really know her,” Marcos said, not even glancing her way. “And I don’t know what kind of business arrangement you two have. So I’m not sure I can do that. But I’ll tell you this much. I betray you? Fine, kill me. I’d do the same. But playing some sort of ownership game with a woman who’s not interested and shooting anyone who gets in your way? That’s not how I work. So, I tell you what. You leave her alone and so will I.”
Carlton tucked his gun back into his waistband and Brenna let out a breath, tugging down her dress and yanking the hair out of her face.
“Well, hasn’t the mob gotten progressive?” Carlton asked. “All right. We’ve got a deal.” He glanced at Brenna. “I guess this means our time together is over.”
He turned and walked inside, and Brenna stood rooted in place. That was it? All the months of work and she’d let a foolish attraction to a man she hadn’t seen in almost two decades ruin everything?
She blinked back tears as Marcos sent her a brief, unreadable glance and followed Carlton, leaving her all alone in the drug lord’s driveway.
When she’d joined the police department, Brenna had known the day might come where she’d have to shoot someone in the line of duty. It was a responsibility she’d accepted, the idea that she might have to take one life to save another.
But nothing could have prepared her for the roll of emotions making her chest feel tight and her stomach churn right now. She pressed a hand to her stomach and tried to calm her breathing as she stood just inside Carlton’s mansion.
His two remaining guards had been called up and were dealing with the bodies outside, and then they were supposed to escort her to her car and send her home. But after all the work she’d put in to get here, she couldn’t leave. Not like this. Not with Carlton still planning business deals, and Simon Mellor with no one else willing to take up his cause.
The truth was, there were a lot of Simon Mellors out there. Other kids just like him who were getting ready to leave the foster system and had no idea the challenges that awaited them. Kids who Carlton might target by offering them things they couldn’t resist, like a way not to be homeless and hungry.
Brenna straightened and strode to her room. She yanked off the dress, heels and diamonds Carlton had been trying to woo her with, and she’d been pretending to be infatuated with, and traded them for her normal clothes. Then she headed to the living room, where Carlton had settled alone after killing one of his own guards. She might have thought he felt some regret, too, but she didn’t think the man knew what that meant.
Throwing the clothes and jewelry at him, she planted her hands on her hips and exclaimed, “I thought you were a businessman!”
He shoved the items off him onto the floor and raised an eyebrow. “And I didn’t realize that you were a drama queen.”
“I came here because of all the things we talked about over the past few months. I came here to start a business deal with you, and this is what you do to me?”
“Careful now,” he said, the amusement dropping off his face. “I gave you a second chance today. Don’t make me regret it.”
“How is this a second chance? Sending me home with nothing?”
“I’m letting you live, aren’t I?”
His words stalled her angry tirade, but she shouldn’t have been surprised. She hadn’t had enough of a plan when she’d come out here.
Taking a deep breath, Brenna started over. “Look, we each have something the other one wants. You plan to find someone else in the foster care system who can do this for you? Fine, give it your best shot. Most of them are overworked and underpaid and are either there because it’s what they can get, or because they want to make a difference. You approach the first type and yeah, you might get a bite, but they won’t be as aggressive about this as I will. You approach the second type, and you’ll get turned in to the police so fast your head will spin.”
“The police,” Carlton mocked. “They’re not smart enough to prove anything.”
But she could see on his face that her words were getting through to him, that he wanted her connections more than he was showing, so she pressed on. “I started working in the system because I thought maybe I could make things better for kids like me. But the truth is, that will never happen. Someone like you is their best chance. And you’re mine, too, because I might not have had control over my life since I was thrown into the system, but I do now. And I plan to make the most of it.”
A slow smile spread over Carlton’s face. “I may have acted too hastily, Brenna. Consider your invitation to stay here extended, and our business deal back on.” He looked her over, from her well-used tennis shoes to her inexpensive T-shirt. “But before I hand over any more benefits like diamonds and clothes, you’re going to have to prove yourself.”
She nodded, elation and disgust with herself at the tactics she was using fighting for control. In the end, determination won out. Before this weekend was over, she was going to have Carlton on the hook with a plan he couldn’t resist.
And that would be the beginning of his downfall.
* * *
“WHAT ARE YOU doing here?” Marcos had been sitting on a bench outside, but he lurched to his feet, nearly groaning aloud at the pain that spiked all over his body. He almost thought the hits he’d taken to the head were giving him hallucinations.
But there was no way even his mind could conjure up Brenna like this. She looked antsy in a pair of jeans and a loose aqua T-shirt that made her brown skin seem to glow and brought out the caramel highlights in her hair. Instead of the stilettos she’d been wearing all weekend, she wore a pair of hot pink gym shoes. The outfit looked way more natural on her than the skintight dresses and ridiculous heels.
She was also teary-eyed as she looked him over, her gaze lingering on his myriad of bruises that had turned a dark purple since this morning. But she didn’t say a word about them, just took a deep breath.
He’d expected her to be long gone by now. And he’d been equal parts relieved and depressed over it all morning.
“I convinced Carlton that we should still be working together.”
A million dark thoughts ran through Marcos’s mind as he lowered himself carefully back onto the bench. “How?”
“Carlton might have a bad temper—and apparently a possessive streak—but at heart, he’s a businessman.”
Marcos felt himself scowl and tried to hide it. A real drug dealer would think of himself as a businessman, not a criminal.
By the expression on her face, she’d seen it, but she didn’t say anything, just continued, “I have access that he wants. And he’s better off with someone who will do the job without a personal distraction.”
He held in the slew of swear words that wanted to escape and instead asked calmly, “You sure it’s a good idea after what happened today?”
“No.” She let out a humorless laugh and sank onto the bench across from him. “But I’ve come too far to
