Toni blew out a shaky breath, tucking her nose into the blanket and closing her eyes. “There has to be another way, Jon. She can’t stay here much longer or she’ll…I can’t let that happen. She has a little girl and a husband. She needs blood.”
She realized her hysteria was rising along with her voice, but there was little she could do to stop this new wave of panic.
“Have faith, Toni. Ellesandra is one of the most skilled healers in the land,” he said, his voice husky and low.
Faith. She’d had that once, but not anymore. “I’m all out.”
“Why? What troubles you so that you cannot hope? I know something darkens your doorstep. What can it hurt to share, here in my world, when yours is so far away?”
Misery welled in the pit of her stomach, tugging at her already knotted gut. “Because what happened was awful, okay? What I did was awful, and I’ve been running from it ever since.”
He captured her hand, stroking her palm, his fingers tender and warm. “Then I urge you to tell me your woes. My ears listen well.”
Maybe he was right. What could it hurt? Her world was light-years away. No one would ever know…
“I had a boyfriend—”
“Does this word mean the same thing in your land as it does in mine?”
“Probably not. Let me reword. I was involved for a short time, or maybe betrothed is a word you’ll better understand, to a man who was part of a very bad group of people. Kind of like Queen Angria’s henchmen. It’s called the Russian mafia. I didn’t know it until it was too late, but then it was…well, too late.” So late. So, so late.
Jon paused, looking into her eyes, his face darkening under the light of the half moon. “So you didn’t know he was a henchman?”
“No. I worked in the finance department of a car dealership run and owned by this bad man’s father. We’d only dated for a couple of months when what I’m about to tell you happened.”
“You handled gold?”
Oh she’d handled it all right. Handled it so well, she didn’t even know she was handling it. Closing her eyes, she nodded. “Yes. Lots of gold.”
“And what is this car dealership you speak of?”
She sighed, licking her lips. They had some huge otherworld deficits—technology being the biggest. “Cars are like your carriages, only with motors and windows and vroom-vroom—Never mind. They’re a means of transportation in my world. Where I worked, we sold them.”
“For hefty sums, I imagine? Especially if they vroom-vroom,” he teased, his eyes amused.
She chuckled and shook her head. “They’re probably the equivalent of ten herds of sheep here in Shamalot.”
He waved a dismissive hand and grinned. “Sheep are rather inexpensive. Now reindeer—”
“Not the point, Stable Boy.”
He sobered, his gorgeous face becoming serious as he straightened and cleared his throat. “Of course. Please continue.”
“Anyway, my betrothed, Stas was his name, was laundering money through the dealership.”
“He washed the gold, you say? How peculiar.”
Toni groaned. “No. Not literally. Suffice it to say, the gold was illegal, and I handled it. Which meant I could go to prison if the police…I mean the people who guard Jersey…ever found out.”
“So then what happened?”
“One night, just after I’d figured out what he was doing, that he was using the car dealership as a front to launder money, I decided I’d confront him. I really hoped I was wrong, but I know numbers, Jon, and those numbers didn’t add up. Anyway, I asked my supervisor to meet me at the dealership so I could tell him about Stas and what he was doing. I was too afraid to do it over the phone. Little did I know, my supervisor was also a part of the mess.”
God, that night. She’d never forget that night—finding out Andre was part of the whole thing, the blood, their laughter at what they’d done.
Jon’s beautiful sapphire eyes narrowed to mere slits in his head. “And did you confront this scoundrel? Were I there in your land, I would have beheaded him. No one steals from the king.”
“I never got that far, and now, looking back, it was a good thing. When I showed up, for some reason I took the back way through the service entrance instead of the front doors. I don’t know why, because it was out of the ordinary for me. But I’ve thanked my lucky stars every day since I chose that path.”
Because it had been the right one. She paused and swallowed hard, tightening her grip on the blanket.
Jon cupped her jaw, letting his thumb run over her lower lip. “This pains you, milady. I cannot bear it. I will not press if you wish for it to remain a secret.”
No. She’d come this far; it was time to go all the way. “Stas and Andre, my supervisor, had just kill…killed a man. I don’t know who he was or why he was at the dealership, but they were standing over his body, and the body was in a pool of…And Stas had a gun in his hand and they were laughing about it while they waited for me.”