"Of course," I replied, my tone even. It was a practiced sound. One that gently put clients at ease and achieved the opposite of my targets. "Please let me know if you hear anything. I want her found as much as you do."
"Oh, I highly doubt that, Mr. Belmonte," Jackie said. "I have something at stake here. My father was brutally murdered, and now the whole of his life, his empire, falls upon me. I want to know where my sister is more than anyone. I want her to pay for what she's done."
There was no doubt in my mind that Jacquelina knew more than she was letting on, and the first thing I would have to do if I was going to find out what had happened between them was to find my wife. That was where we agreed but also where our alignment on the situation ended.
Jackie lived up to her conniving and ruthless reputation, which was no different, but I needed to know thetruthof what happened, and I didn’t trust her story for a second. When I found out why Raff had been murdered and by whom, then I would deal with her. For now, I had only one focus.
My wife.
Angel would pay.
She would pay for lying to me, for betraying me, and most of all, for thinking she could run from me instead of trusting me.
“I wish you all the best, Mr. Belmonte.” Jackie’s words echoed as they followed me down the hall as I headed for the exit.
The best,I thought absently. That’s what I was, and yet I’d been so wholly and utterly deceived by nothing more than a small, fragile-looking woman with a beautiful face.
Oh, yes, Evangeline had much to pay for.
Epilogue
Angel
5 years later …
Dreams were like the wind. You could feel them brush against your skin, touch your presence, but you could never catch them. Never hold onto them. Attempting to do so was like trying to capture a human soul—not that I believed those existed anymore, and if they did, my sister certainly had a rotten one. She was rancid and corrupt to her very core. Only now that I’d experienced the depths of her betrayal and delivered my own betrayal in return did I understand what the life of a criminal indeed did to someone.
It sucked out hope, burned it to a crisp, and then let the ashes rain back down over every fucking thing.
As I sat in the Rosemary Café on Main Street of Queens, New York City, waiting for my client to make an appearance, I absently reached up and touched the ring hanging from a slender chain beneath my silk shirt. Every morning, no matter where I was—Boston, Paris, Vancouver—I woke up and touched it. Made sure it was still there. Reassured myself that what I was doing—the person I’d become—had not been for nothing.
It was all forhim. The only man I’d ever felt I belonged to. The only man I’d ever been so close to loving. And the only man I could never ever touch again.
Some days, the beautiful metal ring felt like it would burn a patch in my skin; other days, it felt like the only thing keeping me tethered to the ground. Today, it was a mixture of both because today was our wedding anniversary.
The bell to the café door chimed and I lifted my gaze as a tall, slender man dressed in an impeccable suit bypassed the short line of patrons waiting to be served at the counter and made his way toward me. My client’s tall, gangly-thin frame outlined his body and shadowed his features as he rushed through the café. It wasn’t until he sat before me that I looked up and saw the red splotches over his too-pale skin. Too thin, too pale—the poor man rarely left his lab, even less so in the past few months. He was rather sweaty, not that I could blame him. As one of the youngest scientific protégés in America, if any of Ronald Wiser’s competitors even caught a whiff of what he was doing, he’d find himself on the wrong side of an assassin’s scope.
“Thank God you’re here,” he said as he took a seat across from me. “I think I’m being followed.”
My back straightened. This was not good news. My eyes shot past him and out into the busy street. “Was it a car or a person?” I clarified, scanning our surroundings.
“Car. Dark blue sedan,” he answered. “I think I lost it a few blocks back, but I can’t be sure.”
I scowled as I watched a dark blue sedan drive past the front windows of the café.Damn.No, he hadnotlost it.
Ronald was neither a spy nor a criminal on the run, but he did need my protection. I sucked in a breath and slowly let it out. It wouldn’t help to panic now. If I’d learned nothing over the past five years, it was that panicking merely slowed down my thinking process. If Ronald was being followed, then someonemust have tipped off his competitors. If his competitors knew about the synthetic organ growth project he’d been working on for the last several months, then he was in deep shit. Anyone in the medical industry would spend billions to keep his future from happening. There was too much money on the line for them. My eyes moved from the street and back to him.
Ron was red-faced, his eyes jumping around the room as if any of them would stand up and shoot him at any moment. I leaned over and touched his hand, offering him a small smile as if we were two friends out for a friendly chat. “Calm down,” I warned him quietly under my breath. “Don’t make a scene.”
“They’re going to kill me, Eve,” he hissed the fake name I’d given him when we’d first met. “I know they are. I’ve done everything you said. I copied all of the files, all of the information. I’ve sent the flash drives, but what if it’s insufficient? They will want to destroy this information—or worse, take it and use it for themselves. They’ll create my organs and then jack up the prices until no one but the rich can afford them. This could save lives, and they’re going to use this for their own profit.” By the end of his monologue, his voice had turned slightly shrill. More sweat beaded on his brow. I wrinkled my nose as the distinct smell of sweat reached my nostrils.
Discreetly, I reached into my purse, removed several tissues, and handed them to him. He took them and began blotting the sweat on his forehead.
“We don’t need to worry about the research,” I told him. “Right now, all we need to worry about is how to get you out of here and to a safe place before whoever is trailing you finds a way to get you alone.” Anddead,but I don’t say that last part aloud.
“Do you have a safe house set up?” he asked almost pleadingly.
My smile turned pained. If only I had those kinds of connections. Had things not gone terribly awry five years ago, I might have been able to give him a better answer. I’d once thought that being the wife of a mob boss was the worst thing that could ever happen to me, but now as time had passed and the longer I’d been on the run, I knew that having contacts in the world of crime was what kept people alive—as well as fear and power. Ron had fear in spades, but his power was waning in the face of the profit-mongers.
