Page 61 of Hero & Villain
“Man, Dani, are you trying to make me cry? I’m getting all choked up, and you know that emotions are my driving force towards criminal activity. I’m going to have to go out and pickpocket someone, and then return it, because I’m saved for better things. Instant gratification is a lie that will ruin you, but you taught me that, taught me to play the long game. I love you, Vil. Whatever you’re up against, you can conquer. I know it.”
I exhaled and hung up, taking a minute to blink back the tears before I headed towards Prudence. A few tough guys had gathered around her, checking her out.
“Hey, Pink!”
I turned to see the beer guy coming towards me with a hopeful expression on his face. How had I managed not to stab him yet? Maybe it’s because I wouldn’t be able to. While I was frowning at him, thinking that I’d never be able to defend myself, someone else grabbed me from behind.
It all happened so fast- a bag over my head, manacles snapped on my wrists, and the next thing I knew, I was being shoved into a car that pulled out with a sharp jerk.
I sat perfectly still on the bench, back ramrod straight, because the end of this trip would be my grandfather, or worse, Philippe.
“You aren’t screaming or crying. That’s a surprise,” a woman’s melodious voice came to me through the rough bag. “Take it off, Jerome. Her dignity should be rewarded.”
The bag was yanked off, leaving me with a headache and a view of a gorgeously dressed older woman with cold brown eyes. To my left, Jerome was the beer guy who didn’t look nearly as helpless and idiotic as he had a moment before.
The woman spoke, dragging my attention back to her. “I shouldn’t need to introduce myself since you’ve been plotting to get your hooks into my son for years. I have a deal for you. You’regoing to be smart and take it, walking away from my son with a generous donation to help set you up with honest work.”
I stared at her, and I think that my mouth may have fallen open. This was Dirk Dagger’s mother? Yes, he had her eyes, except that his had a mischievous softness, while this woman would happily slaughter baby seals for a new purse that she would never wear.
“I don’t understand,” I said with a cracked voice before I swallowed hard. This couldn’t be happening. Just statistically, no one could have such a bad, bizarre day.
“No? You’ve done very well getting close to my son. So well, in fact, that I’m forced to buy you off.”
It took a second for her words to penetrate my stunned brain. “You’ll pay me to stop seeing Dirk? I’m not really dating him. We just work together.”
She shot me a hard look, and her mouth curled. “Of course you aren’t, because you’re playing a little hard-to-get game that will bring him to his knees with a ring.” That almost made me laugh hysterically. My game had nothing to do with being hard-to-get, but I’d royally screwed up all my evil plans. “Jerome told me all about the fight, how responsive my son was when you demanded he win. Two fights in one night, you must have made a tidy little profit off my son’s humiliation.”
As a matter-of-fact, I had, but only out of my failure to dominate a mountain lion. Is that what I’d been doing? How clever of me. How diabolical.
I would have rubbed my forehead, but my hands were still cuffed behind my back. Out of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, this was the most ludicrous. And she thought that I was harmless because of some cuffs and the muscle beside me, but she had no idea who I was. Then again, did I?
“I see. You think that I’m going to seduce your son and break his heart. You’re trying to protect him.”
She waved a hand airily. “You may make him happy right now, at the moment, but a secretary isn’t what will bring him future stability and contentment. That comes from a match between two equal partners with similar backgrounds and values, not to mention culture and breeding.”
My stomach tightened and nausea swamped me at the thought of her selling Dirk to a nice debutante like my grandfather had sold me to Clint, even if she thought that I made him happy. Not that I did. I mean, I was there to destroy him. Her intentions, while misplaced, were not at odds with an actual protective impulse. But she didn’t know that.
“How much money would you give me?” I asked while I tried to think like a villain. The puppy slippers I’d put on were decidedly not helping my frame of mind, but they were cute.
She smiled and settled back against her seat. “Two hundred thousand dollars. I’ll transfer the money to the bank account of your choice, but you must agree never to see Dirk again.”
“Two million.”
She blanched and then narrowed her eyes at me. “You aren’t in a position to bargain.”
“I’ll lose my job. It has benefits. Who knows when I’ll be able to find more work?”
She pursed her lips. “You would have to quit. Go back to wherever you were before you came crawling to Las Vegas.” She eyed her beautifully manicured nails. “Jerome told me the condition you were in when you arrived, so perhaps you can consider this as a nice vacation between jobs, or the chance to invest in yourself with some education. If you see him again, things will get very unpleasant for you.” She raised her eyes and fixed me with those cold orbs of judgmental hostility.
I was Louis Haversham III’s only granddaughter. In assets, I was well past the Prescotts. As for breeding, grooming, culture, I’d gone to the finest art school in Boston instead of attending Harvard, but I wasn’t the only debutante who had done so. I was the only eligible young woman who had snagged the elusive Clint Harrison, much to his mother’s delight. Clint’s mother was nothing like Dirk’s. Strange how who your mother was didn’t equate to who you’d become. What was Jezebel’s mother like? What about Felicia? What about mine? I didn’t know anything other than the fact that she’d taken me on that roof to die with her. I was so tired of wealth and families who thought they could buy and sell people. So. Sick. So. Tired.
“And if I refuse?”
Her mouth tightened, and those fingers became claws. “You will suddenly find the law very troublesome.”
“Oh, but you won’t kill me.”
She curled her lip in distaste. “I’m a Bostonian matron of the highest society. I come from generations of upright, stalwart souls who would never stoop to something so dirty.”
