Page 18 of Intent to Kill
4
BURNING UP
FEBRUARY 1991
Mercedes pushed through the front doors of her mansion home. She’d felt more emotion in the past hour than she had in the past five years. The encounter at the old lot left her simmering with a deadly cocktail of rage…and something else that she wasn’t willing to look too closely at. Either way, it was something she had to keep to herself now that she was back inside the discomfort of her home.
When the door slammed shut behind her, she saw Dorian’s Seconds, T.B., Yani, and Antonio, all gathered in the adjacent living area. Luckily, Dorian wasn’t with them to witness her late arrival.
“You’re home late,” T.B. smirked.
Observant little prick, he was.
She smiled and pulled a bottle of fine scotch from behind her back. “I couldn’t show up empty-handed.”
Walking into the crimson-walled lounge, she handed the bottle to T.B., who was leaning over the fireplace. A grand and elegant addition to the home, serving as a focal point which was only for show. Nobody needed artificial heating in Ridge City.
Passing the bottle down the line like it was a representation of their chain of command, Antonio finally popped it and poured a glass for everyone. Everyone except Mercedes. She’d already worked up quite the attitude over the afternoon’s events, so she had to hold herself in extra tight to keep from lashing at him for that.
“This is a very nice bottle,” T.B. said, savoring the taste as he sipped from a custom-made crystal glass with the letters D.B. initialed on the side. He didn’t need to know that she’d actually bought the bottle for herself, planning to drown her emotions in solitude under layers of alcohol. Smother her feelings until they couldn’t come up for air.
“And where is my future husband?” Mercedes said.
T.B., Yani, and Antonio shared a condescending laugh between them. She often had to pretend she wasn’t aware of Dorian’s extra-curricular activities. And pretend hard she did, because these geniuses weren’t actually very good at hiding anything. Dorian had many girlfriends, she had somehow become his favorite one seeing as none of the others shared the same address, just the same man.
Yani finally spoke up. “Just finishing some things up at the Club.”
Mercedes just raised her eyebrows. She should have been offended by how little they thought of her, but it worked in her favor so often that it wouldn’t be smart to speak up. With nobody watching her, she could be busy watching them.
“And why are you still standing around here?” T.B. said. The others paid her very little attention, but T.B. had taken a special disliking to her. She gathered that T.B. himself had no idea why he hated her so much. They were both drivers, even if T.B. didn’t know it, they’d gone head-to-head on the roads many times before. He thought he was the best driver in the city. He was wrong.
“Going to bed,” she said, teeth grinding.
The mansion was a decadent prison. The staircase was made of marble and gold stretching all the way up to the fifth floor. There were fine Italian sculptures of small men with tiny dicks littered throughout.
Fitting, she thought.
She was always gifted the most expensive jewels, always invited to the high-class parties. Lucky she was a good actor, because like an automatic transmission in a Corvette ZR-1, she didn’t belong.
She slid under her silk sheets, still reeling from the day’s events. Adam had come back to Ridge City. And that changed everything. Things that she didn’t want changed.
She would pretend that Adam had no effect over her. That she didn’t think of him. Because she conceded that while she knew he wasn’t dead, the man she had loved all those years ago certainly was.
When they’d first fallen in love, Adam was wild and crazy. He never thought once about his actions. He acted selfishly and insanely. She used to love the way his mouth moved when he shouted every word he said with a passion, and how his eyes would bulge with an unpredictable insanity. His untamed brown hair would bounce whenever he threw a punch or took one. He was the brilliant kind of bulky, and incredibly broad shouldered. His body was built up by muscle, but was wide enough that it would take up just as much space even if it weren’t. He had a strong grip that felt soft when he latched onto her hips.
Dorian was dangerous, too. Just not in the way that ordered her thighs to clench. While he did the kinds of bad things that she loved with a sickness, it just wasn’t the same.
Snapping her from her thoughts, Dorian entered the bedroom, his suit messy and tie half undone.
“You’re still up. Hello, darling,” Dorian said. He finished removing his tie and stripped down, rushing into the bathroom to shower. When he returned and slid into bed beside her, she concluded the shower hadn’t been long enough. He still smelled of so many different women that it was like a perfume store had thrown up on him.
“The boys said you bought them scotch.” The silk sheets moved in between them as he placed his palm on her thigh. Her brain was stuck in comparison mode, and she struggled not to cringe. Dorian’s hands on her thighs were like fluffy pillows, where Adam’s used to be rough and calloused, so much so that they could cut her skin.
“Mmm, I hope they enjoyed it.” She wiped the remaining night cream from her hands and returned her six-carat diamond engagement ring to her finger.
“They did. Too much. They’re all tanked. Don’t do that again.”
“Sure.” She wasn’t fucking planning to, but damn if his disapproval didn’t make her want to do it again.
