Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74005 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74005 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
“I’ll go with you,” Vinnie says.
“No. I want you to get to work on those flowers. For Dani. Please.”
Vinnie nods, and Raven looks visibly relieved.
My sister has been through her own kind of hell, and I’m not going to put her fiancé in danger.
Besides, as good as Vinnie is, I can move more quickly alone.
I stand. “Text me if you get any updates. DNA, toxicology, whatever.”
Vinnie nods. “You’ll be the first to know.”
By the time I reach West Lake Hills, the sun is beginning to set.
The gate is exactly what I expected—iron bars, keypad entry, security camera overhead. Looks impressive to anyone who doesn’t know better.
Getting in is simple. I wait, idling a few car lengths back until a silver Lexus rolls up and punches in the code. When the gate starts to swing shut, I ease in behind them like I belong.
Reyes’s place is deep inside the neighborhood, a southwestern style with clay shingles and perfectly trimmed bluegrass. Lights are on inside. Someone’s home.
I park two streets over, just close enough to keep an eye without drawing attention.
I walk over and check the perimeter.
Three real cameras, two fakes. The fakes are the cheap, hollow kind you can spot in seconds. The real ones cover the front door, back door, garage, and a bay window—master bedroom, if the Zillow listing I pulled is still accurate.
I scroll Zillow on my phone. Reyes bought the house a few years ago. It has five bedrooms, each with their own bathroom. A kitchen that looks like it belongs in a cooking show. A finished basement with all the luxuries—gym, wine cellar, home theater.
It’s the theater that grabs me.
One of the listing photos shows a door in the corner. I flip to the floor plan. There’s another entrance, leading from a stairwell off the pool deck.
I glance toward the pool. Sure enough, a camera points that way. But the casing’s wrong. It’s a dummy.
That’s my in.
I’ll come back after nightfall.
28
DANIELA
The hallway to my suite feels longer than usual. My mind is a tangle of voices—Vinnie’s instructions about the chocolates, Raven’s assurance that Belinda is safe, Hawk’s determination to go after Reyes. Alone.
I close the door to my suite behind me and lean against it for a second, listening to the muffled quiet. In here, I can pretend for a moment that I’m just another woman with a normal life, a normal bedroom, a normal trash can that doesn’t hold potential murder weapons.
The box is right where I left it—on top of the trash, the lid askew.
I crouch and stare at it before I pull a gallon-sized plastic bag from my pantry, hold it open, and slide the chocolates inside. The faint scent of candy wafts up, and my stomach tightens. One piece is all it would have taken. One careless bite on the wrong day.
I place the zipped bag on the counter.
And I remember…
All the other gifts from the men over the last three years.
Lingerie, folded into tissue paper and boxed. Dresses that clung in all the places men liked to look, not the places I liked to show. Jewelry—cold metal and cold stones that warmed only when my skin did.
Stranger things, too.
Music boxes that played notes so delicate they were almost sad. Paintings of landscapes I’d never see. Silk bedsheets from Diego Vega embroidered with my initials and his—his way of saying I belonged to him.
I hated all of them. No matter how rare or expensive, every gift was tainted by what I had to do to get it.
Except one.
The only gift I ever truly valued.
And it wasn’t from a man I serviced. Not because my father forced me too, anyway.
It was from the chef.
Two Years Earlier…
I slip inside the kitchen quietly, but Chef spots me instantly, glancing over his shoulder with that look that says he already knows what I want.
“You want to learn?”
I gaze at the trays lined with white ramekins, the air thick with the scent of chocolate and cream. “You’re making soufflés.”
“Mini soufflés,” he says. “For tonight’s dinner. I’ll walk you through it.” His smile turns sly. “In exchange.”
I sigh, already knowing what that means. “Now?”
He tilts his head toward the pantry.
His bonuses. That’s what he calls it. He once told me he likes my bonuses better than the yearly trips to a private island that my father gives him.
I suppose that should make me feel good. It doesn’t.
It’s quick, mechanical. I focus on the cool shelves at my back, the faint scent of dried herbs and onions, the way the dim light hums above us. His body is sweaty and coarse, and I breathe through my mouth to block the smell.
His dick is disgusting. It tastes like salt and dirt, and he holds my head, fucking my mouth.
I don’t gag anymore. Though sometimes I have to pretend if someone likes it. But I tamed that reflex long ago. I had to in order to get through it all.