My lip quirked. “I thought you were here to drive me deeper.”
“That’s how you get out,” she told me sagely. “The only way out is through.”
“Hold on a second, Maddie,” I asked, breaking away from her and traveling back to the bathroom for that pregnancy test. It had to be ready by now. “I’ve got to see something.”
“Now, you’ve got this entire estate to dismantle,” Madeline went on over my shoulder, “and so far, I’m the only one who’s been fucking shit up.”
I picked up the test.
“You need to get in there and use your resources, Sofi.”
A blue plus sign.
Not a negative.
A positive.
“Break a vase. Rip a skirt. You know what I mean?” Madeline went on—but her voice had become vague and distant to my ears.
I looked at myself in the mirror. Disheveled curls and wild eyes.
Pregnant. I was pregnant.
Pregnant with the child of Leonardo Battista.
“You’ll feel better,” Madeline said, her voice coming closer. “Trust me.” She cropped up behind me in the mirror, leaning on the bathroom door and watching me thoughtfully. “What’s that?”
My eyes met hers in the mirror and said everything for me. Knowing the way Madeline carried on, I was somehow certain she could recognize a pregnancy test without having to be told what it was.
Her eyebrows twisted. “Are you—?”
Her question was interrupted by an abrasive sound. A deep, shuddering thud emanated from the downstairs area. But Madeline ignored the interruption and didn’t break eye contact with me in the mirror.
“Are you pregnant?”
“Do you hear that?” I asked, turning from the mirror with the test still in my hand. I slid around her and toward the stairs, gripping the bannister to fix my unsteady feet. “Something’s breaking down here.”
“Don’t change the subject on me. It’s probably just James at the door,” Madeline said, flouncing after me. “I think he left his speakers. It’s positive, isn’t it? THAT’S why you’ve been such a wreck since I got here. You’re not heartbroken; you’re pregnant!”
“I’m both,” I grumbled as my feet hit the landing.
The front door splintered off its hinges and rocketed open, skittering into the foyer. Madeline and I both froze with eyes bulging out as a troop of black clad men threw aside their battering ram and marched into the room, some of them with guns at the ready. Madeline and I both screamed in unison, and one of the men advanced to me and gripped my arm—the one not holding the pregnancy test—and twisted it behind my back. I was too stunned to buck against him. “Sofia Castillo,” he barked, securing handcuffs tightly, “you are under arrest for the theft of two million dollars in rare jewels.”
“Holy shit,” Madeline muttered.
“Oh no,” I groaned, closing my eyes. I didn’t fight, because what could I say? What could I do? They were right. I had been the one. I didn’t know how they knew, exactly, but they did. And my instinctive reaction was, Leo.
Leo will help me.
I believed it, even though he had been the one to threaten to expose me in the first place. I believed in him.
I pressed my lips together and held out the pregnancy test to Madeline. “You have to tell Leo for me,” I begged her.
Madeline crinkled her nose and took the white stick from between my pinched fingers.
The arresting officer twisted my other wrist behind my back to join the first one, both of them secured together by handcuffs. He gripped my arm and led me roughly through the foyer and down the front steps of the Castillo mansion.
The entry drive was thronged in police vehicles, sirens and lights all going. I exhaled. Was it possible that Leo had turned me in to Cyrus de Silva after all—for van Buiten, since the Heart of Icarus was off the table? But why? Why would he warn me away and then turn me in anyway? Unless his wrath was so great that even deserved heartache was cause for vengeance…
But I didn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe that the Leo who had made such tender love to me in the rain was the same Leo who would ensure that I went to jail.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“Someone called in an anonymous tip last week, and it didn’t pan out for that particular crime,” Cyrus answered. “But some of the details did coincide with an earlier crime. Some physical evidence regarding a wanted criminal known as Lorenzo ‘Spider’ Iglesias surfaced at the scene, and we were then able to connect the Castillo family to him as employers. If it hadn’t been for that anonymous tip, we wouldn’t have even thought about it. The Castillos are good people—not criminals. But, after Spider was placed into holding, he was quick to trade your name for immunity.”
He wrenched open the back door of his police cruiser and I winced as Cyrus placed his hand on the back of my head to lower me in. My eyes flashed up to the house and I saw Madeline on the stoop, watching with an expression of anguish on her face. She was still holding the positive pregnancy test in her hand.
“Madeline!” I called out to her. “You have to tell him for me!”
“WHICH PART?” she cried. “WHERE ARE YOUR CAR KEYS?”
But then the squad car door was clapped shut in my face, and the conversation was over, and I didn’t have the chance to tell Madeline that nothing filled me with more dread than the thought of her behind the wheel of my car.
18
Leo
The sun was sinking into the horizon and I was sitting on the deck, my legs crossed, my back straight, cycling completely calm breaths through my system. Maybe if I lived out here, I wouldn’t have anger management problems. I hadn’t felt this relaxed since—well—since I’d been inside Sofi on the hood of her car, right before I’d confessed everything, like a damn idiot. In that moment, it had felt like everything was really going to be okay.
That moment blew this one out of the water, no pun intended.
But part of the point of meditation was to cleanse my thoughts of Sofi Castillo. Wash her out. No thinking about her curls wrapped around my fingers. No thinking about her vanilla and coconut flavor. Her golden stretch of thigh.
Nothing but om.
The first unwelcome fantasy to creep into my mind wasn’t specifically about Sofi, though. It was the thought, I wonder how long I can possibly stay out here before someone ends up in jail.
My eyes popped open. Now that the thought had stricken me, I couldn’t shake it.
I was the one who kept everything together. Without me there, it was only a matter of time before everything fell apart.
Om, I repeated forcefully.
Javier was an excellent forging artist, but without my guidance, he would get carried away and pursue a forgery beyond his means.
Om.
Damian, our fencer, could probably sell to an undercover fed without my instincts there. I knew the law enforcement better than he did.
Om.
And who could imagine what Gabe might do? Hire seven new hands at the estate without vetting anyone. He’d fuck up some petty, simple crime with a negligible yield like hoisting someone else’s cargo off the airport baggage claim, get caught, detained, charged, and debilitate the whole family for the rest of the summer. Good God, maybe he’d get someone pregnant. I was surprised he hasn’t already.
Om. Om, om, om. Come on, inner peace, hurry up. Om.
I sighed deeply. I was going to have to go back soon.
The mantra crumbled apart in my mind, and all the peace fizzled away with it.
A breeze moved off the ocean and through my hair. I inhaled and exhaled. Shit, even that salty wind was a reminder of Sofi—how it had filled the car the first time I’d been inside her. It had torn through her hair, swirling all around us, and I’d whipped the car off the road, unable to resist. That had been an amazing night, hadn’t it? Full of adventure and whimsy without even having to break the law once: dancing to a beat that didn’t even match the “music” from the sp
eakers, her buttons popping open at the lagoon, belting those douch-bag twins…hmm. I guess it is hard to avoid breaking the law over the course of an entire evening. But we’d come close.
I did still have her number. All was not lost. Once I got back to a portion of the land which received network coverage, I could try calling her. Maybe she would pick up.
Probably not, though.
The sound of an engine pulled me from my thoughts and I vaulted up from the deck, scanning the vast waters for any approaching tourist ship or, worse, a ship from the National Marine Park. I was queerly completely unconcerned about the possibility of pirates, and had been ever since departing. It was as if I wanted to lose everything.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, almost certain that I had to be hallucinating.
It wasn’t a tourist boat, and it wasn’t anyone from the National Marine Park coming to apprehend me. It wasn’t even a throng of pirates.
It was The Wet Rocket, Gabe’s boat, and it was pounding across the waves toward me.
I rushed to the farthest point on the yacht and leaned against the railing, glaring out at him. That son of a bitch. It really was him, wearing loose cargo shorts and another t-shirt with some flippant message and sneakers. Sneakers. Naturally, unlike me, he was not a solo sailor. Solo sailing was dangerous, demanding, and rewarding. It would only appeal to a certain kind of man. The Wet Rocket was fully staffed. I was pretty sure Max was the blond securing some rigging in the back, not Gabe. And it wasn’t just Max, it looked like there was a small crew working on his boat.
Gabe was just waving grandly to me, his arm swinging back and forth in the wind, like a damn tourist realizing he knows someone at the same theme park.
I felt my blood pressure practically double. Shit. They would never come out here unless something was really wrong. It took me half a day to get out this far, and Gabe had known that it wasn’t for sight-seeing.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” I yelled out to him.
“I’M GREAT!” he called back, grinning like a big dog. I think it might have been the first time since childhood that I was seeing him without any styling product in his hair. “HOW ABOUT YOU?”
Behind him, the rest of the crew scurried to bring the boat to a stop alongside mine. Gabe braced the rail and stood as calmly as a sneaker model.
“I was better about five minutes ago,” I told him honestly. “What are you doing here?”
“You could’ve had your radio on, and saved me the trip, but—”
“I wanted the privacy!” I snapped. “But, that clearly didn’t matter, so, out with it.”
Gabe averted his eyes, bit his lower lip, and then peered back up at me, scowling against the setting sun. “Okay, well, you’re not gonna like it,” he confessed, “but it’s still worth mentioning that I dropped everything and brought the boys up here to get you, even though I was picking my fantasy football team when Madeline showed up.”
All the tension flowed out of my face at the mention of her name, and my shoulders went round. Madeline had come by the house. That couldn’t have been good. And then they’d dropped immediately prepped and come up here—that must have been worse.
I swallowed and asked, “What was Madeline doing at the house?”
Gabe grimaced. “Well,” he said, “I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news. Really bad news. And, also, the good news might not be that good. The good news is actually totally subjective. I guess the bad news is too—”
“Jesus Christ, Gabe!” I laid my hands out on the railing as if I could neatly divide up the things I needed to hear from the bullshit my brother was spouting, and then just ask him for that instead. “WHAT HAPPENED TO SOFI?”
Gabe took a deep breath. “She got arrested,” he said.
“But—but she left—she went—”
“Yep. She got arrested for van Buiten,” Gabe continued. “Madeline came to tell you, but you were out here.”
My eyes softened as it hit me. Madeline came to tell me—which meant that Sofi had told her to do so. I didn’t know if it meant that Sofi had forgiven me, but it did mean that Sofi might concede to needing me.
“Fuck.” I exhaled and bowed against the railing, running my fingers up into my hair.
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you got a little rest over here before real life came crashing back down,” Gabe said. “It’s really gorgeous out here. Hot as balls, though.”
“There has to be some way out of it,” I muttered, still not looking too closely at Gabe. My mind was churning slowly over this dilemma, like teeth gnashing through wood. “She wouldn’t have told me if there wasn’t anything I could do for her. There has to be something I can do.”
“Well,” Gabe said, his voice hitting an unusually high and uncomfortable pitch. “Well, she didn’t necessarily say that. I mean…the arrest might not have even been the news she was supposed to give me.”
Now I looked up to glare at him. I normally hated when Gabe played around, but when I was already stressed out, it was enough to make me wring his neck, brother or not.
“What are you TALKING about?” I seethed.
“You know, Maddie’s a weird girl,” he said mildly. “She brought this thing with her, but, I don’t know, I guess, if you wanted proof—”
“No, I don’t need any proof that—”
And then it hit me. There was a thin white object in his hand. He’s been waiting it the whole time, and I only noticed it now. It was a pregnancy test.
Madeline had brought Gabe a pregnancy test. And the news that Sofi had been arrested wasn’t necessarily the news she’d been sent to give.
I swallowed thickly.
“She’s pregnant,” I breathed. The deck beneath my feet fell away, and I mused as to whether or not I was going to pass out and plunge headfirst into the Atlantic. “She’s pregnant, isn’t she?” I asked dreamily.
Gabe pursed his lips and nodded. “Yup.”
I took a deep breath and, when I let it out, it trembled. “Okay,” I whispered. “Then I was right the first time. There has to be something I can do. There has to be a way out of this. She’s not going to have our baby in jail.”
Images of Sofi fluttered through my conscious mind—her with her bare feet propped up on the Porsche’s dash; her grinning impishly at me on the beach, saying, “You don’t look like it’s physically possible for you to relax;” her face between the wooden rails of the Rainbow Disco deck, begging me to get out of there before we were banned. And all these moments, Sofi smiling, Sofi being gentle, laid-back, and sweet, all these moments culminated into another moment, a future moment I could see with staggering clarity: Sofi as a young mother. Sofi as the mother of my child. Sofi as the woman I would spend the rest of my life with.
“You came to tell me and you told me,” I said, flicking a finger at Gabe. “Now let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve got to get home.”
We needed to sail throughout the night. I lost track of the hours and thought only in terms of knots and miles. My knuckles bound so tightly around the steering wheel that they ached. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the shadowed sea, from the lights of The Wet Rocket, running parallel—but my mind was two hundred miles away, detained with Sofi.
“Hey, boss,” Max called, loping up the companionway toward my station. “I came to relieve you of your shift.”
I shook my head and frowned. “Not necessary.”
Max stroked at his chin and laughed softly. I looked back out to sea. “It’s going to be a long night.”
I took a long breath and inhaled deeply, gratefully. Om.
“You’re a funny guy,” Max went on. He shot me a look I pretended not to notice. “Look, man, I’m, eh, sorry about earlier, before. Back at the house the other day.”
I kept staring ahead. “Not sure what you mean, Max. I tried to stop you from doing your job, but I was too late. You called de Silva, just like I told you to.” I took another deep breath, but the tension wouldn’t flow off me anymore. Not without her
. No amount of om could erase the truth. This was my fault. I’d been the one to give the hounds her scent.
“You’re not going to make this easy, huh?” Max sighed. “I’m sorry I said that you were going soft.” He hesitated. “This is different.”
“I know it is.”
“I thought she was just a good-looking mark,” Max explained. “I didn’t know she was pregnant.”
I grunted. “Me neither.”
“And I didn’t know the break-up was sail-across-the-ocean material.”
“Well, a couple hundred miles. Not across. Though—I did think about it. Thanks for coming by, Max,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. “But, hey, I think I’m going to stay and steer a while.”
I didn’t accept anyone’s help until near dawn, when Max insisted and I relented, finally claiming a bunk. It would still be about six hours before we arrived in Aurora Beach. I had six hours to lay in bed, stare at the ceiling, and think about how the hell to get Sofi out of this, for the second time since we’d met over a pair of shoplifted rose print panties and—
And then it hit me.
Sofi hadn’t really been the one to pull off the van Buiten score. I had. Spider had just betrayed me, and she’d swiped the jewels out from under me.
But I could tell them everything they needed to know. Things even Spider didn’t know. How I had known the combination to the safe. Who was waiting to purchase the jewels from me in Madrid.
Why I had chosen Sofi Castillo as my fall guy.
They would believe me, and they would take me, and they would let her go.
They had to.
19
Sofi
I stared at the bars all damn night, trying to get used to the idea of living the foreseeable future in a cell. And I had thought that my father had been too controlling. At least he’d never locked me up in a cage.
The Perfect Con (A Bad Boy Romance Novel) (Bad Boy Confessions Book 1) Page 16
