as soon as he’d said it, I’d gone cold all over. It was the first time in my life that I’d witnessed Gabriel Battista be right about something. Terrifying. “It’s Für Elise.”
“Für Elise doesn’t have those two kicky notes, whoa, whoa!” Gabe sang to me. “Anyway, man, no need to be ashamed of being caught BRIEFLY enjoying your life. If you didn’t loosen that noose you call your tie, heart attack was right around the corner. Going out to see What’s-her-face again?”
“Sofi,” I reminded him testily, abandoning the bathroom to fetch my loafers from the ground floor. “Sofi Castillo, the ballerina from So You Think You Can Dance whose performance you’ll never forget.”
“Right, right.” Gabe waved me off as I passed. “I’ve never actually seen that show.”
I paused long enough to give Gabe a look. There are lots of things you can say about my little brother, but you can’t say that he’s bad at his job. If you need someone to be fake, Gabe Battista is the handy man, safety inspector, interior decorator and die-hard ballet fan that you require.
“Aren’t you going jogging?” I asked. He was just lounging on the couch now.
“Pfft. No.” Gabe gestured lazily toward his sweats and headphones. “Why would you think that?”
“No reason,” I smirked. Even my annoying little brother couldn’t dash my high spirits tonight.
“So, where are you lovebirds headed?”
“We’re not lovebirds,” I sco
ffed, slipping on my loafers.
“Uh huh,” Gabe agreed with high amusement. “So, where are you going?”
“Belly of the Whale,” I answered haltingly.
“Mm. That restaurant that you hate, but she loves,” Gabe reminded me. “Right?”
“I thought it would be good to do something nice for her,” I said, snatching my wallet and car keys from next to the vase of flowers on the small table beside the front door.
“Before she goes to jail, you mean?” Gabe asked. “You want to do something nice for her, before sending her to jail?”
I glowered at him, but said nothing. My shoulders squared without conscious thought, and my knuckles tightened my dominant hand into a fist. As if he was the one threatening her, when it was me. He was just talking about me. He was just telling me about myself.
“I guess,” I said, gruff. I turned and jerked the front door open, face flaming.
“Dude,” Gabe called after me, “are you banging this chick?”
I glared over my shoulder at him. “In some respects.”
“In some RESPECTS?”
“On two occasions,” I snapped. “Or three, depending on your definition of sex.”
“You’ve only known her for three days!” Gabe cried. “You’re setting her up for grand larceny this weekend!”
My jaw clenched. “Don’t you think I know that?” I seethed.
“So WHY are you taking her out to some stupid restaurant that she likes?”
“I wish I still smoked,” I mumbled, still feeling that cigarette in my pocket.
“I thought we both had agreed to quit,” Gabe said.
“Damn, bro, I need it bad.”
Gabe peered up at me, and slowly, like he was watching a goddamn miracle, a soft smile broke over his face. “Seriously?” he whispered. “That chick got into you, didn’t she?” He lowered his voice further, nearly laughing. “Are you going to be able to pull off your great revenge scheme after all, Houdini? Because, remember, I’m heading out of town tomorrow, and I won’t be back until the score—or, the fake score—on Saturday. So, if you want to change your mind, let me know, cause I’m going to be pissed if I come back early and you don’t even want to go through with it—”
“All part of the plan,” I reassured him. “Just wanted her to trust me. She was asking too many questions.”
“For the millionth time, Leo, we don’t have to go through with this. It’s not too late—”
I pulled out that errant cigarette from my pocket and crushed it in my hands, watching the tobacco fall all over the expensive carpet. And any other day of the week, seeing someone else do what I had just done would have sent me into a five-alarm rage. Suddenly, the antique rug didn’t register on my emotional scale anymore.
I turned from Gabe and started to walk out. For a minute, I really considered grabbing those flowers, too, but that would be—crazy. What was I thinking? It was like two men were living in my body since meeting Sofi. One of them was decent, and the other was losing his mind with lust and guilt.
And unfortunately, the decent one was the figment—not the crazy one.
“So, you can picture her in those handcuffs all right?” Gabe called after me innocently. “You’re okay with what she’s going to think about you when she gets out—in her thirties?”
Her eyes, wide and mournful and so betrayed, peering through the back of a squad car, flashed in my mind. Wisps of red curls coming loose from her bun as she struggled with the police officer. Simultaneously a stabbing sensation dug in my chest.
“I’m in fucking control of this, Gabe!” I roared, gripping the flower vase and whipping it at the wall. The glass shattered with an awesome blast, sending wet stems onto the floor in a pile, and I was able to breathe again. Sometimes I just needed to destroy something, to hear it shatter or see it in pieces. It was oddly calming to exercise control when I felt like I had none. If my life was spinning away from me—at least I was in control of that fucking vase of flowers. It wouldn’t mess with me again.
Gabe cleared his throat and blinked at me from the den. “Clearly,” he offered lightly.
I pivoted and marched out the door.
By the time I reached the Castillo house, I felt better. I’d rolled down the windows on the Porsche and let the wind get in there. Taken some deep breaths. Harnessed my chi. (I’ve gone to anger management courses three times in my life, all of them related to traffic infractions.) It was going to be all right, I told myself. Maybe—I don’t know—maybe I wouldn’t go through with the plan at all. I could call it all off if I wanted to. I was still in control. I was always in control. I wouldn’t make myself do anything I didn’t want to.
Reaching the fern-fringed, polished stone stoop of the Castillo estate, I knocked at the door as a completely different man. It was possible that my blood pressure was even the standard one twenty over eighty. Anything’s possible. I leaned heavily on the door frame with one arm, letting my eyes go soft, preparing my body for the impact Sofi always had, like a delicate brush fire sweeping my nerve endings with a single glance. Gabe had been right about something else, too. I could be happy. It was basically the only thing I was doing that WAS legal.
The door opened and a colorless, limp, heroin chic twenty-something stood before me, smiling wanly. It may have been a sarcastic smile, as it did nothing to warm her eyes, the unlilting blue of a marble. The simmer sputtered right out of my own eyes. “Madeline,” I greeted her formally, pulling myself off the door frame. “Is Sofi here?”
Madeline rolled her eyes and made a gesture of apathy and disdain with her mouth. “Yeah,” she moped. “She’s upstairs, wallowing like a big, fat baby duck.”
“Wallowing like a what?” I frowned, letting myself into the house. “The last time I saw her, she was smiling and talking about taking a hot shower to get the sand out of her hair. What did you do?”
Madeline stared up at me, hollow. “The right thing,” she replied monotonously. “Not that you would know, but it feels pretty weird.”
“What ‘right thing’?” I hissed, starting through the foyer and toward the stairwell. Sofi had given me the tour when I’d come over for lunch yesterday.
“Figures that you wouldn’t know,” Madeline simpered. “I just told her what Gabe told me, and I implored,” she panned one hand forward, “that she spare a little common sense.”
“You don’t know me, Madeline,” I said, bolting up the steps, not bothering with Madeline’s nonsense about common sense anymore. Instead I crossed to Sofi’s room and pounded my fist on the door. So much for that standard blood pressure; a vein sprang to life on my temple. “Sofi?” I snapped. “Sofi, you in there?”
There was a long pause before Sofi’s voice, soft and mournful, leaked through the door. “I’m here,” she replied weakly. “I thought we were meeting at the restaurant.”
“Mm.” Still coming off the adrenaline of conversing with that vicious bitch downstairs, I softened quickly at the sound of Sofi’s voice. “Well, I came to pick you up. Open the door, please,” I pled gently. “Is everything okay? You sound like hell.”
“I’m fine.”
“You know, it’s late,” I went on. “If you thought we were meeting at the restaurant, what are you still doing here?”
“Just thinking.”
I laughed mirthlessly, like I’d been socked in the gut and lost my breath. “Thinking about standing me up?” I asked. But, for once, I wasn’t mad at a slight to my ego, at a kink in my plans. I was just worried about her. “Hey, look. Will you open the door, please?”
There was another span of silence, and then the door opened and Sofi Castillo was standing there, wearing the same thing she was wearing earlier. She had clearly never showered. Her hair was still a kinky mess, and her poor eyes were bloodshot, mascara smeared and faded. I winced at the sight.
“I look that bad, huh?” she croaked.
“Oh, no, no, no. Sofi…even when you look terrible, even when you haven’t showered an
d your makeup is from yesterday and there is sand in your hair, you look—perfect.” I kissed the tips of my fingers and smiled at her.
Sofi smiled back weakly. “Okay,” she whispered, stepping out of the way. “Come in. Give me just a minute. I would like to step in the shower, if you wouldn’t mind.”
I caught her arm as she drifted away from me. “Sofi, wait,” I whispered, “what did Madeline say to you?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head. For a moment, we just stared back and forth, then she stepped forward suddenly and one smooth hand slithered along the back of my neck, drawing my lips down to hers. I reeled. The kiss spoke more volumes than an answer would have; she’d been really rattled, but she was choosing me.
She still tasted like the ocean, and a hot peach sunset flared in my memory. Thinking about that, I wanted to choose us, too. Our fingers locked together, gritty with earth. Her plush rear turned up like a fluffed pillow. Her whole world opening up for me, slick and smooth and grasping tightly to me, like she’d been waiting her whole life for this perfect fit. Hell, I wanted to do it again. Do it for the rest of our lives.
I sighed as our lips separated, viciously recalling the enthusiasm with which I had wanted to come inside her last night, restraining myself. Damn. I hated to think this, but fuck…maybe Gabe had finally been right about something—three times in one day. Yeah, maybe he’d been right. Maybe I couldn’t do this.
Any other woman and she’d be facing the swirling lights and siren of Cyrus de Silva and I wouldn’t care, wouldn’t care about anything but getting my revenge on Uncle Ronaldo, but—maybe I was too selfish to let her go. I wanted her for myself now. My hands slid over her like she was my Porsche, like she was my suit jacket. Like she was mine.
“So, what was that for?” I asked. No girl had ever been so upset, stood me up, and then turned around, put her fingers into my hair, and kissed me softly and deeply. And I just wanted to stretch her out on that bed and make her feel better.
The Perfect Con (A Bad Boy Romance Novel) (Bad Boy Confessions Book 1) Page 9
