One she’d heard only in her nightmares since the time she was eight years old.
“Hello, Naomi. Or should I say Narumi?” She felt the blood drain from her face the way he spoke her given name, full of dark amusement. “Pity about your friend. Suicide is such an ugly thing.”
“You did this.” No need to pretend she wasn’t aware of Leo Slater’s evilness. “You sadistic bastard, you killed him.”
A low chuckle sent a shudder through her bones. “No, my dear. You did.”
She could hardly deny her part in all of this. The guilt washed over her in a black tide, and it was all she could do to keep her sob from choking her. “Keep talking, Slater. I’m going to take everything I know about you straight to the police. Including what you did to my mother.”
“No, Narumi, you won’t.” He sounded so confident, she wanted to scream. “You won’t, because if you intended to do that, you’d still be talking to those officers parked in your crippled friend’s driveway right now.”
She sucked in a shallow gasp. He’d been close enough to see her? Was he still lurking somewhere on the road with her? Her gaze darted to the rearview and side mirrors, taking note of the scores of vehicles that surrounded her. He could be anywhere, following her by himself or accompanied by any number of his gangster lackeys.
“What do you want?” she demanded, knowing there was nothing he could take from her now that meant more than what she’d already lost.
“I’m sure you know what I want. My money. All of it.”
She swallowed, shaking her head as she stared out at the sunlit road and the garish signs that flanked the Strip. “If that’s what you wanted, then you shouldn’t have killed Michael. The money’s in his bank account. I can’t get to it.”
“Find a way, Narumi. And I want the rest of it too. By my accounting, you owe me another two-hundred-and-thirty-seven-thousand dollars in addition to what you and your friend stole from me the other night.”
She scoffed, but her heart was racing with fear. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He exhaled a tight, impatient sound. “You may have cheated me right under my fucking nose, but do not take me for a fool. I’ve seen the video footage from my casinos over the past many months. I don’t know how you did it and I don’t care. I want my money back. Every. Fucking. Cent.”
He was asking the impossible—more than the impossible—and she didn’t think for a minute that he didn’t know that. She’d spent more than half of his money on the kids and helping Michael run the shelter. That money went to food, clothing, countless other necessities. As for the little bit she’d made waiting tables here and there or doing any number of other odd jobs, it wouldn’t make even the smallest dent in what she owed him and besides, her menial wages were gone practically before she even brought them home. “I don’t have all of your money to give it back to you.”
“Then find a way to get it. All of it,” he said again, menace in the calmness of his viper’s voice. “Or you’ll be forcing me to take something else from you if you fail.”
The line went dead. Naomi’s breath gusted out of her, part in relief, part in paralyzed dread. She hardly cared what Slater might do to her personally, but she didn’t want to imagine how far he’d stoop to hurt anyone else she loved.
Her hands were shaking so hard she had to pull over. She sat in a loading zone for several minutes, until a truck blasted its horn at her and nearly made her jump out of her skin.
God, what had she done?
For the last eighteen years of her life she’d lived with the sole purpose of getting even with Leo Slater. Making him pay for hurting her mother, for taking her away and destroying everything Naomi had.
For nearly two years now, she’d been chipping away at the monster of her past. Cutting him where he would hurt, in the only place a man like Slater would bleed. But even as she was taking his money, each of those little victories felt hollow. That’s why she kept going, kept hitting him for more and more and more.
Now, she was the only one who’d lost.
And even if she had the chance to take every last nickel of Slater’s fortunes—even if she could be assured that one day she could destroy him completely before stabbing him in his black heart—she knew that would be an empty triumph too.
Simply put, Leo Slater didn’t matter.
The cost of her vengeance was already too high.
She just wanted it to be over.
If she could, she’d surrender all of his damned money right now, just as he’d demanded. But she didn’t have access to Michael’s personal bank account, nor did she have the more than two-hundred grand she’d taken from Slater’s casinos over time.
But she had some.
And she could never spend it anyway, knowing every penny she took from Slater was now stained with Michael’s blood.
Numb and wracked with tears she refused to let spill, she glanced at her phone and tapped one of the numbers stored on the device.
A perky voice answered. “Anytime Private Vaults, can I help you?”
