Deceptions
Page 4

“If I thought you’d keep the Maserati, I would agree to the detour. You insist on depriving yourself—”
He clipped off the rant so hard I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had nipped his tongue.
I checked my phone. I had a good-morning text from my boyfriend, Ricky, who was in Miami on business. That business . . . well, I didn’t know and didn’t ask.
I’d met Ricky through Gabriel, whose main clients are the Satan’s Saints. It’s a biker gang—sorry, motorcycle club. Ricky’s dad runs it, and Ricky is a member. He’s also an MBA student at the University of Chicago, not as an escape from the life, but so he’ll be better prepared to take over when his father retires. I’d called Ricky last night to give him a heads-up on the accident.
I texted him back and when I looked up, we were in the city core.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“To see James.”
“You’re going to confront him at his office?” I struggled to keep my tone even.
“Yes.”
“That is . . .” I lost the battle and twisted to face him. “Are you out of your mind?”
“No.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“I know you’re upset—”
“Upset does not begin to cover it.” Each word was razor-edged.
“He insulted you,” I said. “I get that.”
“I could not care less about an insult.” His ice-blue eyes swung my way. “This is about sending men to kidnap you at gunpoint.”
“If you confront him in public—”
“This requires more than a tersely worded e-mail or an angry phone call, Olivia. If I don’t confront him publicly, he will skew the story to paint me as the aggressor. I made that mistake once. I won’t do it again.”
Last week, Gabriel had confronted James at his house after James had sent me a private investigator’s dossier on every illegal and unethical thing Gabriel had ever been accused of doing. Gabriel had taken that dossier and systematically sorted it into “truth, lies, and damn lies.” He didn’t care; neither did I. What set Gabriel off was the call James made afterward, to inform him that the dossier was only the first strike, and he wouldn’t stop harassing me until I came back to him. Gabriel had briefly ended up in jail charged with assault after James’s mother had called the cops.
We stopped for a red light. When I looked up, I saw a bird sitting on the signal box.
“Gabriel?”
“Hmm.”
“What kind of bird do you see there?” I pointed.
“A robin.”
“I see a magpie.”
He didn’t say there shouldn’t be magpies in Chicago. We both knew that, just as we knew there wasn’t really one sitting on that box.
“One for sorrow,” I said. “That means you’re making a mistake.”
“Are you sure?”
“If you’re implying that I’d make up an omen—”
“I’m saying I don’t agree it has anything to do with me visiting James. You’ve had a hellish twenty-four hours. First you find out that Cainsville is populated by fae. Then you have visions and a fever. Quickly followed by Macy Shaw trying to kill us. An hour ago, you had a gun put to your head.” He waved at the bird. “One for sorrow.”
He knew that wasn’t how it worked. Omens aren’t retroactive. Yet he drove through the intersection and refused to spare me even a sidelong glance. He’d made up his mind, and no mere omen would stop him.
—
Of all the problems that came with the revelation about my notorious birth parents, the most bothersome was the media attention. I’d been a delicious story in a slow news week. And I continued to entertain. Oh, look, she dumped James Morgan. Oh, look, she’s hanging around with Gabriel Walsh. No, wait, she’s dating a biker. I was the Lindsay Lohan of the debutante set.
In the lobby of James’s office building, I felt the stares and I heard the whispers. His employees had known me before the media firestorm. To them, I wasn’t just the daughter of two convicted killers—I was the stone bitch who’d cut the heart from a really nice guy.
When we got on the elevator and Gabriel said, “Which floor?” I hesitated. He turned to the young man beside him and said, “James Morgan’s office?”
The guy pressed the button.
The elevator cleared out before the top floor. As I watched the last numbers pass, I turned to Gabriel.
“Can I handle this?” I asked. “Having you speak for me isn’t going to help.”
After a moment’s thought, Gabriel nodded. Then the elevator doors opened and we stepped off.
CHAPTER THREE
While the top floor is reserved for his company’s executives, James likes to maintain a non-corporate feel, with open areas where people can congregate. That’s where we found him, standing at the espresso machine, laughing at something one of his employees had said.
When I saw him, I felt as if I’d woken from a nightmare. The encounter with the deprogrammers was so ludicrous it couldn’t be anything but a figment of my overworked imagination. This was the James I knew, making coffee for himself and those gathered around him. Down-to-earth, easygoing, always helpful and considerate.
When James noticed me, he smiled, eyes crinkling as he turned toward me, as if thinking, Huh, that deprogramming stuff works fast. Then he spotted Gabriel, and I saw exactly what Gabriel must—something twisted and ugly simmering behind James’s eyes. No, not “something.” Obsession.