didn’t say it, but he heard the lilt of suggestion in the way she trailed off.
He set aside his half-finished coffee with a click of bone china meeting lacquered wood.
She swallowed, eyes shielded by her lashes, but she was watching him through them. Cautious. Scared, even.
He let his lip curl to let her know he was amused by her adorable attempt to extort from him.
“You understand I could have you arrested.” Which was a strangely appalling thing to imagine. He had brought charges to bear in the past, when laws had been broken. He never thought twice about protecting himself and always sought justice through due process.
But there were exceptions to every rule, he supposed. Even the rules he made for himself.
“You could bring in the police,” she agreed in that same trailing tone. This time the adjunct was but. “I haven’t done anything illegal, though. Not yet.”
Not yet? “Ah. You’ve planted a cyberbomb.” He ought to be furious, but he was so flabbergasted by her audacity, he wanted to laugh. Did she know who he was?
“May we call them incentives?” Her gaze came up, crystal as the Caribbean Sea. Placid and appealing and full of sharks and deadly jellyfish with stinging tendrils.
His divided mind wanted to watch the shift of color in those eyes as he immersed himself in her even as the other half absorbed the word incentives. Plural.
“Call them anything you like. I’m calling the police.” Even he didn’t know whether he was bluffing. He took longer than he needed to bring his phone from his pocket, though, watching for her next move.
“If I don’t log in soon, a tell-all will release to the press.”
“Has my grandmother been running an opium den? What terrible tales could you possibly have to tell about her?” As far as he knew, Mae Chen’s worst crime was being stubbornly resentful of her daughter’s choice in husband—and rightfully so.
Luli’s face went blank. “I’d rather not reveal it.”
“Because you have nothing.”
“Because your grandmother’s good name would be smeared and she’s been good to me.”
“Yet you’ll destroy her reputation to get what you want from me.”
“I’ll tell the truth.” Her tone was grave, her comportment calm enough to make him think she might have something more than threats of revealing a dodgy tax write-off or a penchant for young men in small bathing suits.
“Something to do with my mother?”
“Not at all.” That seemed to surprise her.
“What then? I’m not playing twenty questions.”
She pinched her mouth together and glanced toward the door to ensure it was firmly closed.
“Human trafficking and forcible confinement.”
“Ha!”
She didn’t laugh.
“That’s a very ugly accusation.” There was a thriving black market in everything from drugs to kidneys, but it wasn’t a shop on Fifth Avenue where women in their golden years could drop in and buy house staff. “Who? You?”
She swallowed. “Ask anyone here how many times I’ve been outside the front door of this house. They’ll tell you today was the first time in eight years.”
“Because you’ve coached them to say that? Are you ring-leading?”
“I’m acting alone. I would be surprised if anyone else knows my situation as anything but a preference for staying inside the grounds.” Her watchful gaze came up. “As I say, it would damage their memory of your grandmother if staff began gossiping. I’d rather you didn’t make serious inquiries.”
“You know as well as I do that without a thorough investigation, it’s very much she said, no one else said. I’ve weathered disgruntled employees making wild accusations many times. I’m not concerned.” He was a little concerned. This woman was not like the others here, that much was obvious. Not just in looks and background, either. At twenty-two, she had inveigled her way into controlling an elderly woman’s fortune. She was infinitely more dangerous than she looked.
Luli’s cheeks drew in as she set her chin. “Whether the police believe me or not, I expect they will deport me, seeing as I have no legal right to be here. My prospects in Venezuela are dim. I’ve had to make arrangements for that possibility.”
“I bet you have.” He couldn’t recall the last person to be so bold in their stalk of his money. He was reluctantly fascinated. “Stealing is a crime.”
“Only if I collect it.”
“Indeed.” He picked up his cup to sip and allow that lethal threat to sink in.
She might have paled slightly, but the sun had set and the light was changing.
“You could kill me,” she acknowledged. “Or I could simply disappear. Contingencies have been prepared for that possibility, as well. The investigation into that would be very thorough and go on a very long time.”
“Hell hath no fury like a woman with a keyboard. What did I do to deserve this wrath?”
Her hands, so prettily arranged in her lap, turned their palms up in a subtle entreaty. “I’m aware that my only value right now is my ability to reverse the inconveniences I’ve arranged.”
“I’m confident I can reverse them myself before they do too much damage. Your value is nil.”
“You’re probably right.” She nodded, not even sweating. Her only betrayal of nerves was the rapid tattoo of the artery in her throat.
Gabriel had a weakness for puzzles. There was a twelve-year-old boy inside him itching to lock the door, put on his noise-canceling headphones and hack his own system until he’d found every Easter egg she’d hidden there. Not because he was worried. Purely for the game of it.
And there was a thirty-one-year-old man who wanted to put his hands on the twisted pieces of this woman and see how quickly he could untangle her and make her come apart.
“If what you say about your circumstance here is true...” He set aside his coffee mug again. “One could argue that by taking control of my grandmother’s assets, I am taking possession of you.”
There was that intriguing stillness again. The screen of her mink lashes, so ridiculously long and curled like a filly’s, hid her eyes while her mouth might have trembled.
“One could argue that,” she admitted in a voice that wasn’t quite steady. “I’ve done my utmost to protect all of her assets. Including me. Which wouldn’t stop you from unloading me. As assets go, I’m probably at my top value right now. If you were to sell me, for instance.”
He told himself she was mistaking him for someone with a conscience
