Then she walked out of the restaurant without a backwards glance. She had been playing the soft and meek role for the last twelve years, afraid to ever really stand up for herself for fear of discovery. And what had it gotten her? A stripper she hadn’t wanted to hire in the first place ratting her out and an ex-boyfriend, who was now planning on killing her.
She was done apologizing to people like Nestor, especially now that she didn’t have anything else to lose.
That decided, she snatched her phone out of her purse and called the only person she owed anything to.
“What?” her daughter asked in the hostile tone she’d decided to take with Lacey as of late.
“I have to meet with someone,” Lacey answered. “So I might be late tonight.”
“I don’t care,” Sparkle informed her, even less emotional than usual.
And Lacey had to bite back the urge to go off on her petulant daughter, like she’d just gone off on her former boss. “I know you’re angry at me. But I need you to listen to me carefully now,” she said between clenched teeth.
Silence.
“Jennifer, are you still there?”
“Yes, and for the record, I hate the name Jennifer.”
“I know you do.” Lacey took a deep breath. She had hoped she wouldn’t have to ever have this conversation with Sparkle. She’d hoped she’d be able to send her daughter off to college one day and give her the means to lead a normal life. She cursed herself now for letting down her guard in Montana, even for one night.
But in the end, she gathered up the last of her resolve and said, “In case I can’t get back there, I need you to remember these letters: ISLVM. The easy way to remember it is ‘I love Sparkle very much.’ Check the letters against a telephone pad and you’ll have the combination to the safe under my bed. It has everything you need, including instructions about what to do if you don’t hear from me.”
For the first time in weeks, Sparkle didn’t sound angry when she spoke to her. “What’s going on? Mom, you’re scaring me.”
She thought about the icy look on Suro’s face as he informed her he was a hit man. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to scare you like this. Please believe me. I never wanted any of this for you, but from now on, I need you to be selfish, okay? Don’t worry about me. Worry about you. Do whatever it takes to make sure you don’t turn out like me, okay? I love you, Sparkle,” she told her daughter. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I will always, always love you no matter where I am.”
“Mom, you’re upsetting me,” she could practically hear Sparkle rubbing her thumb between her fingers on the other end of the line.
“I know, and that’s why I’m going to get off the phone now. I don’t want to upset you any more than I have.”
“Mom, no. Stay on the phone.”
“Sparkle, breathe. Remember your exercises. Just breathe until you’re able to take the next step and do I would told you.”
“Mom—”
She hung up on her daughter. It seemed less cruel that way. And when she dropped the burner phone back into her purse, she saw that the Cliffrose Inn, a quaint collection of adobe suites, was standing right in front of her.
CHAPTER 20
A FEW minutes later, she found herself outside Suro’s stand-alone suite, knocking on a door painted with a Navajo symbol. It felt like knocking on the door to her own death and her heart beat in her throat when Suro answered. He looked her up and down before opening the door wider so she could enter.
More than twelve years of running, and it had all come down to this, she thought. How would he kill her? she wondered. He didn’t have a gun in his hand. Would he strangle her, or smother her, slit her throat, or force her to drink poison?
Strange, she would have never guessed he was hit man when they were together, but now it made total sense.
She heard the door click behind her and she gathered up her bravery, before turning around to face him. “Before you kill me, I have a few things I have to say.”
He stood there, hands at his side, lethal in his stillness, but he didn’t interrupt so she took that as an invitation to continue.
“I’m glad you know. I couldn’t tell you myself, but I’m glad you found out.” She looked him in the eye. “Because I wasn’t lying in Chicago. I really do love you, and more than anything I wanted you to know who I really was.”
To her surprise his face morphed from impassive into a storm cloud of rage. “Do not lie to me.”
“I’m not,” she said, and she stood her ground, though her instincts were screaming at her to run, to try to get away from this killer, this mad man, even if he’d easily be able to catch her.
“Do not lie to me,” he said again, angrier than she’d ever seen him.
“I’m not!”
His body crashed into hers like a runaway train. Her back hit an adobe wall and the block of ice that had opened the door became a wall of heat. Suro kissed her everywhere, her neck, her chest, her face all the while demanding, “Stop lying, stop lying, stop lying.”
“I’m not,” she said. And she kissed him back with all the passion she’d been trying to forget in the long weeks since she’d left him unconscious in Ferrari’s apartment.
He lifted her leg up around his waist, hiking up her skirt, so she could feel his rigid hard-on against her womanhood.
“Please believe me,” she said. “I loved you. I still do. So much. I don’t care who are or what you do for a living.”
There came the sound of her panties ripping and he was inside her, no condom, just his long, unforgiving length sheathing itself all the way to the hilt inside her quivering pussy. “Yes!” she cried out, happier than she had any right to be, because they were joined together again, even if it was in anger on his part.
He yanked the front of her waitress uniform open and the cheap buttons went flying everywhere. Then he pulled down her bra so her now swollen breasts came bursting out, and he started moving against her, his chest scraping again her sensitive nipples every time he jerked his cock inside her.
For a long while nothing could be heard in the room except for his harsh breaths and the sound of him slamming into her as he fucked her like a vengeful beast against the wall.
But then she wrapped her arms around him as tight as she could and said, “I love you, Suro. I really do. Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and God help me, I’m so happy to see you again. I will never, ever lie to you again I swear. I swear it.”