Page 88 of Intent to Kill
“I did.” She nodded as she completed her look with more pink lipstick, plumping her lips together in the mirror, though her muscles were tense.
“Do you remember all the people who used to hang around there?”
“I suppose.”
He discarded the towel and slid his boxers up his body. She watched his face in the mirror, looking like he thought she couldn’t see the devil’s grin on his lips. “And do you know why Paul got in so much trouble? All those years ago?”
She prepared herself to lie. “I know he betrayed you, and he was in big trouble for it.”
Dorian approached, sneaking up behind her to put his hands on her waist. He ran his fingers up the length of her body and kissed her neck while she watched him in the mirror.
“What about the club? The guys Paul used to hang around with, do you remember them?”
“Sure, they hung around a bit.” Mercedes swallowed as he placed his hands around her neck and gripped. She was trying like hell not to seem uneasy, but he was getting incredibly close to home.
“Do you remember a kid named Adam Vandemilio?”
Her heart stopped with a flutter, but she made an effort to compose herself, and in her head grabbed tightly at the fringes of her apprehension and pulled it closed. “It sounds familiar.”
“Mmm, it should, his was a famous name once upon a time,” Dorian whispered in her ear. His hands tightened around her neck while he placed gentle kisses down her shoulder.
“Paul hung around with them,” she offered, giving as little as she could. Playing the role of the mindless little lamb he thought she was. The mindless little lamb for the slaughtering.
“He did,” Dorian nodded, meeting her gaze in their reflections.
“I think there were four of them, always together,” she squeezed out through tough breaths.
“Four guys?” Dorian loosened his grip and stepped back only millimeters.
“Mmm, four guys,” she said, catching her breath without making it obvious she was about to freak. “Why?”
“Really? Four?” Dorian sulked away.
She grabbed her stomach to steady herself, and then stood and walked to Dorian’s side, taking his tie to help put it around his neck and strategically holding it in place in case she needed to use it.
“Four,” she nodded again. “You think it’s–?”
He grabbed the tie from her hands, huffing like he thought there was no way she’d know how to tie it. “Everyone I’ve ever talked to swears that there were five guys on Adam’s team.”
“What does it matter?”
He laughed, in that condescending way of his. “It’s a bit above your head, sweetheart.”
“You can’t think that it’s them who’re after you?” she said, walking back to the dresser, mindless little lamb back in her rightful place.
“Ofcoursenot.” Though, unfortunately, she knew he was lying. If he didn’t know how much Paul meant to her, if she hadn’tprovenmultiple times how important Paul was to her, maybe Dorian wouldn’t have lied.
“Come now, darling, we’ll be late for lunch,” Dorian said, the venomous whisper now turned toward her, too.
* * *
Adam landed on his feet on the pavement outside the mansion. He brushed the sticking hedges from his arms with an exhausted breath, though he felt that climbing up the trellis and using Mercedes’s unlocked window to enter the mansion got easier every time he did it.
He crossed the road to where Paul was waiting underneath a line of shade trees, leaning up against the car.
“Did you put it back?” Paul asked.
“Yeah, it’s done, safe and sound back in its rightful place,” Adam said, wiping his hands together as if to say job well done.
