Page 106 of A Game of Deception
My nerves were fucking shot.
For the third time in ten minutes, I paced my penthouse living room, from kitchen island to the windows. Leo perched on a barstool, pretending to care about his phone instead of my mental breakdown.
“She should’ve called by now,” I said, checking my watch again. “It’s been almost two hours.”
Leo glanced up. “She said she’d call when it was done.”
“What if something went wrong?” My words stuck like peanut butter. “What if Hank figured her out? What if?—”
“Xander.” Leo cut me off. “Tara knows her shit. She’s not some helpless princess. She’s a badass with a plan.”
He was right, but my brain kept playing disaster movies starring Tara and her father. I’d faced Diego Mano’s mobsters yesterday, but Tara alone with her dad froze my blood in ways Torres’s goons couldn’t touch.
“Should’ve gone with her,” I muttered.
“And done what?” Leo dropped his phone. “Hidden in the bushes? Climbed the walls like Spiderman? Get real.”
My phone buzzed. I pounced on it.
On my way. I got it.
Relief hit me, and I collapsed onto the nearest chair.
“She did it,” I told Leo, my voice tiny. “She got the confession.”
Leo’s eyebrows jumped. “Holy shit. She actually pulled it off.”
“Never doubted her,” I lied, suddenly floating.
“Bullshit. You nearly wore through your shoes,” Leo fired back, grinning.
The next twenty minutes dragged on like a snail race. I tried emails, social media, anything to avoid staring at the door. Failed miserably.
When the knock came, I nearly broke my neck getting there. I yanked it open to find Tara—pale but fierce-eyed.
“You did it,” I said, pulling her inside and against me in one move.
She held on tight, shaking slightly. When she stepped back, her face told the real story.
“I’m okay,” she said, glancing past me to Leo. “I got everything. The confession, Morrison, Brittany, Diego—all of it.”
“Let’s hear it,” Leo said, suddenly serious.
Tara pulled out her phone. We moved to the couch while she remained standing, too wired to sit.
“Fair warning,” she said, finger hovering over play, “this is fucked up.”
I grabbed her hand. “We’re in this together.”
The recording started with background noise, then Hank’s voice. As I listened to him casually admit to bribing Detective Morrison, framing me, and orchestrating my Miami return just to destroy me, my stomach twisted.
“I did it all for you, Tara.”
When it ended, we sat in shocked silence.
“Jesus Christ,” Leo finally muttered.
I couldn’t speak. A decade of guilt and self-destruction—all because of this twisted fuck and his warped idea of fatherly love.
