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“This ride is going to the Tijuana, Scarlet. Where you were going to be auctioned.”
“Huh.” I settled a hand on my hip. “And to think Neri was so impressed with my poker abilities.”
If Theo had the capability of expression, this would’ve been the moment. “That fact doesn’t concern you?”
“As you can see, I had it covered.”
“And how were you going to get off this yacht?”
“There are two lifeboats, one on either side, out of the eye of the captain, who is likely still driving this mansion thinking there’s nary a problem.”
“I don’t know what’s more concerning, the fact that you used ‘nary’ in a sentence, or that you’ve studied the blueprints of this boat. What if there was a storm? Or Neri decided not to take you to his ship?”
“Stay one step ahead at all times, that’s what you taught me.”
Thedingon my phone let me know the transfer was complete. I unhooked and shoved Neri’s phone back in his blazer pocket.
“He’ll look for you. Track you down.”
“Neri won’t find me. At least while he wants me. Then, when I reappear, he’ll be on to other matters and won’t care about the girl who escaped his clutches by drugging him and stealing one of his blow-up rafts. Not exactly something he’ll want to advertise.”
“You don’t think so? He can kill you without giving anybody a reason.”
“He doesn’t want me dead.”
“I just informed you he was going to auction you off as a sex slave to the highest bidder.”
“Probably what he told most of his big honcho friends. In reality, he covets respect. He wants to recruit me to play in games, take cuts—or most—of my winnings. I sense he was taking me to Mexico so he could strong-arm me into opening an account and making a deal.”
Theo paused, likely realizing his scare tactics weren’t working. “Would you have agreed to it?”
I pondered. “I didn’t think it would come to that point. And it hasn’t. So.” I dropped my cell into my clutch and snapped it shut. “I guess this is the end of the line for us.”
Theo stared me down like his glare alone could stop me in my tracks. “I’ve underestimated you.”
“Chase me all you want, Sax. Attempt to run me down, do all of those things that you’ve now deemed necessary to come out of hiding. But I’m not the girl you knew anymore.”
“No,” he agreed. “You’re not.”
I wondered if he’d really let me go.
Scarlet Rhodes and Theo Saxon were no longer. And my end game had to occur whether or not Theo wanted it to. Whether or not he’d be … hurt.
Theo had been keeping to the shadows, creeping along edges of light like he was always apt to do. That part of him hadn’t evolved. Even now, he stood near the bar, away from the halogen lamps, Henry’s supine toes nearly touching Theo’s shoes. The rebel in him hadn’t changed, either—while we all took off our shoes before entering the interior of theHatari, Theo stayed in his.
There was a metaphor in that, I was sure.
“But neither am I the same man.”
Theo stepped forward, the recessed lights above the bar gliding across his features, highlighting them. Spotlighting his face to the extent that I gasped.
“Oh my …Theo.”
The words escaped me, the pain behind them leaking first, before I could bury it beneath my hardened shell.
A scar, beginning at the top of his right eyebrow and cutting across the bridge of his nose before ending in the middle of his left cheek. It was thin—as thin as an expensive black-market blade—and light pink, almost white. A few years old.
Theo always had a darkness in him, one I’d recklessly tried to unearth when I was young and stupid. But now, it was forbidden to me. I couldn’t ask him how he’d gotten the lurid evidence of the badness in his life, because I no longer had the right.
