Chapter Forty-Six

Philadelphia is two hours away from Brooklyn. I didn’t consider that before I flounced out of Markus’s office, forgetting that we’d been chauffeured here.

Not that I cannot get home on my own. They do have cars here, and trains run every hour.

I’m just a little thrown by the unfamiliar environment when I step out of the building. But the city is lovely, so I decide to meander a bit before I hire a car service to take me home.

Home.

Where is that now, anyway? Is home a home without Melanie? I’ve been apart from my family for so long that she has become home to me. At least, she had been.

But now, without her, where is home?

I love my best friend, but I’m also extremely mad at how okay she is with leaving me to join someone else’s team, with zero qualms, zero damns about my feelings. Except I shouldn’t be surprised, should I? She’s Melanie. An emotionless narcissist. I’m lucky she feels anything at all for me.

I don’t know what happens from now on, but I do know I’ll not be staying in New York City. It holds too many memories. Not just of Melanie, but of that SOB Jaxon.

As I’m strolling past a café called Rachel’s Café & Pastry with chocolate-drizzled doughnuts on display, I brake and peek inside. I’m not hungry. Indignation has banished my appetite. I’m also not in the mood for junk food. Haven’t been since…him.

But, I am feeling rebellious. Eating a chocolate-drizzled doughnut will represent me sticking it to the odious bastard. Not as if he cares what I eat, but I have been eating healthier because he eats healthy, and I enjoyed eating what he eats, as it somehow brought me closer to him. Mimicking him helped me to understand him sometimes.

Or, that’s what I thought.

Now that I know he was gaming me the whole time, I’m forced to accept that my progress with him was all an illusion. A manipulation. None of it was real.

Bastard probably got off on it. Off watching me fall hopelessly for the heart he doesn’t have.

I stomp into the café, emerging a few minutes later with a once-bitten chocolate-drizzled doughnut.

Ah, rebellion, how sinuous the shape of your ire.

As I lift the doughnut to my mouth to take another bite, a white Rolls-Royce Phantom stops at the curb, right at my feet.

I pause in mid-bite, and the back window rolls down, revealing the insultingly gorgeous Alessa King. She eyes my rebellious doughnut with revulsion. “I can see now why your nose is so oily.”

I feel my eyeballs knock about in their sockets as I lower the doughnut from my mouth. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“You? No.” Her voice mocks me. “But I can help you with a ride back home.”

“No, thank you.” I turn to leave.

“Oh. No, my darling. I’m sorry if I made it sound like you have a choice. I’m not my husband.” Her voice is a chilling wind, warning me she’s not to be trifled with. “Get in the car. Now.”

I stop and glance back at her uncertainly. Because, well, she’s frightening. And as bitchy as I’m feeling today, I also have a feeling Alessa King is not someone I want to piss off. “And what if I don’t?” I ask. Because caving immediately would let her know I’m a chicken.

“Hmm… I guess I would have to take my Choos off, grab you by those annoyingly frizzy bangs, and stuff you in here myself—seeing as I’m not allowed to harm you.” She actually sounds bored.

I still don’t move. These people are insane.

She rolls her eyes and sighs. “My son swears you are his future. And if you are his future, you are family. And in our family, we protect each other. Therefore, I’m not about to leave you on the street two hours away from your home.”

Future?

Family?

Did she seriously say…family? And future?

“You’re totally insane,” I mutter.

She ignores me. “Besides, even if I want to leave you—because, honestly, he could do much better for a wife—I love my son. I love my son, and I hate our fights. If he finds out I left you on the street, we will have a fight. He is spiteful and tricky, and I never win. So, throw that O of calories away and get in the car.”

I want to remind her with ear-splitting enunciation that her son and I aren’t together, we have no future, and I sure as hell will never be his wife. But I have a feeling it would only fall on deaf ears.

For a long moment, I hesitate.

She bristles with impatience.

Oh, what the hell. Maybe I can straighten out her ridiculous notions.

But first I adjust my glasses and bend to peer into car—just to make sure Jaxon isn’t hiding in there.

It’s just her.

“Fine,” I say. “But I’m keeping my doughnut.”

I wait for her to object, but she doesn’t. She just purses her lips in a moue. So, I go around to the other side and get in. By myself, since the driver doesn’t bother to open my door for me. He pulls into traffic before the door is even closed, as if I might jump out again, or something.

Deliberately, willfully, I take a big bite of my doughnut and stare straight ahead.

Alessa is watching me. After several long minutes, she says, “You know this is not over, right?”

Wrong.

“Pardon me?”

“My husband and my son are one and the same. Stubborn, and driven. Markus will not stop until you agree to work for him, and Jaxon will not stop until you’re barefoot and pregnant.”

A week ago that thought might actually have been appealing. Now it was just…nauseating.

Taking another bite, I speak with my mouth full on purpose. “Well, they’ll be not-stopping for a long time. Because I want nothing to do with you lot.”

She sighs. “You will learn, girl. You will learn.”

Once my doughnut is finished, and I’ve crumpled up the paper bag and dropped it on the floor out of spite, I ask, “Why aren’t you using this opportunity to convince me to work for you instead of Markus?”

She stares out the window for a long time without answering. At length, she says, “You are smart, and quick, so I assume you have already figured it out that I do not get a say in who makes the team. Jaxon does.” She pauses. “And he does not want you on the team.”

That makes two of us. But hell if her saying that doesn’t raise my hackles.

“Right. You two were working together to pull one over on Markus. Which I had no part in.”

“No need for sarcasm. Jaxon already knew, in the end, you would leave and your friend would stay. He figured out she wanted to be on the team—for real—a long time ago. We already had her. All that earlier was just for show.” Alessa turns from the window and looks at me. “We were not conning Markus, honey. We were conning you.”

And she has the gall to say it to my face. My God! What the hell is wrong with this family? They’re all twisted psychos. Why would I ever want to be a part of this? I’d never know what’s real and what’s not. Hell, I could still be in the middle of a con right this minute.

Hell, no. This is not a family I want to be a part of.

“So, Mr. Jaxon Almighty thinks I’m not good enough for his pathetic little band of thieves?” I can’t help the bitter bite in my tone. Despite everything, his rejection cuts to the quick.

“No. He does not.” Her thin, penciled brow arches up. “He thinks you are better than a field operative.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I give her my full attention, because this might be my one and only chance to hear what Jaxon really thinks of me. Unless, of course, she’s lying through her teeth. A distinct possibility.

She rolls her eyes. “He thinks you belong with Markus. Working in the lab. Not out on the streets. He believes you will be happier advancing technology and making cool gadgets, or whatever, for the government.” She makes a noise of distaste.

Disbelief surges through my whole body. Along with a spritz of genuine interest. “Gadgets?”

She studies me for long moment. “Hmm. I guess he was right.”

Embarrassed by my own budding excitement, I turn away. The traitorous nerd in me just did a KO on my inner bitch. My body is starting to hum wildly at the thought of making gadgets—spy gadgets? Computer gadgets? Scientific gadgets?—and it’s an enormous struggle to keep it from showing.

“You did not hear that from me,” she cautions. “I was not supposed to tell you. Classified, and all.” She flicks her fingers as if the word annoys her.

“But you did anyway,” I mutter. Utterly torn between wanting to smack her and wanting to hug her. It was getting harder to hang onto my fury.

She regards me seriously. “You’re planning to run. And I want you to know what you’d be running from. The future you’ve always wanted. Contentment. And—although I’m told you don’t care about money—the opportunity to surpass your sister’s net worth in no time.”

I chomp on my bottom lip, my fingers twitching with resistance. I want to say yes. I want to say yes so, so badly. But his stupid face keeps flashing across my mind. And it still hurts. Like crazy.

I can’t do that to myself.

I can’t work for Markus. Not anymore. From now on, whenever I see Markus, all I’ll be able to think about is his son.

“Tempting,” I say. With true regret. “But, no. I want nothing to do with your son.”

“That’s too bad,” she says with a tsk and a dramatic sigh. “Because he wants everything to do with you.”