Charlie makes a noise in her throat, not quite disbelieving. EJ ignores her and fluffs her hair as a knock comes at the front door.
Frenchie is on time. Her flighty, irresponsible friend is nothing but professional efficiency when it comes to his business. Even now, stepping into the room, he's serious and restrained, that effusive charm she likes so much reined in while he walks by and sets his briefcase on the hotel desk. He lays out four manila folders and nods at the girls. "Everything you asked for."
Charlie glances at EJ who nods once.
The envelopes contain birth certificates, drivers licenses from Nevada, Social Security cards, and passports, all so perfectly done that they could be real. Two sets, for each of them.
“The money is in your account,” EJ says, and Frenchie glances at his cell phone briefly. Nods.
“Thanks, Frenchie,” EJ says, softly, and his professional demeanor melts away.
“Be careful, lil sis. He’s mad and he’s dangerous.”
She nods, and Frenchie hugs her quickly before stepping back. “I’m getting out of town by the end of the week—if you need me, you know how to get in touch.”
“Of course.”
He studies her for a long moment, before he smiles, and it’s a little sad. “I won’t see you again, will I?”
Her heart squeezes, a kind of painful thing she didn’t expect.
Walking away is supposed to be easy. No one warned her that when she did, it would be from friends as well.
“We had a good run, Ellie. Be good.”
She laughs then, and the noise is all wicked and amused. “Where the hell is the fun in that?”
It happens very quickly, when he’s gone. EJ packs while Charlie makes flight arrangements. Four tickets in EJ’s names, all to different locations. Four in her own. It won’t buy them a lot of time, but it’ll be enough that if things with Jacobs don’t play out the way the girls have planned, they have a little time and space to go to ground.
“Did you make the reservations at the Palace?”
Charlie looks up from booking the final flight and nods. “Just go to the front desk and show your ID. It’s authorized for both of us.”
EJ nods, and types something in her phone. She glances at Charlie. “When is your flight?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. Yours is tonight—so don’t waste time with this shit, ok?” A thread of command colors her tone and EJ arches an eyebrow. There is the not unreasonable fear that EJ will back out, the elephant in the room that they’re both ignoring.
“Are you ok?” she asks, suddenly. EJ blinks at her and Charlie flushes.
“You’re going to shoot him.”
“Do you see another way to make this happen?” EJ asks coolly, her hands shaking slightly at her side. Charlie eyes her.
She looks flawless, utterly gorgeous and dangerously remote.
She looks exactly like she had the day she walked into Charlie’s office with a cut of the profits from the drugs they sold.
She could still be in Charleston, for all that she’s changed. Her hair is shorter, and she looks tired, but that’s the extent of the changes.
“Can you do this?”
EJ’s eyes narrow. “What about last night made you think I’m not in this?”
Charlie flushes, remembering the way EJ’s hands had stroked over her, fingers digging into her thighs as her mouth moved over her with such gentle skill she was reduced to begging faster than she had ever thought possible.
And that was before—she clears her throat and shakes her head. “This isn’t about last night. This is about right now and you having the balls to go through with it.”
EJ smiles at her, a tight little thing, and tosses her bag on the bed. She pulls Charlie to her feet and kisses her, a long deep thing that has Charlie remembering every fucking thing EJ had done to her last night, and the way she had looked, so smug and self-satisfied as she coaxed orgasm after orgasm from Charlie, the way she had looked when she straddled Charlie and palmed her breasts while Charlie fingered her wet pussy.
“I don’t want you to go alone.” She murmurs against EJ’s lips.
The other girl laughs. “You know why. I need to do this. He deserves at least this from me. And if things do go bad—you’re safe.”
She’s quiet. There is the fear, deep down that she doesn’t want to acknowledge. That EJ will change her mind. She’s run before.
“Hey,” EJ murmurs, pulling her chin up until Charlie is staring into her big green eyes. “Stop thinking so loud. It’s two days—three max. And then we’re in Ireland, and we’ve got a castle and each other and no one gets to change that. All the freedom we could ever want. Ok?” She kisses Charlie quickly before she steps back and grabs her bag. “Now. Get in public and do your thing. Be safe. And I’ll see you in a few days.”
Charlie nods and EJ stalks to the door. She glances back at her once, with the door propped open, and smirks. “See you soon, baby girl.”
And then she’s gone and Charlie is left standing in a hotel room alone, panic and loneliness clawing at her.
Three days.
Chapter 30
Caesar’s Palace is Jacobs’ favorite casino on the Strip. It’s why she chose it. She pulls the Nova up to the door and nods at the valet. “I can bring my own bags.”
He looks vaguely startled, but EJ likes the weight of it, and the security. She ignores his stare and walks inside.
It’s easy and effortless to check into the room Charlie secured. It’s already been paid for, and if they think it’s odd that she’s checking in with a different name, Charlie is paying enough that they don’t ask questions. With the bag on her shoulder, she bypasses the elevators to her suite, and instead picks a table in a nearly empty café.
The thing about Jacobs is that, even now, he refuses to see that she’s serious. That this is more than a childish tantrum thrown for attention and the hot make-up sex.
A tiny smile curves her lips. They always had fantastic make-up sex.
She opens her computer and logs in. And there they are.
Jacobs’ fortune. All of it. The money tucked away for her if things went sideways. The accounts for business expenses and the ones he keeps clean for his personal use. The millions in blackmail money that lingers in an offshore account. All of it waiting for her to hit the button.
He never once considered moving the money when she had his entire network in her grasp.
He never considered changing his passwords or access codes.
“Ella Jane,” a smooth cultured voice says and she shivers.
Because he always assumed the best and worst of her. That she would stay loyal. That she didn’t have it in her to be more.
She ignores him as he situates his coffee and puts one in front of her.
He still remembers exactly how she takes her coffee.
One click. It will trigger everything.
“Where is Charlie?”
“Safe,” she murmurs. Annoyance flashes across his face, and she can see what she already knew. He would kill her.
Fear stutters down her spine, and she hits the button.
A world away, his money is draining away, a fortune filtering into dummy corporations and accounts he can’t trace and will never be able to access. Accounts in her name and in Charlie’s. She smiles, a tiny thing that Jacobs sees. His expression tightens and she closes the computer, and tucks it into her bag. Then she focuses on him, her hands wrapped around the cup, a white mocha latte, steaming and strong.
The heat of it wards off the subtle chill that wants to slither down her spine, and she smiles at him despite that fear. “Hello, Anthony,” she murmurs.
*
Charlie spends all of an hour pacing her room. She has too much time before the flight. Too much time to spend in her own head. She could shop. It might be the last time she has a chance to indulge in mindless shopping, and she considers it, tempted for a moment.
Except that shopping reminds her of EJ and the long
afternoons they spent together in Charleston and in Memphis, of the afternoons that were aimless and happy.
She should have made her flight sooner—a flight to London, followed by a quick hop to Dublin. Easy.
And too direct. She huffs out a breath and stands.
She’s in the elevator, halfway down stairs when her phone dings with a text. For a heartbeat, she has a spasm of fear, blind and choking, that EJ is deserting her, or that Jacobs has decided she’s more trouble than she’s worth.
Her hands actually shake when she pulls her phone out, and then she laughs, a startled, hiccupping noise.
Jasper: What are you doing today?
Jasper: Have dinner with me.
She smiles, because this is familiar and comfortably distracting, and without thinking or even considering an alternative, she types a quick response.
Charlie: Give me one hour. I’ll meet you in the coffee bar.
She’s late. Because of course she’s late. But he’s there, glancing at his phone and trying to look unconcerned, his hands moving restlessly between the coffee cups in front of him and the phone he just checked. A tiny, satisfied little smirk turns her lips, and she puts a little sway to her hips as she strolls into the café.
Jasper’s eyes light up when he sees her, and she pauses for a moment in that gaze, reveling in it before she sits across from him, her legs crossed.
“You came,” he says.
She smiles, and shrugs. “I was bored.”
He blinks and she laughs, a private amused noise. He can’t possibly know why that amuses her. Why it’s a challenge.
She doesn’t bother to explain. “What are we going to do?” she asks, instead, and directs all of her attention on him.
“What do you want to do?” he asks, and she grins.
“Everything.”
His smile is wide and he nods. “Then we should get started.”
It doesn’t matter. It’s thirty six hours before she leaves, and she’ll never see him again. But for now, as he walks her down the Strip, and shows her the city. She’s been here before, but Tre and Hayes were never much interested in showing her around, and less interested in letting her wander without one or both of them. In the past, she would spend the day lounging by the pool and in the spa.
But now—they wander up and down the strip, into casinos she’s never seen, and past a roller coaster with shrieking children. He’s content to let her lead them wherever she wants, and doesn’t seem to mind when she wants to shop.
He’s a mechanic from Tuscaloosa, a boy with no prospects except the ones he creates for himself. He seems dazzled by her shopping spree, by the city and expensive lunch—by her.
It’s meaningless and in a way, it’s cruel—to play with this boy who will never be able to follow her and who she doesn’t want. But for a few hours, she can forget everything but the boy at her side and the high of being adored.
And that is enough.
Chapter 31
“This is your game, Ella Jane,” Jacobs says. He’s sitting back in the chair, his sushi untouched. EJ stares at her food. It’s a delicious salad, and she should be hungry. After the sex last night and the morning without anything to eat—she should be starving. Instead, her stomach pitches unsteadily and she can’t imagine eating anything. “What’s the end game?”
“What do you think it is?” she asks, curious despite herself.
His eyebrows hitch upward, as if surprised she’s allowed herself to ask that. Then they narrow. “I don’t think you know. You’ve been running on instinct and a half-cocked idea since you found the mouse with a dead body. The smartest thing you could have done was called me. But you’ve never been good at listening and you didn’t do as you were told.”
“Did it occur to you that I didn’t want to be told anything?” she snaps.
“If that were true, lil sis, than why the fuck did you call me?” His voice never changes. It stays completely even, despite the fury she can hear building behind it.
It’s an impressive little trick, or it would be if she hadn’t learned the same one from him.
As it is, she did. And the nicknames—she knows exactly what he’s doing. The way he uses them to put distance between himself and the things that are troublesome or too close. It’s why he first started calling her that, especially in front of his people.
If she was his little sister, they would never think about hurting her and would go out their way to protect her, if only because she was his.
“God, we’re fucked up,” she mutters, the same thing that Charlie has told her so many times.
“That’s what you love about us,” Jacobs says, unconcerned.
“No.” She shakes her head. “That’s what you love about us. That we’re so fucking twisted and self-destructive and that we need each other.”
He laughs at her, a tiny noise of amused disbelief. “You think I need you? Don’t be an idiot, Ellie.”
It should sting. It does, a little. That part of her that will always be a ten-year-old girl forgotten by a mother chasing the next husband and desperate for the approval of anyone—that girl withers under the words.
But she isn’t only that girl, and hasn’t been for years. She smiles coldly and reaches for the wine that has sat untouched. “I used to think I needed you more than you needed me. I hated that about us. Even after I ran to Brazil, and you brought me home and got me involved in the business—even then, I thought it was simply you placating me to keep Mom happy. I know she hated it when I was running.” She quiets, allowing herself to consider for the first time, the mother she’s leaving behind. The one who has never understood her or tried to. The one who will be furious over upset plans, who had EJ’s first husband picked out when she was in high school.
“EJ?” he murmurs, and it brings her back to herself. Reminds her that she’s been quiet too long.
“If you didn’t need me, Jacobs, you wouldn’t be here. We all have a blindspot—that one thing where we can’t see clearly because we need it to be what we’ve made it in our mind.”
He stares at her, his expression somewhere between fascinated and amused.
“I’m your blindspot. Always have been. Anyone else, Marco would have killed without even making his presence known. Instead, he let me know he was following me and he tried to bring me home alive. Same with your mad dog.”
He flinches. And a twisted sick part of her is happy to see that flinch. He should flinch. He should carry that guilt forever.
“But you didn’t. You’re here. We’re here. And you want me to come home.” She smiles. “Because I’m your blindspot.”
“What does that make me?” he asks, not denying it. She shrugs and smiles. It’s weak, and sad.
“The one person I’ve always been able to count on.” She takes a breath. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
“It changes everything,” he snarls. He stands abruptly and tosses a few hundreds on the table.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
He pulls her from her chair and she grabs her bag as he stands next to her, vibrating with fury and—something else she can’t name.
“We’re not doing this here,” he snaps, and almost drags her from the restaurant.
Jacobs doesn’t lose his cool. It’s never been his MO. He is control, and cold detachment and amused reserve from a distance. It’s something that has always, always driven her a little crazy because she does–she let’s emotion run rampant.
Jacobs can shatter her cool calm faster than anyone ever has, and he knows it.
But now, she is the quiet calm and he’s shaking with anger. He pulls her in front of him as they stand at the elevators, and she smiles as he presses her against the long length of his body, the hardness of his dick against her ass. A tiny part of her wants to grind against him, push that fraying control, but she refrains.
The elevator has two other couples and they are very clearly vacationing together, the men laughing and talking about winning in the
casino while the girls chatter about shopping and the spa. It is simple and mundane, and something she’ll never have. Even if she had stayed in Charleston, this simple act of vacationing with a friend wouldn’t have been part of her life.
“Do you ever wish you had left me alone, that day?” she whispers. “Have you ever wondered where I would be now if you had?”
“No,” he says. “I don’t think about shit that doesn’t matter.”
The other two couples are watching them, in that polite, skirting way that annoys her so much. His hand is splayed over her belly, thumb tracing the underside of her bra, and she wants to arch into that soft caress.
She knew, when she called him while Charlie watched, that this was inevitable. Jacobs would arrive, they would argue. They would fuck.
“I do,” she confesses. “Sometimes.”
His grip on her tightens just a little, and she shudders as his dick pushes against her, her body arching and rubbing against him almost without her permission.
“Liar.” He murmurs. The elevator slows and the door glides open and she watches the two couples spilling out of it. Even before the doors are closed, Jacobs has turned her and pushed her against the glass wall, his mouth slanting over hers.
It’s brutal and demanding, his hands hard on her hip and in her hair and she moans when he catches her lower lip and bites down, hard enough that her knees buckle and pain licks through her.
“You cut your fucking hair,” he murmurs.
She laughs, a breathy noise. “Like it?”
“No,” he grumps, nipping at her earlobe. “There’s nothing for me to pull when you suck my dick.”
She would be offended by the calm assertion that she would hit her knees for him, but she can’t be. Not when her panties are wet and just those coarse words make her cunt tremble.
The elevator stops and he releases her suddenly, so suddenly that she sways.
Without a word, she leads the way off the elevator, to her hotel room.
Fatal Beauty Page 17
