Cadillac Payback: Rising Tide by AJ Elmore (the false prince .TXT) 📕

expected him to say, but in three sentences, he has me feeling like he dropped a brick into my stomach. So the old bag moved him away from Maria. I bet that didn’t go over well. It makes sense now, the scene in the mansion hallway.

I think he’s looking for my side of the story, but it’s hard to speak. If he’s on a trail like this, that means he’s probably right. Some shit is going down, and he will figure it out. He’s always been a damn fine detective.

It occurs to me that giving him what help I can may get me the answers I also want. I clear my throat, not as a point in our interaction, but because I have to.

I say, “They pulled me off a beach, dressed me up, and told me that I was going to be a diplomat.”

He weighs my words for a moment.

“Who is they?” he asks.

Just then, the sound of a door opening stops the conversation. We both turn toward it, and he’s reaching for his gun. Out steps Mona in a stupid pair of heels and another tiny dress. She’s wearing a furious expression that widens when she sees Freddy and me. She stops in her tracks, and Freddy doesn’t quite draw.

She looks from me to him. The eye contact holds between them much longer than I expect before her attention comes back to me. She wants to say something, wants to be the bitch that she is, but she’s quiet. I do believe she’s intimidated, maybe for the first time ever.

She turns on one of those fucking heels and goes back inside.

Freddy turns to me with one eyebrow slightly raised. Despite himself, he’s curious.

“My ex,” I say, only barely not spitting the words.

He’s quiet for a long time, and now it’s a little bit aggravating how he functions like a computer: input, sort it out, catalogue, make connections.

“Your ex is in the heroin business?” he asks, his tone as close to incredulous as I’ve ever heard it.

“Not exactly. Her dad is in the pill business, but it’s close enough,” I answer with a shrug.

I’m aware, and I’m sure he is, too, that this is the first he’s ever heard about my old life. I didn’t talk about it, not to him, not to Charlie, not anyone. I buried it.

“How did they find you? How did they know about your ties to us?” he asks, his voice a low rumble, like the thunder that has moved into the distance.

I laugh, but it’s bitter. Even if he weren’t watching me so shrewdly, he couldn’t miss my resentment.

“They didn’t,” I say.

Now seems like a good time for a cigarette, so I let it ride while I pull them out and notch one. Just a little more of the same matching the pace. He stares at me the whole time. It’s never fazed me before, and it doesn’t now. I take a hit.

“Apparently it was the stipulation from Abuela before she would deal with them,” I say.

His eyes narrow again and I can see the gears turning. I have no reason to lie here, but he looks like maybe he doesn’t believe me.

“Why?” he says. It’s posed as a question but it doesn’t sound like one.

“That I don’t know,” I say, then smoke some more.

It’s not hard to hold his gaze. He doesn’t scare me. Right now, I have one thing to lose in all the world, and it looks like it will come down to who kills me first.

“And you’re cooperating?” he says, again with that tone that says he doesn’t believe me.

“Listen, I tried to get out. I had a whole life to myself, a little place to live, even a legit job. And that bitch found me. I could run, but it would only be a matter of time before one side or the other put a bullet in my brain. All I have left is a shred of hope that they don’t expect me to hang around once the deal is made.”

There’s something oddly therapeutic in being honest, in being able to be me because Freddy knows me. We’re not friends, but in this moment, we’re not exactly enemies either.

“I’m more curious as to how Abuela knew about my past and my ties to Carlo, but even that doesn’t really matter anymore. Here I fucking am, dancing like a goddamned puppet.”

He lets the silence settle back in. I stab out my smoke on the glass tabletop, and my thoughts skitter back to the first thing he told me.

“How’s Maria?”

I shouldn’t care. She should be just another bitch who betrayed me, yet I still think about her. Still wonder if she’s all right, and if she learned anything from playing little girl games with three men who would have done anything for her.

He hesitates, eyeing me thoughtfully. Maybe he’s deciding if it’s wise to share more inside details with me. Maybe he just didn’t expect the question.

“She’s a mess,” he says gruffly. “She won’t leave the hospital. Won’t eat or sleep.”

I let my gaze wander out to the glistening yard and the curtain of rain, which eases off now as suddenly as it started. The absence of the noise of it on the roof is as deafening as the sound itself.

“She was like that with you, too,” I say.

The memories of her red, swollen eyes and disheveled hair are hard to stop. He shifts in his chair, and I wonder if I’ve hit a nerve. Everyone has a breaking point, even Freddy. I’m sure the memories of getting beaten almost to death are rough in their own right.

He extracts the pipe and the weed again. This time, there’s also a folded up piece of paper. He leaves the paper on the table as he packs the bowl. Of course I’m curious, but not enough to ask about it. He’ll make sense of it eventually. He’s not the type to waste a movement if it’s not important.

He takes the green hit