Tess was doing her damndest to put off every Don’t-Give-A-Fuck vibe she had to spare, but she was shaking hard inside. This man – she’d taken him inside of her, and he’d been lying the whole time. He had to know what she’d thought, what she’d assumed. It wasn’t that she hadn’t had sex she didn’t really want before, but this was something else. Somehow, the way he hadn’t bothered to even explain who he was seemed worse than anything else.
Of course, she could hardly blame a hired gun here to kill the man who was her keeper for being less than scrupulously honest. And she’d hardly stood up out of that tub to ask for his identification. And he’d been good to her, the second time. Even the first time, he hadn’t been bad, just rough. She liked rough, but, well, it didn’t matter now.
When she raised a sardonic eyebrow, the man rolled his eyes and gestured toward the back of the door with his gun, pointing her towards her silk bathrobe. That was good. Now she wouldn’t have to strut through the penthouse suite naked. She’d done it before, but usually for a much more specific purpose. And definitely not with someone’s cum drying on her thighs. That was going to feel terrible later. It felt bad enough now.
It had been quite a thing – watching the man shift from a relaxed lover into a trained killer. It was interesting, she thought idly as she put her robe on, trying to think about what in the world she was going to do to maximize her chances of surviving this afternoon, to wonder which had been the mask. Or were they both masks, hiding someone else entirely underneath them?
“So, you know my name,” she said, turning and giving him a full flash as she settled the robe around her, tying it loosely around her middle. “Do I get to know yours?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said.
There was something to his voice, but she couldn’t place it. In general, he had a standard American TV accent, just plain and relaxed. But there was something underneath it; she’d bet diamonds that he’d been born somewhere else or traveled somewhere else for a long time. The accent he had was too cultivated.
“Right after I reveal my master plan to you so that you can foil it like James Bond.”
Tess shrugged her shoulders. “Suit yourself. I mean, depending on what you are aiming to do, I might be able to get you closer to Toro than you’ll get on your own. But you be petty and fussy if you want, it’s fine with me.”
She didn’t expect it to work, so when he sighed and scrubbed his hand through his fine auburn hair, she was incredibly surprised.
“I’m here for Toro. There’s a contract on him. Silk Road wants him dead. He’s intruded on enough territory. You know he’s running out of miles, don’t you?”
She did indeed. It wasn’t for nothing Tess had started to think about her future once someone took down Toro. She needed to either be gone or claimed by then, and both were dangerous options. She tried to be surreptitious as she looked this man up and down, but she already knew; a man who fucked that rough but came back to make sure she was taken care of too, that was a man who could protect her. She could trust him. Not far, of course, but at least as far as seeing how his plan unfolded.
“I’ve heard rumors,” she lied. “Tell me your name, and I’ll take you to him. Through back rooms, ways that are – Well, nothing in this place is unguarded but less guarded.”
“You were unguarded,” he pointed out.
She raised an eyebrow again. “There’s a silent alarm. I could have tripped it at any point.”
That was a blatant lie, but if he was noticing them, he wasn’t giving away his realizations. There wasn’t a silent alarm in this room. In the hallway that she would take him through, however, there absolutely was.
“Milo,” he said after a moment. “Now move.”
Milo. Interesting. She gave him a quick jerk of her head and then shifted into motion, leading him carefully through the suite towards the rooms set aside for Toro’s “business” interests. He used them for everything from dealing with employees who stole from him to cute little whores he liked better than her – which she did not mind in the least – to watching sports loudly with his most favored lieutenants. To get to the office, you normally have to go through a long hallway which always had at least two, sometimes four, goons posted along its length. Today, Toro had been entirely clear that Tess was going to spend time on her own because he had important business to conduct with a visitor who didn’t want his face seen by anyone. That worked for her just fine. But it also meant there’d be plenty of goons in the hallway, and probably more inside the office.
Instead of going down that hallway then, she’d use the panic route Toro had installed a year ago. It wasn’t supposed to work in reverse; the doors were only supposed to work outwards, leading from Toro’s office to the bedroom to a recessed door in his closet. But never hire budget contractors; the idiots hadn’t installed anything right, and if you had a decent nail file, it was an easy thing to get the closet door open. From there, it was just turning doorknobs. Tess had started keeping a decent nail file in all of her outfits, for just such an occasion. She never thought she’d really have to bolt, but if she actually did, she wanted every single option open to her.
She pried the door open, then gestured for Milo to follow her. He did so, moving fast and shutting the door behind him. In the moment where he closed the door, she nudged the alarm by the closet door.
There. If Toro managed to take down Milo, she’d be able to argue that she was at gunpoint, tee-hee, what could she possibly have done? And if Milo shot Toro and escaped, she’d be able to swear she did everything to help him, and the alarm must have been triggered accidentally. She had covered as many bases as she could without much in the way of prep time.
It was kind of shitty – ending things with Toro like this. He’d been good to her, in as much as an emotionally stunted drug kingpin could be good to anyone other than his bank account. He hadn’t made her put up with gross stuff that she didn’t want to do, he’d made sure she got regular testing, visits to doctors when she was sick, and every creature comfort her heart could desire. He treated her well. But if she stayed too long with him, she’d be considered tainted, especially if she was still there when his empire fell. She’d seen it before; the kind of criminal that kept a prostitute as a companion was not the sort who thought rationally about such things. Too many beliefs depended on gut feelings and superstitious omens.
And honestly? While she’d slap anyone in the outside world who called her “older” at twenty-three years old, the fact was that for men in Toro’s position, she was practically decrepit. There were so many girls who were eager to take over spots like hers – the younger model that was traded in for. She’d been one of those girls once, dancing her ass off to impress Toro and get kept. She remembered the cold, angry eyes of the woman she’d been replacing.
Milo came up behind her, stepping carefully through the mess of the walk-in closet. Toro was a lot of things, and none of them were neat. It was one of the things about him that put her absolutely through the roof. He used to come into her room, drop his crap everywhere, poke her for a little while, and then disappear naked into the suite, leaving all his junk behind. He expected her to pick up and keep her room pin-neat, but, well, it was typical anyway of that sort of self-centered person.
“Let’s go,” Milo said.
Tess nodded, taking a long, deep breath.