A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire #1)(111)

The blast from a gun cut off Margarita’s heartfelt speech and a hole blossomed in the middle of her forehead, right between her eyes, before her lifeless body crumbled to the ground.

No one moved as the echoing explosion from the gun bounced off of the walls and rang in everyone’s ears in the small room. Parker stared in horror at the body that laid on the floor a few feet in front of her, barely able to comprehend what just happened and the fact that the woman dead on the floor had been Milo’s mother.

“I knew that woman would be more trouble than she was worth,” Fernandez complained as he lowered his weapon and handed it back to the guard he’d taken it from a few moments before. He wiped the palms of his hands on the front of his shirt like he just got dirt on them instead of taking the life of the mother of his child, the woman he brought to this country and promised to love and protect.

Milo said nothing. He stood where he was and stared down at his mother with his head cocked to the side like he was trying to figure her out, trying to decide if the things she’d said were real or just a way to ease her guilty conscience for ruining his life. She tried so hard the past few years to make him believe that his father was a bad man. She tried to convince him that he should leave the Dominican and never look back. He knew she was just jealous, jealous of the connection he had with his father that she would never have. She let him down when he was a child, abandoned him and never looked back. Never once did she check to make certain he was safe, that he was taken care of. His father at least kept an eye on him. Sure, he allowed Milo to be kicked around by a step-father who hated him, but he did it to make sure Milo would turn into a strong man. He used his contacts to make sure he was accepted into the military, to make sure he was offered a role as a Navy SEAL so one day he could join his organization and stand at his right hand. His father loved him. His mother left him.

“Well, now that one problem is out of the way, how about we move on to the next one?” Fernandez asked the guard by the door. The man pulled a phone out of his pocket and made a call. Several minutes later, a button was pressed and the call was placed on speaker phone for all to hear.

“Juan, are things secured?” Fernandez spoke loudly so the man on the phone could hear him.

“Si, Mr. Presidente,” the voice replied over the line.

“How about you put our friend on the phone?” Fernandez asked with a smile as he looked down at Parker.

The sounds of shuffling and a faint moan came from the speaker before a weak, raspy voice came on the line and wheezed a demand.

“What the hell do you want, Fernandez?”

Garrett watched the color drain from Parker’s face and wished, more than anything that he could go to her. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and tell her not to worry, tell her not to lose hope no matter what she saw or what she heard. He wanted to take away all the fear and anguish he could feel radiating from her from across the room. He never wanted to hear the terror in her voice when she choked out that one word into the room just loud enough for the speaker phone to pick up.

“Dad?”





Chapter Twenty-Four



Parker knew her father’s voice as soon as the first word left his mouth and traveled through the speaker. Even though they’d only spoken to each other for all of five minutes in the past twelve years, she'd know her father’s voice anywhere, even when it was raspy from having tubes down his throat and sluggish from pain medication. And yet she still felt the need to voice her question out loud just to make sure what she was hearing was real, to make sure her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her. She should have known by the smirk on Fernandez’s face that this was no trick.

“Annabelle? Sweetie, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

Fernandez clapped his hands together in glee before Parker could answer her father.

“Oh isn’t this family reunion just lovely?” he exclaimed with a smile. “I do enjoy a happy ending. You should thank Milo for this moment. He lost his concentration and the bullet that was supposed to go through your father’s head only went through his back.”

Parker’s eyes darted to Milo’s, and he actually had the decency to look embarrassed. Unfortunately his shame had nothing to do with the fact that he’d tried to kill Joe and everything to do with disappointing his father.

“I’m sorry, sir. I promise I won’t let you down again,” Milo assured him.

Parker had never felt white hot rage before as she had when she stared at Milo. This person she’d let into her life and into her heart was a monster, a cold-hearted, vile man just like his father. Whatever small inkling of hope she still harbored that maybe there was still some good in him disappeared in an instant. He deserved whatever he got.

Parker wanted to scream and wrench against the bindings that held her in place so she could kill Milo with her bare hands, but she knew that wouldn't get her anywhere. As much satisfaction as it would bring her to end his sad, miserable life, it wouldn’t fix anything. It wouldn’t get them out of this basement alive, and it most certainly wouldn’t ensure that Fernandez went down for his crimes. As much as it killed her to do so, she had to remain calm. She had to let this play out.

“Juan, would you be so kind as to give us a status update on our friend?” Fernandez spoke in the general direction of the cell phone his guard held out towards him.