Page 56 of Reckless Woman
“No, you don’t. Not anymore. You’re going to keep your mouthshut.”
He pauses. Calculates. He’s another man I’ll never underestimate. “And why would I do that?”
Think big, Vi. Think shocking. No matter how much it repulses you, because it will never come close to what Santiago did.
“Because if you don’t,” I warn. “I’m going to take the same machete I like to play peek-a-boo-limb with, and I’m going to introduce it to Santiago’s newborn baby girl. Perhaps you can hear her now?” I pull the phone away from my ear and hold it up for him to listen.Fuck… It’s even louder than its mother.“Stay on your side of the pacific, Joseph Grayson, and my machete stays clean and dry.”
“I could call him now, and you’d be dead before you took your next breath.”
“But not my contacts who have instructions to carry out the task in the event of my death,” I lie easily. “Our spies are everywhere. Even on this island.”
“He’ll torture the truth out of you.”
“I’d die before I said a word.
“You’re so full of shit!”
He’s past the point of anger. He’s tasting what me and my father taste now.
“Care to test that theory? Care to have another death on your conscience?”
“I’ll kill you extra slowly for this, and so will Anna.”
Anna.
“So, that’s where she disappeared to.”That smell…it’s that fucking smell again.“Did you have a sweet reunion in the restroom stalls?”
She chose him over me. How could she?The hurt is blinding, squeezing my insides harder than any labor contraction.
I go to reciprocate it, to wound him with another threat, when I hear a voice in my head that I haven’t heard in a long time.
“Never show your enemy the red of your wounds—bunny rabbit—or they’ll keep painting it until it’s impossible to conceal.”
I stifle a gasp, wrenching the phone receiver away so he doesn’t hear it.
That voice with the thick, treacly accent that scarred the side of my neck as he raped me over and over again.
Breath, Viviana. Breath.
He’s dead.
He’s gone.
“Here’s what you’re going to do,” I say, clawing back the power in this call. “You’re going to switch your cell off for the next fifty years, or Santiago will be attending his daughter’s funeral, not her intended baptism. ”
“Fuckyou!”
“Temper, temper,” I drawl lightly. “Do you need another drink to calm down? Does she know you’re an alcoholic yet?”
My cell beeps. It’s my team in Miami sending me a security camera screen grab of Anna and Grayson climbing into an old blue Toyota outside the diner with the license plate on full display.
Checkmate, again.
Another message arrives, hot on its heels.
Tracked them to a motel outside Haines City.
A tight smile stretches round my teeth as I tap out my reply.