Cruel Paradise (Beautifully Cruel Book 2)

I call Max back and tell her everything. Then I ask her what she thinks we should do.

“Aside from driving straight to the nearest adult store to stock up on lube and fishnet stockings? Book an appointment for a Brazilian wax. Then set up a video camera in the closet. I’m gonna want to watch the highlight reel over and over again.”

“I’m not having sex with him. Also, you are a very disturbed person. I said what should we do? Stay in our safe spots for the time being, right?”

“He knows where your safe spot is, genius.”

“I’ll move to another one, obviously.”

“Uh-huh. And what makes you think he couldn’t find you there?”

She makes a good point. I touch my hair, wondering if he implanted another tracking device when he had his hand buried in it.

I decide the odds are good. I should take another shower.

“We can’t go back to the apartment like nothing happened. That’s reckless.”

Max laughs. “Right. Because the three of us would never do anything reckless.”

I sit on the edge of the bed and stare out at the view of the Charles River, where I accused him of planning to throw me while I sported a pair of cement shoes. I think of his face when he said he liked me the way Newton liked gravity.

I think of his eyes.

I say quietly, “Help me, Max. I’m lost.”

She’s silent for a long time. Then she says, “You’re lost because you like him. And you hate yourself for liking him. Because he’s everything he is. Because your worst nightmare is ending up like your mother: drunk in love, then dead as a result.”

It’s both a gift and a curse having another person know me this well. My chest constricts until it’s painful.

I whisper, “I remember how she worshipped my father. How she hung on his every word. Even when I was little, I couldn’t understand her devotion. I knew he was bad…why didn’t she?”

Max says firmly, “You’re not your mother. Or your father. You’re you, not the sum of their parts. Let that shit go.”

Letting go is what I’ve been trying to do my whole life. But a person’s life history isn’t a butterfly’s cocoon or a snake’s dead, outgrown skin. We can’t walk away from it. We carry our history around in our hearts and our memories and deep within our bones. It’s alive and well, circulating in our bloodstreams.

Our pasts know exactly who we are, even when we don’t.

Or don’t want to admit we do.

Perhaps that’s my mistake: running away from the past instead of confronting it. Fleeing the dragon instead of slaying it.

Confusing hiding with moving on.

I look at the gun I stole from Killian’s guest room resting on the nightstand. I remember the knife stashed in the pocket of my coat. I think of all the ways I’ve trained to save myself from danger, all the ways I’ve contorted myself to make up for the sins of a single man, and wonder if the point of all the training and striving hasn’t been safety or penance, but preparation instead.

Every warrior has to go to battle. Everyone who trains with a sword must eventually use it to fight.

Max says, “Hello?”

“I’ll go back to the apartment. For the time being, you and Fin stay out of sight.”

“Jules—”

“I won’t risk your safety.”

She chuckles. “That’s a sweet thought, babe, but it’s not your decision. Wherever you go, we go, too. Without the other Musketeers, D’Artagnan was just a wannabe in a dumb cape.”

A wave of emotion overwhelms me. I don’t deserve this kind of loyalty, but damn, it sure is great. “I love you. You know that, right?”

She’s silent for a moment. “Jesus. Don’t make it sound so awful.”

“What do you mean?”

“You saying ‘I love you’ sounds like anyone else saying, ‘The dog’s dead.’”

When I laugh, swiping at my watering eyes, Max says, “That’s better. I’ll see you at home.”

She hangs up before I can make any more depressing statements.

Two hours later, Fin, Max, and I are standing together at the big bay window at the front of our apartment, looking down onto the street below.

Fin says, “What is he doing?”

We watch Killian stride back and forth between two parked SUVs. They’re his, obviously, the big ones with blacked out windows, shiny rims, and general air of menace. He doesn’t stop to speak to the men inside, he simply walks the half block distance between them then turns around and goes the other way.

Max says, “He’s pacing.”

“Why?”

“Maybe that’s how he gets his exercise.”

I know better.

I know that right now he’s down there doing battle with himself. I recognize the signs. Hands flexing open and closed, thunderclouds gathered over his head, jaw muscles jumping.

He’s trying to restrain himself from running up the steps, kicking down the front door, pulling me out of the house, throwing me over his shoulder, and taking me back to his bat cave. Even from a distance, he looks like a man obsessed.

I can’t decide if I’m flattered or if I should call the police.

Without breaking his stride, he glances up at the window. Our gazes lock and hold. Heat flashes over me. I exhale a soft, mystified laugh, wondering how it’s possible that merely looking at him could raise my temperature by several dozen degrees.

Fin elbows me in the side. “Don’t be rude. Wave.”

Max says, “Judging by the look on his face, a wave isn’t what he wants from her. Dude is intense.”

Fin makes a noise of agreement. “Maybe you should call him, hun.”

“What would she say to him, Fin? ‘Hi, I can see your boner from here. Looks majestic. Send it on up.’”

“I’m just saying that he might calm down a little if he heard her voice.”

“Or he might explode into a million superheated mafia king pieces.”

“We can’t let him stomp back and forth across the sidewalk all night. You know Mrs. Lieberman downstairs is already on the phone with 9-1-1.”

“I’m not calling him,” I say quietly, watching him turn on his heel and go back in the opposite direction. “I’m not doing anything with him. He said he’d protect us from the Serbians, and if his way of handling it is to wear a groove into the cement, so be it. He won’t get a reaction from me.”

Fin’s whistle is low and impressed. “Play on, player.”

“No games. I just have to disengage, not escalate.”

Max snorts. “I’d escalate it all the way to a hundred screaming orgasms, myself.”

Fin says drily, “Gee, what a shocker.”

I say, “To what end? It would be a disaster. A stupid, dangerous, and completely preventable disaster.”

A man steps out of one of the SUVs. I recognize him. It’s Declan, the handsome one who called me Your Highness and got a sharp rebuke from Killian over it.

Spotting him, Max says loudly, “Holy crap, what is this? The Evil Supermodel convention? The first annual Criminals Who Can Cut Steel with Their Cheekbones event?”

Declan approaches Killian. They share a few words, then Killian starts his pacing anew. Declan heads back into the car, shaking his head.

As for me, I turn away from the window and lie down in the middle of the living room floor. Staring up at the ceiling, I say, “Someone please bring me a Xanax. I have to get up for work in a few hours. At this rate, I’ll have a heart attack before then.”

Fin says, “Oh, shit, that’s right. Tomorrow’s Monday. It seems like lifetimes ago since we broke into that diaper warehouse.” She turns, looks at me on the floor, and smiles. “Since I broke into that diaper warehouse.”

I say without heat, “You suck. Also, you’re wrong. I’m the one who used the bolt cutters to get through that chain, remember?”

“What I remember is you flailing around like a newborn giraffe until I handed you the bolt cutters. Which I brought.”

I entreaty the ceiling, “Why must everything be a competition?”

Max chimes in, “Because you were Ms. Crabtree’s favorite. She’s never forgiven you for it.”

I remember our glamorous ninth-grade teacher at boarding school, and say, “Oh god. Carolyn Crabtree. I wonder what she’s doing now?”

Fin says, “Still slaying young men with her crystal blue eyes and masses of wavy red hair, no doubt.” Her smile falters. She says more softly, “Young men and women.”

Gazing at Fin fondly, Max says, “You always were a sucker for a ginger.”

“And you always were a sucker for anything with a dick.”

“They do have their charms.”

“Name one. I’ll wait.”

Fin and Max grin at each other, while I lie on the floor, emitting plaintive moans. “Xanax!”

“You know we don’t keep Xanax in the house, dummy.” Max comes to sit cross-legged on the floor next to me. She takes my hand and pats it. “But I’ll let you borrow my vibrator.”

I close my eyes and heave a sigh. “So gross.”

Fin sits down on my other side and takes my other hand. I say warily, “Are we about to start a séance here, or what?”

“More like group therapy,” says Max, making me moan again.

“No. No therapy. I don’t want to talk about this. About anything!”

No one says a word for a while. Fin starts to brush her fingers through my hair. The silence is heavy with anticipation.

I insist, “I’m not talking about him. I don’t even want to say his name.”

“Hmm,” says Fin, exactly like a therapist would.

I open my eyes and glare at her. “He’s a criminal! There’s nothing to talk about!”

“Nothing except your deeply conflicted feelings about him and what he does to your libido.”

I close my eyes again, wishing I were a hermit who lived alone on a tropical island and my only friends were a parrot and a tree snail.

A mute parrot and a tree snail.

When the silence grows so pregnant it’s about to give birth, I relent. “Fine. Who’s going first?”

“I am,” says Fin briskly, already in interrogation mode. “Max filled me in on the unicorn pony situation, but I want to backtrack to before any of this started. To the very beginning. How did you pick him for the job in the first place?”

“I saw him on the news a year ago. He was being arrested. Led in handcuffs up the steps of the courthouse by a bunch of federal agents. Except it looked like he was leading them. Ugh. You’ve never seen such confidence. Such conceit. Even his hair looked smug. It really, really pissed me off.” Thinking about it, I’m getting pissed off again.

“I remember that,” muses Fin. “He was let go pretty quickly, right?”

“Literally the same day. No charges filed. The government nabs the guy after months of intense investigation, and not one of the charges they slapped on him stuck for even twenty-four hours.”

Max nods. “You were indignant.”

“Righteously indignant,” adds Fin, her tone soothing.

“Hell, yes, I was! Here was this man—”

“This incredibly gorgeous hunk of man. This extreme example of uber-manliness. This scorching hot, barn burner of a man, who can produce spontaneous orgasms in whole swaths of the female population with merely a smile.”

I direct my glare to Max. “May I continue?”

She has the decency to look bashful. “Sorry. It’s just that he’s freaking beautiful, Jules.”

“No one is denying the man is attractive. Panthers have lovely, strokeable, furry torsos, but nobody is dumb enough to stick their hand close enough to cop a feel.”

“Point taken. Proceed.”

“Thank you. As I was saying…what was I saying?”

Fin says, “You were indignant.”

“Yes! Thank you. I was indignant. Here was this man, this infamous criminal, oozing self-confidence and superiority like sap from a tree. I hated him on sight. It’s like he knew he’d get off scot-free. I could see it on his face. That…that…”

Sounding impressed, Fin says, “Boldness.”

Sounding dreamy, Max says, “Élan.”

“Give me a break here, girls. I’m running out of glares.”

They apologize, and I continue. “Arrogance is the word I was looking for. Arrogance was coming off him like fumes. And not only that—entitlement. He knew he’d get off because he is who he is. Because he thought he deserved to. Because for a man like him, nothing in the world is impossible or out of reach. The heartless bastard.”

I seethe for a moment, until Fin observes, “I’m sensing some Daddy issues.”

My tone drips sarcasm. “You think?”

Max says, “To be fair, if Daddy issues were plutonium, the three of us would have enough nuclear power to run the entire galaxy.”

“True,” says Fin, nodding. “We were all emotionally abandoned as children.”

“We’re emotional driftwood.”

We sit in gloomy silence until I say, “This sure has been a great talk. Very uplifting. I feel so much better now.”

While I’m busy marinating in my discontent, Max is looking at me funny. She says, “Wait. If my math is right, we’ve pulled off four jobs in the last year.”

“Yeah? So?”

“So you said you saw Liam Black on the news one year ago.”

“And?”

She eyeballs me. “And you’ve been stewing about him ever since.”

I issue an automatic denial, to which Max says, “No? Then why wasn’t his job the first job we planned after you saw that news story?”

“I was doing research.”

“Research. Uh-huh. An entire year’s worth of research.”

Her tone makes me feel defensive. “Exactly.”

She’s not buying it. “It takes you a few months to research and plan all the rest of our jobs…why did it take a year with him?”

“Maybe I was being extra careful!”

“Or maybe you knew, deep down, that this one wouldn’t be just another job.”

I sit up, drag my hands through my hair, and huff out a weary breath. “Please don’t start with the fate stuff again.”

“Fate is a real thing, Jules.”

“Sure. So is the Tooth Fairy.”

“No, that’s a BS story parents tell their kids. Fate is as real as…well, as love. Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. All the most important things in life are invisible.”

Fin and I look at each other, then back at Max. She shrugs.

Fin says, “What other invisible stuff is important? The mental break with reality you’re having?”

Good. She doesn’t believe in fate, either. I knew Max was wrong when she claimed to be the smarter of the two.

But Max is undeterred. She lifts her nose in the air just far enough to look down it at us. “Things like loyalty. Things like faith. Things like friendship, dumbasses.”

“One could only wish friendship were invisible,” says Fin with a sweet smile.

Max scowls at her. “I’m gonna make that condescending smile invisible in a minute. When I slap it off your face.”

I stand and head into my bedroom, calling over my shoulder, “Wake me up if I need to help one of you bury the other one’s body. Otherwise, I’ll see you two nightmares in the morning.”

I head to my room and lock the door, knowing they won’t be the only faces I’ll see in the morning.

Knowing without knowing how that tomorrow, Killian Black will be right where I left him, pacing in agitation outside the window.

My dark, deadly Romeo waiting for his Juliet.

Thank god I don’t have a balcony.