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  “She was afraid of this man, the one who had been so cruel to her, because he was a king, and he ruled over a vast kingdom filled with infinite resources and all of his subjects worshipped him,” he announced in grand style. “In her mind, there was nothing she could do to make him pay for the horrible things he’d done to her. He had committed a terrible crime, and the poor princess would have no choice but to live with the humiliation, the degradation.”

  By this time, Lonnie was crying. “Stop it, Phillip,” she sobbed, helplessly. Why the hell was he saying these things to her? “Just … stop.”

  “But one day, the beautiful princess met a wizard,” he said, pulling a copy of Forbes magazine from in back of the pillow behind her, and placing it on her lap.

  Lonnie stared at the picture of Jordan, looking posed and poised on that cover. Bile rose in the back of her throat, and she looked at Phillip, shaking her head.

  “What are you doing? Why are you doing this?”

  She started to get up again, but he held her in place, staring into her eyes with those steely gray eyes of his. Phillip picked up the magazine and held it to her face, forcing her to look at it and to read the caption.

  GATEWOOD TO MAKE A HOSTILE BID FOR ANTON OIL AND GAS

  “Suddenly the beautiful princess began to wake up and shake the fog she’d been living in,” Phillip continued, staring passionately at Lonnie. “Yes, he was a king, but she was a princess. Yes, he was bad ass, but so was she!”

  She looked at him again.

  Phillip’s expression was defiant. “The wizard said to her, snap out of it, lovely girl. And he waved his magic wand.” Phillip fanned his fingers in front of her face. “And suddenly her eyes were opened.”

  “What are you talking about?” she murmured.

  “‘Make your wishes, princess,’” the wizard told her. As many as you like, and I will grant all of them to you. But first, you must answer one question.”

  Lonnie was transfixed on the wizard Phillip. “What?”

  “How do you topple a king?”

  Phillip was quirky. He was odd, and eccentric. Some people thought he was crazy, and maybe he was. Lonnie had always found him amusing and wise, and a little bit scary. But the two of them had connected years ago on some cosmic level that had always drawn them back together to meet in the middle.

  Lonnie stared deep into those hypnotic eyes of his. This wasn’t a game, and Phillip wasn’t simply telling her a story. Suddenly, the answer came to her. “You find his weakness,” she whispered.

  Relief washed over Phillip’s expression. “And what is the king’s weakness?”

  She looked down at the magazine in her lap, and her eyes drifted to the word “Gatewood.”

  “His name.” It dawned on her.

  “His name, Gatewood, holds the power to all that he is, princess. And all that he is not,” he said smugly. “Jordan Gatewood is a king. Joel Tunson is no one.”

  She knew his secret. Lonnie knew that Jordan’s father wasn’t the late, great Julian Gatewood like everyone believed. His real father was a man named Joel Tunson, a nobody. “I have a friend who works for Forbes,” she said, feeling life creep back into her all of a sudden. “I can send him a copy of Jordan’s real birth certificate. I have a copy of it in a safety deposit box in—”

  Phillip shook his head disapprovingly. “No, no, no, princess,” he groaned. Phillip’s full lips cocked to one side in a crooked smile. “That’s too damned easy.” His expression hardened. “The king nearly killed you. He tried to ruin you. You don’t simply tell his secret to some reporter. You showcase it, put it up on a neon sign for the whole world to see. You strip him of every ounce of power and dignity he has.” Phillip’s eyes narrowed. “You make that mother fucker suffer.”

  “So says the wizard?” she asked, seeing the magic in this man and feeling it spark inside her.

  He smiled. “So says the wizard.”

  Dear Jordan, You missed. xoxo, Lonnie

  Up Jumped the Devil

  She stared out of the window from the living room in the house and watched his car pull into the driveway. Jordan Gatewood climbed out of his black and shiny Panamera Porsche sedan, came toward the house, but stopped long enough to study the only other man outside that house, casually leaning against his restored Chevy Caprice. Lonnie was no fool. She was guilty of doing foolish things, but she knew better than to show up here, alone. That man was her outside assurance that she would be safe in this house. Her inside assurance was locked and loaded inside her purse. The yummy and beautiful Jordan Gatewood continued his journey to the front door. For a moment, a lump filled with fear the size of her fist threatened to choke her running and screaming from this place out the back door, but Lonnie swallowed that shit. It had taken two long years, but in that time, she’d mastered the art of putting things in perspective. Jordan Gatewood was a monster, but maybe not so big—not so bad.

  “Mind telling me how you managed to get into my house?” he asked, as he came inside and shut the door behind him. Jordan started to turn the knob to the deadbolt, but stopped when Lonnie cleared her throat.

  This moment had been a long time coming. Lonnie had spent the last two years avoiding this confrontation in her nightmares, but she’d savored it in her fantasies. Jordan was every bit the handsome, delicious man she’d remembered—on her best days. But hidden behind those dark and heavily browed eyes of his was the boogie man.

  “The Realtor let me in,” she eventually responded. “How much are you asking for this place?” She surprised herself and smiled at her own attempt at sarcasm, a pretty good attempt too.

  Her worst memories had been of this room. Jordan had stripped her down to nothing in this room, taking full advantage of her naked body, mind, and soul. He had raped her in so many terrible, terrible ways that night. Jordan had not only assaulted her body, but he’d assaulted her pride, her ego, her true-soulful-self. He’d stripped her of the woman she’d always known herself to be, fearless and ready to face any and everything. He had made her helpless for the first time in her life.

  Lonnie had faced bigger monsters. She’d stood nose to nose with wars and dictators, drawn back her shoulders and defied them without hesitation or trepidation. She’d been one of the few photographers in Zaire during the first Congo War when Mobutu was being thrown out on his ass. Lonnie had locked gazes with rebels, getting up-close-and-personal photographs of their rage, victories, and deaths. Her editor sent her to the heart of what was once Yugoslavia, when eighteen thousand Serbs lay siege to the city of Sarajevo, assaulting the city with machine guns, tanks, and bombs. She was there, close enough to touch everything going on around her, and capturing it all with her camera. And this motha fucka right here had left her running and screaming for her life? She’d pondered it for the last two years, and for the last two years, she’d found that shit unacceptable.

  Lonnie took a defensive step back when she noticed him walking toward her. “Don’t even think about it, Jordan,” she threatened.

  He stopped. “I wasn’t thinking about it,” he said, sounding almost—almost—apologetic. “I would apologize, but I know that it wouldn’t matter.”

  Lonnie raised her brows in awe. “No, it wouldn’t, but I have to admit, it surprises the hell out of me.”

  Jordan shook his handsome head in dismay. “What are you doing here, Lonnie? Why here? Why this house?”

  “This house,” she murmured, looking around the room at the pristine and expensive furnishings he’d bought to replace the shit he’d used her body to smash the other stuff with. This place looked brand-spanking-new. The smell of her blood, sweat, and tears had been washed away, and the body of the woman he’d left behind here to die blended into the shadows. “This was the scene of the crime, Jordan,” she explained, looking into his eyes.

  He didn’t like hearing that. Lonnie took note of the slight cringe in his face when she said it, but it was true, and he needed to remember that. He needed to understand that some things co
uld not neatly be disposed of and replaced with his version of the truth. All the money in the world couldn’t make what happened in this house go away. Lonnie wouldn’t let it.

  “I never meant for it to go that far,” he finally said. “I lost it, Lonnie, I lost it in a way I never thought possible, and I will never forgive myself for what I did to you.”

  Her face lit up. “What you did to me! Yes, Jordan. Yes, that’s what I needed to hear. I needed to hear you say that you did something terrible to me. I needed to hear you admit it, because I swear, at first, I thought I had imagined the whole thing. For the past two years, I’ve been hoping and praying to wake up, warm and safe in my own bed, wiping sweat from my brow, exhausted but relieved that it had all been nothing more than a bad dream.”

  That brief bout of empathy he may have expressed moments ago faded quickly, replaced by the real Jordan. The one who bucked the system of fate, and rejected any form of responsibility that didn’t match his three-thousand-dollar suit.

  “It’s been two years, you say?” he asked defensively. Jordan tucked his hands into the pockets of his slacks.

  Lonnie held up two fingers and mouthed the word: “Two.”

  His ice-cold gaze washed over her as he took a step again, toward her. He stopped when he noticed how her ass was holding on to that purse. Good boy, she thought approvingly.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  There he was, looking just like the good-old lovable pit bull he really was. Lonnie knew that he was in there somewhere, feigning regret, trying to lure her into his circle so that he could grab her by the neck with those steel jaws of his and squeeze until she fell limp in his teeth.

  “To do to you what you did to me,” she murmured coolly.

  A glint of something sinister flashed in his eyes. “Is that why you got your boy outside? Is he going to hold me down, Lonnie? Is he going to make me beg him to stop?”

  Jordan took another step in her direction, but this time, Lonnie didn’t flinch. She didn’t take a step back. She didn’t blink, and that nervous ball bouncing around in the pit of her stomach stopped bouncing, and she took a step toward him.

  “You’ve got me confused with someone else, Jordan. Oh, you got the drop on me, caught me off guard, but you have no idea who I really am,” she explained menacingly. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

  “Oh, I think I know. I know that it was you fueling the Desi Green machine,” he said confidently. “When I saw the two of you together, Lonnie, I knew exactly who you were. Desi’s a great victim. She’s a master at playing that role, getting people to feel sorry for her, and even to believe her pitiful little lies about me and my family. But she’s no rocket scientist. You, on the other hand, were masterful in the way you unraveled that mess that ultimately made her America’s sweetheart. It was you who exposed that pedophile judge and the fact that he’d murdered that kid. How can a man like that, who passed judgment on someone like the sweet and pretty Desdimona Green, ever be validated? Of course she didn’t do it. Of course she was set up, and someone else pulled the trigger that night, killing the late, great Julian Gatewood.”

  Lonnie waited patiently for Jordan to round out his diatribe. He was spot-on, of course, about all of it. Desi Green was her friend, closer to Lonnie than any sister could be, and yet, Desi Green was a pathetic blob of downtrodden uselessness that would’ve curled up and died had it not been for Lonnie.

  “The world watched in horror as the truth came out about the upstanding law enforcement official who’d arrested Desi—even taken the gun from her hand that night as he stepped over my father’s body, and escorted her to that police car in handcuffs—fall from grace when the story broke of his involvement in that human-trafficking ring, shaking the hell up out of this whole goddamned state. He was no saint, but maybe, just maybe, Desi Green was. Poor, poor little thing.” He smiled all of a sudden. “That was you too.”

  Lonnie thought for a moment, waiting, just in case he had something else to add. But Jordan held back.

  “You’ve summed me up pretty damn good.”

  “Damn good,” he said convincingly.

  Lonnie felt an unexpected sense of relief. She had underestimated him. He knew what she was capable of, and as she looked at him now, it dawned on her that he was more afraid than he was willing to let on. Jordan stood there, looking as calm and cool as a spring day, but hidden inside that façade, he had to know that he was in for one hell of a ride.

  “Time to put on your big-boy pants and gird up your loins, baby,” she said, walking past him. Lonnie held open the door, took a good, long deep breath, held it, and slowly let it go. “I don’t play fair, Jordan. I’m not nice like you.” She turned to him and smiled. “I choose not to live with any regrets. I’ll see you in the ring.”

  “You survived, Lonnie. That’s got to count for something.”

  The line had been drawn in the sand. Would he cross it? Of course he would. She’d dared him to and it wasn’t in his nature to walk away. “You should’ve killed me.”

  She left him standing there, looking a wee bit squeamish.

  Son of a Man

  Frank Ross had been minding his business in Paris, Texas, when this broad walked through the door of his office and told him that she wanted to hire him for protection. Sitting across from her crazy ass now, in this broken-down hole-in-the-wall outside of Fort Collins, Colorado, it dawned on him that he was the one who needed protection, and he needed it from her.

  He should’ve known something wasn’t right when she offered to pay him more money than his services were worth. And a damn siren should’ve sounded after the two of them left that house, outside of Dallas, headed straight for the airport, and he found his ass sitting in a private jet on its way to Colorado.

  “You can close your mouth now, Frank,” she said, after she’d finally finished telling him that bullshit story about that cat she’d just met up with at that house. He hadn’t even known that his mouth was hanging open. “You look like you don’t believe me,” she said, looking cool as a fan.

  “If I’d told you some shit like that, would you believe me?” he asked indifferently.

  “It’s the truth,” she said, smiling.

  She tried covering the side of her face with her hair, he could tell that something was wrong with her. But the rest of her—damn! Thick up in all the right places, and she knew it too. She was fine and knew it, and those were exactly the kind of women he’d learned to avoid.

  She’d laid a magazine on the table with that dude’s picture on the cover. “Gatewood,” he said, studying the picture. He looked up at her. “And you really expect me to believe that he’s kin to me?”

  “He’s your brother, Frank. Your half brother.”

  Nah, he didn’t believe her. “We have the same—”

  “Father,” she repeated with him. “Yes. What part of that don’t you understand?”

  Now she was just being belittling. “Look at this cat.” He motioned toward the magazine. “We don’t even look like we’re from the same planet, let alone the same daddy. How do you expect me to buy into this?”

  “Joel Tunson is your father.”

  “Joel Tunson is my father, yes. But I barely know the man. I may have seen him a half dozen times in my life. He was a child-support check to my mother. That’s all I know about him.”

  “Then you know more than Jordan knows. His mother was married to Joel for a hot second. Either she was pregnant when he married her, or she got pregnant on her wedding night,” she said sarcastically, “but they weren’t married long before a man named Julian Gatewood sped through town in a white Cadillac, spotted the beautiful Olivia Tunson, and stole her away from her husband, along with her infant son. They changed his birth certificate and his name to Gatewood, leaving poor Joel Tunson standing in the dust and wondering what the hell just happened.”

  “That’s fucked up.”

  “Way fucked up. But what they didn’t count on was Joel having a copy of
the original birth certificate tucked away under his mattress for posterity’s sake.”

  “How come he didn’t try and get his woman and baby back?”

  “Money, caveman,” she said sarcastically. “Gatewood was loaded, and Joel couldn’t touch him. Not to mention, Olivia had made her choice. She wanted Julian and all his money and her kid. She didn’t want Joel.”

  “So, this kid grows up a Gatewood.”

  “Essentially. But he’s not a Gatewood. And that’s the punch line, Frank.” She leaned toward him. “He was never adopted. He was never legally made a Gatewood, and yet he inherited his father’s position at one of the largest oil companies in the world, becoming president and CEO and filthy rich. If the board of directors knew that he wasn’t who they think he is, they’d kick him out the door on his ass so fast, he wouldn’t know what hit him.”

  Lonnie was making one hell of a case for the argument he was already preparing in his head. She might’ve thought Frank was dumb as a rock, but he was smarter than he looked, and he knew where she was going with this. He knew why she’d come all the way to Paris, Texas, to hire a bodyguard when she could’ve found a hundred of them in Dallas. He knew why she’d asked him to stand outside that house earlier that day, instead of coming inside. She wanted the two men to take a good, hard look at each other. She wanted them to remember each other’s faces. And she wanted Frank to sound the alarm.

  “The last thing that man would want is for the truth about who he really is to come out,” he finally said.

  The woman’s pretty smile showed up again. “That’s the last thing.” She shrugged. “At least, one of them.”

  The wheels started turning in his head. Frank was an ex-cop. He’d spent nearly ten years on the force, and in that time he’d learned to read between the lines of what a person was saying and what they were really saying, and he could see red flags waving all around this woman’s head.