Chapter 14
Ten Years Ago
What I had been doing in that hotel room with my father that night was a long story.
Sometimes, I liked to pretend it was just that: a story.
Something that happened to someone else and not the reason I’d spent the next decade changing names and hiding.
After all, everything I had done with my father, every job, was rooted in fiction.
I’d played the part of a debutant that night. A spoiled rich girl whose daddy had promised her an extravagant birthday gift. One we’d had to fly all the way to Houston to meet a jewel dealer in a private hotel room to obtain.
It had all gone according to plan. Until it hadn’t.
“I was hoping for something bigger,” I’d said, pouting, and playing the part of Ana Prescott when the woman with the jewels presented a dazzling tennis bracelet worth a year’s college tuition.
We sat at the dining table in a lavish suite, the pendant lamp hanging above us casting glittering rainbows.
I’d been instructed to do whatever it took to make them bring out the big one.
My father had it on good authority, thanks to the circles he ran in, the dealer had traveled to the jewel expo in town with a diamond of life-changing proportions.
He’d arranged a private meeting with them in a hotel room.
Little did they know, the briefcase of cash we’d arrived with was completely fake—a good fake, thanks to my father’s favorite counterfeiter, but still fake.
Contrary to pop culture lore, five million dollars is way too heavy to haul around in any kind of case; it would weigh over one hundred pounds if it was made up of hundred-dollar bills.
That night, we’d brought a million (fake) dollars as a show of good faith, and my father was going to wire the rest of the money from a bank account that didn’t exist, but we would be long gone before they figured out none of the money was real.
The plan was to make a deal for the diamond in the hotel room and then disappear.
We’d be in the wind, old identities burned, before they realized.
We had another dealer lined up to sell it to in Peru.
Javi, a man my father had known for years, was waiting for our call.
It was supposed to be our ticket out. The final job to set us free.
They’d laid out their best to impress us that night: necklaces, earrings, rings. But what we were after wasn’t mounted or strung. It was loose and the size of an acorn, if the rumors were to be believed.
“Olena, please,” my father cooed from where he casually leaned back in his leather dining chair beside me. “I want only the best for my princess’s birthday. You only turn eighteen once.” He turned and winked at me. “We didn’t come all this way for trinkets we could buy at home. Impress us.”
I sweetly smiled with all the entitlement I could muster. As much belief that I deserved the biggest and best.
Olena, a stunning woman with ice blue eyes and birdlike features, considered us with a purse of her painted lips. She herself dripped in glittering jewels and looked both like she could readily serve us tea or kill us, depending on her mood.
My hands were slicked with sweat beneath the table. I held them in my lap to keep them from shaking. It wasn’t so much the hot lamp overhead or the performance or the terrifying woman sitting across from me. It was the man standing behind Olena with a gun in his belt.
He had a mean scar like someone had tried to gouge out his eye with a knife and missed. He stared at me with a hunger that reminded me of a shark, watching my every move. His lips peeled into a sinister grin when my father called me princess.
Olena partially turned her head and spoke to him in a language I didn’t understand.
The man nodded once and took a step closer to the table. A beam of light glinted off his gun when he folded his arms over his chest. I gulped at the sight of it.
Olena rose from her chair like an elegant bird taking flight. She slipped away toward the bedroom to get the diamond and left me and my father sitting at the table with the bodyguard watching over us like a gargoyle.
My father casually lifted the glass of brown liquor Olena had poured him and sipped. I fought to steady my heart, knowing the moment we’d been working toward was almost upon us.
Just then, the suite’s doorbell rang.
The man with the gun swiveled his thick head and reached for his hip. I sat up straighter when I noticed my father do the same in a motion almost too slight to detect.
We weren’t expecting anyone else.
The man with the gun eyed us before throwing a glance toward the bedroom where Olena had gone. He hesitated. I could see his jaw muscles working as he thought, perhaps about how much trouble he’d get in if something went wrong while his boss was in the other room.
“Who is it?” he eventually called in a thick accent.
“Room service,” a muffled voice said through the door.
The thought of food tempted me since we hadn’t eaten before arriving at the hotel. My father said we couldn’t be late, and with having to put on a dress and heels and the identity of a spoiled rich girl, I hadn’t had time for a bite.
The man with the gun threw another glance toward the bedroom and must have decided he was hungry too, or that Olena would be upset if he turned away her dinner, because he stalked off to answer the door.
My father and I were left alone.
It was in those moments I longed for some kind of encouragement from him. A pat on the back, a wink. Something to indicate I was doing well. But he never broke character. It was a surefire way to get caught, he’d told me. Never let on to your true identity.
He took another sip of his drink, and I forced myself not to fidget.
Olena returned carrying a small jewelry box at the same time the man with the gun came back with a hotel employee on his heels pushing a cart.
Olena and the man with the gun exchanged words in the language I did not know, but I could tell she was not happy based on her tone.
They seemed to argue, the man shrugging and holding out his arms. Olena eventually grumbled and pointed across the room.
“Over there,” the man instructed and shepherded the waiter toward the living room.
I wondered if the waiter thought it odd since we were sitting at the dining table, the obvious place to deposit food, and he was being guided elsewhere, but he didn’t object and instead pushed his cart toward the couch.
“Now,” Olena said. She turned her terrifying smile on me and my father. She pried open the jewelry box, and inside was the biggest diamond I had ever seen in my life.
My mask slipped for a second—and I let it. Even Ana Prescott would be impressed by the glinting meteor before her.
My father sucked air between his teeth and chuckled. “Now we’re talking. Look at that thing, princess. Do you like it?”
It was undeniably beautiful. A diamond so pure it was white and every color of the rainbow at the same time. I felt its reflection shining in my eyes like I was a cartoon character. I nodded and remembered what I was supposed to do.
“Can I hold it?” I asked.
Olena’s painted lips peeled into a grin. She pulled a small cloth from the box and used it to pluck the stone from its cushion. She placed the diamond in my outstretched hand. It felt like a piece of ice on my skin. A hard, heavy piece of glinting ice.
My heart lifted with relief. I’d done my part. My father had been planning for months to get that rock in my hand, and there it was.
I turned to him with a proud smile. “I love it, Daddy. Can I keep it?”
He smiled back at me, pride in his eyes, and one of the last times I’d ever look at him up close, but I didn’t know that. “Yes, princess. It’s yours.”
Olena tutted. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. I trust you brought payment?”
My father gave her a feline smile and reached for the briefcase near his feet. “Of course.”
“Open it,” she demanded when he lifted the case.
He did as he was told and set the case on the table.
I’d seen the money myself earlier. It looked completely real—and this would not have been the first time we’d used counterfeit cash for a deal.
The bills could stand up to scrutiny. They had all the proper watermarks and security threads.
There was only one way to prove they were fake.
If lit on fire, the ink burned bright green rather than black.
Lucky for us, not many people were in the habit of lighting their payment on fire.
Olena’s eyes widened at sight of the neatly stacked bills lining the case.
Image after image of Benjamin Franklin’s apathetic smirk stared up at us.
“I have heard rumor,” she said in her icy, lyrical tone, “of a clever man and his clever daughter moving around this country taking advantage of hardworking people.” She pinched a stack of bills between her needle fingers and lifted it from the case.
My heart kicked up a gear and sent blood rushing through my veins.
I fought to keep calm and hold still. I noted my father’s jaw twitch from the corner of my eye.
But ever the con man, he played it cool.
“I’ve heard that rumor too. That’s why I’ve taken measures to protect my family and my assets against any danger.
” He nodded over at me still holding the diamond in my hand.
“Hmm,” Olena purred and freed the top bill from the stack. “Smart of you to protect the things you hold valuable. I do the same.” She jerked her head toward her henchman and said something in their language.
He approached her, and when he pulled a shiny silver lighter out of his pocket, I nearly fainted.
I glanced at my father, knowing it was all over if they lit that bill on fire. We’d be exposed. Caught.