Illicit Liaison Read Online Free PDF Page A

in veritable splendor in his cell and he had the cash to bribe the guards so every few weeks a bevy of women from a strip club would show up and there would be a party in the sick bay. Jimmy was always the only patient there on those nights. He had everything he needed in that prison and he was happy there.
    Darien knew he was going to have to come right out and ask Lolita about whom she knew. He was going to have to work with her to figure this mess out because someone out there had not been shy about selling them out and they had to know who had done it.
    Lolita stirred beside him. Her perfume filled his nose—she wore a light fresh scent that mingled well with the scent of her hair and clothes. He hated heavy musky perfumes and floral scents. Her breast rubbed against his body again then her eyes popped open and she sat straight up.
    There were lavender shadows below her eyes that only accented their color. She directed a level gaze at him and asked, “Are you wondering who told Antony who we are?”
    He should have known she would have thought of it already, “Of course.”
    Neither of them had to point out that was a conversation that they needed to have or that it would require a great deal more privacy than they were in command of right then.
    She smiled and turned toward the window of the plane. Banks of puffy white clouds lay below them: a sea of heavy white stuff that obscured any view of the ground. Darien hated that swaddled and cloaked look; it frightened him for some reason. It made him feel lonely and trapped.
    He leaned back in his seat, uncomfortable with those emotions and not willing to talk to her in case she saw some of it on his face. He had never been one to give in to what he thought of as sentimental bullshit feelings. Love was not an option in his line of work and the people criminals surrounded themselves with were rarely honest or reliable.
    He had once heard his mother say that it was better to trust a sharp and heavy blade hanging over your head than trust someone who said they loved you. This was because you had a chance of surviving the blade falling, but no chance in hell of surviving the sword betrayed by love.
    She had been floating on a serious mix of downers and alcohol that morning. They had been driving down some freeway, rushing to get out of town before the cops could crash in the door of the house they had been living in with several other people, including her recently ex-boyfriend, who had gotten pissed over a twenty dollar bag of cocaine someone had refused to share and called in the cops. The words had been spoken through tears that had dragged her false eyelashes from her eyes, they hung like broken spiders in a muddy puddle of mascara, and eyeliner and she had sent the smell of cheap vodka into the air with each word.
    He should have forgotten the words, his mother had said a lot of things he no longer recalled, but he had not. As he grew older, he had begun to notice more and more that almost every time they fled town, she got beaten up, or some scam did not get done so that there was no food on the table it was due to her being in love.
    Love was the sharpest weapon. He had never trusted it and he did not now, he had never felt lonely either, the women he met, seduced, and lied to had always been enough. The curve of Lolita’s cheek and the long arch of her neck kept drawing his eyes.
    I am just in lust.
    He wanted to believe that. He wanted to believe it very badly.
    **
    The limousine was waiting for them at the airport and they climbed in. They were both exhausted and they slumped into the seats, ignoring the sights that spread out in front of them.
    Lolita was too worried about the family that had housed Jamie, and Jamie herself, to enjoy the Italian Rivera though it was one of her favorite places in the world usually.
    Portofino was a small fishing village spread out on the Ligurian Sea. The water was a vivid blue, the sky equally cerulean and the hillsides topped with