Page 77 of Born for Starlight
Layla had changed clothes.
Jeans, and a soccer jersey two sizes too big, the canary yellow of the Brazilian national team with green at the collar. Hair in a braid. No makeup. She'd come dressed to tell me she didn't care what I thought of her, and she'd put real thought into it.
She’s trying too hard.
What's more, scrubbed down like this she looked ten years younger, and I realized I had no idea how old Layla actually was. Thirty? Forty-five? The woman was a moving target.
"So. You want me to speak English, huh?" She said it first thing, before hello.
"It seems like the polite thing to do." I nodded at her. "Can you be polite?"
"Sometimes. When I'm in the mood."
"Cut the shit." Matthew stood by the window with his arms crossed, wound tighter than a drum. "Both of you."
"Matthew, stop looking so aggrieved. If anybody in this room has the right to feel put upon and used, it's me." I turned back to Layla before he could answer. "Look. I've pieced together what's going on. Can we just go from there? Then you two can tell me how in the hell I fit into all of it."
Layla raised one eyebrow. "This should be interesting. Tell me, little actress. What do you think you've figured out?"
"Look, babycakes. I was taught to fight by my brothers, and then by a Krav Maga specialist for six months, before one of my films. I'll take you down. So can it, and let's get to what matters." I kept my voice level and my eyes on hers. "Aurora is running a trafficking ring. Children. Young girls. That's what you call the rare vintages. Right?"
Layla went very still. It was subtle, a half-second of stone under all that practiced ease.
Matthew was not subtle at all. He came off the window like I'd fired a gun.
"Okay. So I'm right." I didn't let either of them regroup. "Now, Layla. Tell me how I'm involved. Apparently Loverboy doesn't have it in him to tell me the truth."
"Babycakes. Loverboy." A hint of a smile touched her mouth. "You have the interesting words." The smile went away. "You and your little event are meant to be a distraction. That is what they are counting on. All the officials, the polícia, the press, every set of eyes in this state will be pointed at the famous American movie star and her checkbook. Their merchandise moves while everyone watches you smile. You are not part of their plan, menina. You are the curtain in front of it."
A distraction.
Here's the thing. That didn't even sting. I'd been a professional distraction my entire adult life. Look at the dress, not the breakup. Watch the premiere, not the film cancellation. Every studio I'd ever worked for had pointed me at a camera so nobody looked somewhere else. This job wasn't new.
The only new part was what I was covering for.
"But it's not just a sale, is it." I said it quietly. "It's worse than that."
Layla shot Matthew a look with an edge to it.
"I told her Aurora was dirty," he said. “I never said auction.”
"Then how does she know?"
"Because I'm not stupid.” She was pissing me off. Even more than she had been, which I didn’t think was possible. “Don't think that talking in Portuguese around me means I can't figure things out." I let that land on both of them, two hot-shot professionals rethinking every word they’d said within my earshot. Good. Let them worry. "It's an auction. Which makes me want to tear these men apart with my bare hands."
"And women," Layla whispered.
"What?" It came out soft.
"Do not think the buyers are only men. Some of the people bidding will be women."
The bile came up fast. I had to swallow hard to keep from being sick right there on the marble floor, and my eyes burned anyway. "Jesus, I don't understand people."
"Do not try." Layla's voice dropped so low I had to lean in to hear her. "The day you can understand people like them is the day you lose your soul."
I looked into her eyes, and for one unguarded second she let me. Pain. Years of anguish. God. Why hadn't I seen it before? All that armor, the silk, the stilettos, tonight's jersey. Costumes over a wound that had never healed.
"Have you—"
