Page 140 of Ricochet

“She’s one of the families I’ve helped.” Gloria’s chair inched back.

Adelia bit her tongue. Nothing the monster could say would get to her so long as she stood up and stepped aside.

“How nice,” he offered, still not turning back.

“I’m going tosee if there’s something that can be said in the program.”

Adelia clamped her molars together and steppe back so that the shipping heiress and woman of the decade could excuse herself.

“I’ll only be a minute.”

In her peripheral vision, Adelia saw suited bodyguards shift their position at a table. No doubt, there was a fury of conversations being had into wrists and through earpieces. “Waveyour security back.”

“They wouldn’t be doing their job,” she said condescendingly, “if I did that.”

Adelia glanced at the podium and thought back to Gloria’s twitch over the word martyr. “What’s more dangerous? Walking to the side of the room for a quick conversation or me walking away, alone, but stopping at that microphone.”

“No one would believe you—”

“You don’t even know what I know,”Adelia snapped. “But you’re worried enough that you’re still talking to me. You’re evil but not stupid. I’ll give you that.”

With a casual flick of her wrist, Gloria held off her protective detail and gestured for Adelia to walk with her. They stepped off the dais, a far enough distance apart now that they didn’t look uncomfortably close. Most guests were deep in conversation, well served withsemi-expensive wine, and enjoying their salads. The clatter of forks on the plates and cocktail chatter mixing together was the perfect backdrop for Adelia’s distraction. “Stop here.”

“I have a private bathroom entrance—”

“No way would I go anywhere with you.”

“I’ll pull off my team if you tell me how you got my number,” Gloria offered. “Simple trade. Your life for another.”

“Screw you.”

Gloria’s exasperation rolled off as she tossed her hair. “You don’t want to kill me. You want to talk, tonight of all nights. What is it that you want?”

Adelia couldn’t believe the superior swagger this lady had. “I want to understand.”

“You’re risking prison time so you can understand something? You’re stupider than you look.”

“Consider it my dying wish.”

“At least you’ll be out of my hair.”Gloria touched the corner of her fake eyelashes and blinked as though the conversation was as simple as her makeup. “When did you put two and two together? Honestly, I looked at how your organization managed money and couldn’t make heads or tails of it myself. That you could even connect one dot to the next dot to another is…” She lifted sequin-covered shoulders. “I should actually be impressed.”

“What are you talking about?” The bank transfers? How would Gloria know what Adelia was doing?

A jeweled hand waved her question off. “Impressed. It means, never mind.”

Focus. Adelia couldn’t slap her for being a condescending bitch. Or she could. But the plan would derail. “I don’t even have to understand how. Just why?”

“Because I am helping.” She gestured to the room. “Can’t you see that?”

Adelia’s stomach bottomed. “What?”

“It’s above your schooling, I’m afraid.”

“Try me.”

“Sure, but you won’t understand. Most people don’t have the intellectual or emotional abilities to comprehend concepts on this macro of a level.” Gloria waved to a woman as she walked by. “Demand dictates there will always be supply. Buyers are not hard to find, but when the global political and socioeconomicclimates shifted over the last two decades, it became the right thing to do.”

“Traffic people?”

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