A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire #1)(104)

“Oh, isn’t that sweet? You didn’t know, did you?” Fernandez asked Parker with a sick smile on his face when he noticed her confusion. He threw his head back and let out a booming, obnoxious laugh. “The big, bad CIA agent doesn’t know everything. Isn’t that amusing?”

While Fernandez laughed at her obvious naivety, Parker wondered how in the hell she could have missed something so vital. She had no idea how, in all of their research, they never uncovered information this big. How could no one in the CIA, FBI, or SEALS know Milo was the son of one of the biggest criminals in the world?

“It’s a shame you had to tell my son that you never really loved him. He had grand disillusions that you would follow him anywhere and do anything for him, even when I showed him physical proof that you preferred to spread your legs for another man in uniform.”

Parker’s stomach rolled with every word that Fernandez spoke. Garrett and Parker had known they were being recorded the entire time they were at the palace, but the moment got away from them and the chaos that ensued when they got back to the resort gave her little time to dwell on that fact. Hearing that Fernandez, Milo, and God knows who else had listened to every intimate moment between the two of them disgusted her.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to check on the status of, shall we say, a disposal. My son was distracted earlier, and it seems he’s not as good of a shot as I thought,” Fernandez stated as he turned and left the room. The guard who held a gun pointed at her head followed closely behind him.

Parker’s head whipped in Milo’s direction, and she stared at him with anger and revulsion.

“You shot my father?”

Milo shrugged like it was no big deal.

“I knew he was there to tell you about me. I couldn’t let that happen. Not before I had a chance to explain and make you see how much better it would be if you came with me. But you opened the door, and I saw Garrett in there with you and it made me so angry!” he shouted. “I lost focus. I fired too soon. I just want to make my father proud but because of you, everything keeps getting f*cked up.”

Milo turned and started to walk away while Parker began struggling against the guard who held her arms.

“You son of a bitch! After everything I did for you, everything I gave you, why are you doing this? You were my friend!” Parker screamed to Milo’s back as he paused with his hand on the doorknob.

“You ruined everything, Parker,” Milo stated calmly. “You had to stick your nose where it didn’t belong. I was just supposed to keep an eye on you. Make sure you didn’t get too close to what was going on here. He told me it would be the most important job I would ever do for him. I made Garrett go to that coffee shop off of campus that day even though he said it was too far away. But you were going to be there, and I had to make contact. You just had to like him more than me, didn’t you? I always knew you did, and it made me hate you. The only good thing was I finally had something Garrett McCarthy couldn’t have. And pretty soon, I’ll get to have one more thing he can never have.”

Parker wouldn’t cry. Not now, not in front of him. Even though she’d never loved him like she did Garrett, it was still real to her. Every moment, every memory, it was genuine and it meant something to her. She had been nothing more than a job to him.

And a way to make Garrett jealous.

Milo turned around to face her. “Go on. Ask me what I’ll have that Garrett won’t.”

Parker refused to look at him or ask his absurd question. She wouldn’t play his game anymore. She suddenly realized just how alike Milo and Fernandez were. They were both sick, sadistic bastards.

“Fine. You always were a stubborn bitch. I guess I’ll just tell you,” Milo said as he walked back across the room to her. The guard tightened his grip on her when Milo got to her and pressed his body up against hers. She craned her neck as far away from him as she could and cringed in revulsion when he wrapped one of his arms around her waist and pulled her tighter against him. She could feel his breath against her neck as he took the gun that was still in his hand and trailed the barrel down the side of her face until it was under her chin. Milo roughly pressed the gun upward and forced her face to turn toward his.

He looked back and forth between her eyes as Parker gritted her teeth.

“The one thing I’ll have that he won’t,” Milo said softly, leaning forward to press his lips against one of her cheeks and then pulling back to look at her again, “the one thing I’ll take from him,” he said, pressing his lips to her other cheek before sliding them across her skin until they were brushing her ear, “is his poor, sad, beating heart.”



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“Son of a bitch!” Garrett yelled as he tried for the fifth time to get a hold of someone from his team. Marshall, Vargas, Conrad – none of them were answering his calls. He’d left Margarita-Michelle-whoever she was in his room with strict orders not to leave. If what she’d told him was true, and he was betting his life it was, then she was in just as much danger, if not more, than any of them. Fernandez wouldn’t take too kindly to having his wife betray him.

His calls to Parker had gone straight to voicemail, and even though he knew Parker could take care of herself, the fact that she wasn’t answering and he had searched the entire resort and hadn’t found her made his blood run cold. As he knocked on doors and asked if anyone had seen Parker or Milo, his anger grew in leaps and bounds. He knew just because Milo was Fernandez’s son didn’t necessarily mean what he’d told them earlier was a lie, but something in his gut told him Milo wasn’t at all what he seemed. He never would have just trusted Milo blindly like Parker had. She should have known better. And now she’d gone off with him to God knew where and wasn’t answering her phone, and he had no way to tell her what he’d learned. Maybe if she knew Fernandez was Milo’s father, she’d realize just how stupid it was to trust anything he said.