AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I slowly pulled open the door and hoped for no squeaks.
Johnson Spinelli’s evil grin greeted me. “Very tricky, pretty girl.” He sat just opposite the door with a gun pointed straight at me. The bastard had never left.
CHAPTER 44
Serena
Johnson rose.
Bracing myself to run, I glanced left. I had a fifty percent chance of finding a door in that direction.
“She picked the lock using the underwires from her bra,” Katelyn said. She pushed me into Johnson’s waiting arms.
What the hell?
He grabbed my wrists and spun me around, wrapping an arm around my neck and pressing me against the wall with his horrid breath in my ear. “Try to kick me one more time, and this won’t end well for you, bitch.”
I relaxed. There were times to fight and times to not.
“The wires are in her back pocket,” Katelyn said.
“Katelyn,” I complained.
Johnson pushed me back into the holding room.
“Why did you have to screw everything up? First that bitch Rossi, and now you.” She shook her head.
“I—”
“If you’d just given me the Thousand Oaks territory like I wanted, I could have salvaged the situation. Instead, you had to go and fuck the entire thing up so nobody makes any money off Pons.”
Makes money? She’s deranged.“What are you talking about? Pons was dumping dangerous chemicals illegally. We’re the EPA. We’re supposed to be preserving the groundwater.”
“Oh, please. Stop that preaching shit. It’s not important. My house is in ruins and being foreclosed. This oaf…” She pointed at Johnson. “Ruined my new bag.”
Johnson shrugged. “Shit happens. Your share of the ransom will buy you a hundred bags.”
The sick woman I’d thought was my friend just grinned at me. “Daddy is going to pay through the nose for you and just in time. I’m going to lose the house, my credit cards are maxed out, and my car got repossessed yesterday. All because you guys were against me.”
“I was never?—”
“Shut up,” she screamed. “Fucking shut up.”
Clearly, I’d have to listen to her drive the crazy train while I waited for a chance to run.
“First Powell wouldn’t let me have the territory after I got rid of Leo. Then Rossi thought she’d blackmail me and Pons.”
The words took a few seconds to sink in. “You killed Leo?” It was hard to fathom. “Your own fiancé?”
She snort laughed. “After you filled his head with your preachy do-gooder shit, he wanted to stop taking Pons’s money and turn him in. That made him a loser and, without the bribe money, broke. I couldn’t marry a broke loser. So yeah, he had to go. If Powell had only given me the accounts, everything would have been fine. Or, if he’d failed your probation when I deleted your Excalibur data, that would have worked too. But no, hedidn’t want to screw up your life, so he gave you more chances. But what about my life, my chances? It isn’t fucking fair.”
Controlling my urge to argue with her insanity wasn’t easy.
“Then Sophia stole Leo’s blackmail stash and used it against Pons, who sent the Russians after her. We almost had her, but she skipped town. Our Russian friends persuaded her to tell us she sent you the key.”
I nearly puked, realizing Katelyn had a hand in Sophia’s death as well. And all this time, I’d counted her as a friend. “Is that why you hired this guy and his brother?”
“I convinced Pons to hire them. I needed the territory, and he needed that blackmail material so we could get back in business like before. You weren’t going to hand it over, so…” She shrugged. “A girl does what a girl has to do. But now, you’ve totally fucked it up for everybody. Nobody’s going to make any money, and the only way out of my problem is your daddy’s ransom money.”
