What if he didn’t come back?

She clung to him for one last taste before he broke away.

“I’ll be back,” he said against her lips.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you ran off and never looked over your shoulder,” she said but didn’t mean.

“That isn’t going to happen.”

“Good. Because I was lying. I’ll hunt you down and make you fall in love with me.” Where those words had come from, she wasn’t sure. But she didn’t regret them when they fell out of her mouth.

“Will you?”

“I can be very persuasive when determined.”

“This I can’t wait to see.”

She reached up to kiss him again.

He pulled away and leaned his forehead on hers. “If I don’t leave now, I’m not going to.”

She would never know if he would come back if she didn’t let him go.

She rubbed her hands on his chest one last time and dropped them to her sides.

“I’ll call when I get home.”

“Okay.”

He turned and jogged down the steps.

She watched his backside as he walked to the car.

“Your eyes are burning a hole in my ass, little lady.”

“Get used to it.”

He tossed his head back and laughed as he climbed into the car.

She watched as he disappeared down her driveway, and clenched her shirt over her chest. “He’ll be back,” she told herself.

“He’ll be back.”

Traffic sucked, and it took three hours to drive from Trina’s home to Wade’s ranch. It took four hours to talk his mother off the ledge. Five minutes to tell Ike one final time that he no longer needed him and remind him of the confidentiality clause in his signed contract if Ike planned on ever working again. Ike was reminded to keep anything he’d heard or seen in regards to Trina to himself. Saying goodbye to a man Wade thought was his friend wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be when he noticed how quickly Ike reminded him of the financial severance they’d agreed on if they ever parted ways.

The letters of recommendation, however, weren’t something Wade was willing to deliver.

The inner circle that included his agent and publicist was quick to smile and tell Wade whatever he wanted to hear. Which only left Jeb and his mother to tell him the truth about anything. Considering his mother’s take on things, that really only left Jeb.

“I’m counting on you to be up-front with me,” he told his bodyguard and friend.

Jeb looked around the great room. The new cameras and extra bodyguards on the ranch couldn’t be ignored.

“I trust her and her friends,” Jeb told him. “I’ll let you know if that changes. As for matters of hearts and sunsets . . . you have to determine if she’s the right fit.”

Wade didn’t skip a beat. “She already fits.”

“There is one thing I like about Trina above anyone else who has been in your life.”

“Oh?”

Jeb made eye contact and didn’t break it. “She doesn’t need anything from you other than you. Not your money, your fame . . . your connections, your music. Just you. That’s a rare gift in your world. Even I need your money.” Jeb’s smile had Wade laughing.

“I appreciate your endorsement.”

“Honey?” His mother walked into the room, a familiar face following behind. “Dr. Kushman said you called him. You feeling okay?”

“Hey, Charles, thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“Anything for you, Wade.”

“Sweetheart?” His mother was all syrup and smiles once he put an end to her rant about Trina.

“I’m good, Mama. Just a checkup. No time to go into town.” Wade blew past his mother and shook the doctor’s hand. “Let’s step into my office.”

House calls were a nice perk of his fame.

By eight o’clock that night, Charles had called with a clean bill of health, and Wade was on the phone, saying good night to Trina.

“You sound even sexier over the phone,” he told her.

“I’ve been practicing all day.”

“My doctor just called, and I’m all checked out.”

“That was quick.”

“Important things are taken care of first.”

Trina laughed.

“I’ll be happy to stock up on more supplies for when I’m back from Vegas.” He secretly hoped she wouldn’t encourage him to glove up. He hadn’t forgotten what unlatexed lovin’ felt like, even though it wasn’t something he did very often in his life. Especially since he’d broken the top one hundred on the charts.

“Like I told you, I have an IUD. I’m happy to get a copy of my last bloodwork if you want to see it.”

“I trust you.” More than anyone else he’d been with. “But why the IUD, if you weren’t sleeping with Fedor?”

“I was a flight attendant. Periods got in the way.”

“That makes sense.”

“I’ll let you decide,” she told him. “I might be provoked to hunt you down if you didn’t come back, but I would never trap you.”

He shivered. “That was both exciting and a little terrifying, all in the same sentence.”

“How so?”

“Exciting to see you hunting me down. Would you dress like that woman in the hotel room, Catwoman?”

“Sasha?” Trina laughed. “I don’t think I could pull that off.”

“I disagree. I might buy you the outfit just to find out.”

“Harboring fantasies about her, are you?”

“Just the outfit. Not the woman.” Wade propped his stocking feet up on his bed and relaxed against his headboard.

“So what’s the terrifying part?”

He gave his head a quick shake. “The reality that I wouldn’t mind you trapping me.”

He heard her suck in a breath. “Wade . . .”

“Too soon?”

“No, I just . . . I’m not taking you up on that. There will be no accidents that force us together. You’re gonna have to want it and stick around to see if it works.”

“Should I get in my truck right now and show you just how much it works?”

“When you’re back from Vegas.”

Vegas couldn’t come and go too soon.

Ruslan threw a crystal glass across the room and took brief satisfaction in it shattering into a thousand pieces on the floor.

He looked at his phone again. Saw an image he knew was out there but had been told was destroyed.

Now they had it.

They . . . the collective clusterfuck that was on him like maggots on rotted flesh.

Natasha had tried to blackmail him.

Him!

In Natasha’s attempts to blackmail him, Alice had gained her freedom by catching him in the act of removing that pizda from this earth. His wife was wise enough to know that she, and her son, would be dead if she said a thing to anyone. So when he’d gone to Fedor’s that night just over a year ago to sway him to his side, he’d learned that not only did Fedor not know about Natasha, he’d also turned into a tryapka.

No son of his could be that weak.

He’d put up a fight. Even had a gun, which Ruslan had put to good use.

Everything had been sewn up.

All the ends neatly tied.

Until his daughter-in-law came back.

Now everything was falling apart, and if he didn’t get his hands a little dirty, everything would be destroyed.

“The woman in the pictures was Natasha Budanov, the same name written on the back.”

“Russian.” Trina now had a name to go with the face of the dead woman whose killer was still free. “How was she connected to Ruslan, outside of the fact he killed her?”

Reed spoke to her on a secure line.

“They were lovers, from what I can tell. She lived in Germany. He would visit her when he was there.”

“She didn’t look old enough to acquire a taste for a monster like him.”

“He had money, and she was just short of a hooker.”

“What do you mean?”

“She had a prior of burglary while she was servicing a man.”

“Servicing?” Trina winced.

“Prostitution isn’t as frowned upon in other parts of the world as it is here. Have you been to Amsterdam?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so you know. Jacking the john for his wallet is a bigger deal. Natasha was pretty enough to avoid the streets, but she liked money. I can only assume Ruslan paid her well enough to keep her as a mistress.”

There wasn’t enough money in the world.

“Did her death go unnoticed?”

“Virtually. But then, Ruslan was a mist in her bedroom that faded when the sun came up. The only person willing to part with information was a friend in the same field as Natasha that still lived in the same town.”

“How on earth did you find her?”

“We have boots on the ground where Natasha lived. With a picture of the woman and a wad of euros, people talk. Our source had a picture of Natasha and herself back when they were both working on their backs. Natasha’s friend gave up the profession after Natasha’s death. We dug a little deeper and found the prior in the database and connected the dots. Miss Budanov was found dead on the rocks off a cliff. It was labeled a suicide.”