by Nancy Gideon
“He wanted someone he could trust close to you. That he could trust, like you were supposed to be able to trust Antonia. But she ruined everything, didn’t she? After all you gave her, she turned on you. Just like your wife. She wouldn’t behave, either, would she? That’s why you arranged for her accident.”
“What?” Toni looked to her father, begging to be told it wasn’t true. But even before he spoke his denials, she could see it in his eyes, the guilt, the shame. And the anger that he’d been found out.
Victor stopped trying to cover his tracks, because there was more at risk than the auto accident. He glared at Veta, willing her silent. “You are condemning yourself, foolish girl.”
“What do I care?” Her laugh was brittle this time, dancing on the edge of hysteria. “I’m tired of this little family game of intrigue. The only thing I care about is that my brother not suffer for what’s discovered here today. He’s the only one who is innocent of any wrongdoing. The rest of us deserve what we get, but not him.”
“Keep talking. I’ll do my best to see he’s not brought into it.”
Veta spared Zach a grateful look. Then the venom returned. “Victor was more than happy at first to loan him the money to invest in the resort. But then as time passed, he started to feel less generous and began to question the value of the secrets I was keeping for him. Such ugly, ugly secrets.”
“You had my mother killed.” The pain in Toni’s voice was a palpable thing as she tried to absorb the awful truth.
“It was business with your mother. Always business. I couldn’t let her go. She would have taken everything I worked to build between us.”
Veta chuckled. “She found out about the money you were paying every month to keep my father quiet about your past in Mexico. You were siphoning it out of the company through a different set of books. That’s why Aletta’s real difficulties never surfaced until recently. You were able to cover them up until you’d almost bled it dry. She didn’t like that, did she? She was saving the company as her daughter’s nest egg. And you couldn’t stand that, could you? That she would give it to a daughter instead of her husband.”
“It should have been mine,” Victor snarled. “She had no right shutting me out. I needed those funds. I had debts to pay.”
“So you arranged for your precious daughter to be kidnapped and who better to call to handle it than your old friend from Mexico?”
All color drained from Toni’s face. She gripped the back of a decorative chair because her knees threatened to give out on her. “I don’t understand.”
“You were never supposed to be in any danger.” Castillo’s promise was as empty as his affection. “It was for the money. But they wouldn’t give it to me. Your bitch mother had built in safeguards with the company so I wouldn’t have access under any circumstances. They wouldn’t release the funds to me.”
He hadn’t not paid because he didn’t want to. Rather because he couldn’t. Toni struggled to breathe as her mind whirled about this new information.
Zach crossed the room to lift Premiero’s unbloodied hand. Evidence of Toni’s struggle to free herself was still scored deeply around his thumb. He glared up at Zach, his black eyes steeped in haughty fury and pain.
“Why?”
Premiero frowned slightly. “Why, what?”
“Why, when he couldn’t get the money, didn’t you just let her go unharmed?”
“You just can’t get good help sometimes,” was his matter-of-fact response.
“It was Steve,” Veta spat out. “He wanted her. I told him it was just business, just for the money. But when the money didn’t come through, he decided to take payment another way. I told him to stick to the plan, but he just couldn’t keep his hands off her.”
“So you killed him.”
She smiled frostily at Zach’s summation. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. He’d become a liability. A smart move, actually, considering how grateful the Castillos were for me killing that nasty bad man.”
“Dead men tell no tales.”
“But something did. What was it?” She had to know what had given her away.
“The blood on Toni’s blouse. It had certain similarities to samples taken from a piece of material you left behind after you tried to frighten Toni by choking her with the necklace. Your DNA didn’t match your supposed father’s and that got me curious. I thought it might lead to Castillo but when it didn’t, my friend Jack suggested another direction.”
“How clever of you.”
“That’s what tripped you up. You were trying to be too clever. You wanted to see Toni and her father squirm. If you’d kept it simple instead of making it personal, you might have gotten away with it.”
Veta smirked. “I told him not to hire you. I warned him that it would be a mistake. But he thought you were a screw up, that your passion for his daughter would cloud your judgment like it did ten years ago. He thought bringing you in would put up a nice false front to keep Toni from becoming suspicious. All she had to do was go in the direction she was supposed to, toward signing the papers in Mexico. I tried to steer her in the right direction, but she wouldn’t go. And when she wouldn’t, my job was to push her, harder and harder, so that if she wouldn’t sign, Victor could claim she was incompetent and take Aletta from her. If she’d been smart, she would have married my brother.”
“And let you have the company through him?”
“Why not? I was going to get it anyway. Once the papers were signed. My father promised that the payment for all my hard work would be control of Aletta.”
“But you were afraid he was lying, even then, weren’t you?” Zach goaded.
“You convinced me to go to that club in London. That business in Colorado?” Toni’s question was barely audible. “Was that you, too?”
“I arranged for the car accident,” Veta gloated. “I took your precious ring, the one your mother gave you, the one the first kidnapper sent to your father as evidence that they had you. I needed the money to pay off Mateo’s debt so he could be out from under your father’s thumb. But, no big surprise, Victor wouldn’t come up with the cash. I got just enough to keep him afloat, but it wasn’t enough for him to become the success I knew he could be. That’s when I approached my father and offered to do a little work on the side to make sure you were frightened enough to do anything they suggested.”
“You were playing both sides, being clever,” Toni added quietly.
“And why not? Why not do whatever I had to to see my brother and I were taken care of?”
“I would have seen to that, Veta,” Toni told her, her heartbreak evident in her gaze, in her voice. “You, you and Mateo, were my family.”
“Poor relations. We didn’t want your charity, little rich girl. And if you had just cooperated, we wouldn’t have needed it.”
“So you set up my abduction on the road to collect the insurance for…”
“For your father, stupid. He had me suggest that policy to you through my brother as a backup, so he could claim the money to pay off his debt to my father in case the deal fell through. He was trying to cover all bases, but he didn’t expect you to hit it over the wall and run.”
“That’s when you decided to pinch hit,” Zach concluded. “You figured with Toni dead, Victor would sign the merger and you’d lead that happy little rich-girl life you always envied.”
Veta shrugged. “It almost worked. It would have worked if they’d listened to me. I told them you were dangerous, that you were a professional who wouldn’t be led around by his…baser instincts. I know men and I knew you’d be trouble.”
“I’m bleeding to death here,” Premiero grumbled. “Where’s my ambulance and my lawyer?”
“On their way,” Tomas promised. He stepped in to grip the mobster by his good arm. “Let’s meet them outside, shall we?”
As he was led past his daughter, Veta spat at him, snarling, “You were supposed to take care of us.”
“I would have, my dear. I wo
uld have. And before you confess to anything else, you might remember that I still may. You won’t need an ambulance or a lawyer. You’ll need a mortician.”
And that deadly vow finally silenced her.
“Time to go, Miss Chavez.”
She balked at Jack’s attempt to steer her toward the door and the multitude of police cars gathering there in the drive. She looked to Zach, her expression humbled as she asked, “You will keep your word about taking care of my brother?”
At his brief nod, she consented to go, heading toward a future she hadn’t expected but well deserved.
And that left Victor Castillo.
Though her whole world was shaken to its foundation at discovering what kind of man her father really was, Toni had one final question, one that quavered with tenuous emotion.
“Why didn’t you just tell me why you needed the money?”
He stared at her, his features all prideful arrogance. “A man does not ask for help from a woman.”
“He does if he’s a smart man,” Zach concluded. He waved to the officers who were waiting for his signal. “Take him. Book him. Conspiracy, murder, fraud, kidnapping, for being a cold, heartless bastard and whatever else you can think of.”
Castillo went quietly, with false dignity, never offering further explanation or apology to the daughter he’d wronged at every turn.
And then they were alone in the shattered remainders of Toni’s dreams.
Zach watched her closely, not certain how she was going to react to the enormity of what she’d learned. Would she fold in devastation? She had every right to. He was ready to step in, to wrap her up in his arms, to hold her until her innate balance was restored. But this was Antonia Castillo, not any other woman who’d just had her emotional legs cut out from under her. And she’d agreed with him in France that she didn’t need him.
She took a slow, unsteady breath and released it in a forceful stream. She glanced at the fragmented window and the stains covering the chair and parquet floor.
“I need to get this taken care of before things get ruined.” She considered her words then laughed softly. “As if they could get any worse.”
Her shoulders trembled and Zach prepared to move in with the offer of his own. The sacrifice wasn’t necessary. She recovered on her own to regard him with a sad yet sincere smile.
“Thank you for keeping your word to me, Zach, for being there when I needed you.” She tapped the bracelet. “Thanks for being there when I called. It was a job well done. You proved my father wrong.”
“It wasn’t a job, Toni. I already had a job. It was a debt that needed paying. I never told you how sorry I was for what happened.”
And she wasn’t about to let him tell her now. “Consider it paid. You’re free to go. Have Jack send me the bill.”
“Rule Two,” Zach reminded her.
Her brow knit in confusion.
“Where you go,” he told her, “I go.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Her heart had begun beating in a hurried, hopeful beat but she didn’t dare, not yet, voice her deepest desire. That he meant what he was saying.
“I need a new line of work. I figure trying to keep up with you will provide me with all the excitement I’ll ever need.”
“You want to work for me?” She tried not to convey the magnitude of her disappointment. “As what? My bodyguard?”
“I’d consider that a perk, not a job duty. I was thinking of something a little more full-time with better benefits. I might just take my mother up on her offer as CEO so she can retire to something she’s wanted to be for a long, long time. That’s a retirement package I’ll enjoy putting together for her.” His eyes grew heavy lidded with speculation and heat raced through Toni from head to toe.
“And this will involve me, how?” she prompted, ready to engage in negotiations for the future she’d desired more than any of her many successes.
“On every level, lovey,” was his smoldering promise. “From bedroom to boardroom. And if we’re bored, we can get naked and roll around in all our combined assets.”
“Just how much are you worth, Russell?”
“Not as much as you are to me.”
That was the deal clincher she was looking for as she went gladly into his arms.
After a long, stock-taking kiss, she leaned back to observe him saucily. “If you’re willing to throw out Rule One and Three, I promise to spend the rest of my life working on Rule Two.”
“I have a better idea.”
She traced the shape of his mouth with the tip of her tongue before asking, “And what would that be?”
“Let’s just damn the rules and wing it.”
“I’m right behind you on that one.”
“No,” he corrected with a soul-searing tenderness. “Not behind me. Beside me.”
“Done,” she murmured through the sudden fullness in her chest. She reached up for his lips.
Deal closed, it was time to celebrate the prospect of a long and prosperous merger.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6734-7
WARRIOR WITHOUT RULES
Copyright © 2005 by Nancy Gideon
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