As the skin across the back of Marie-Terese’s neck tightened, the woman focused on her and smiled like an axe murderer who was looking at his next victim. “I saw your purse down on the dining room table, darling. Given how much money was next to it, I’d say your prices have gone through the roof. Congratulations.”

Vin’s hard voice sliced through the air. “How did you get in. I locked everything—”

“Don’t you get it, Vincent. Your door is always open to me.”

Vin put his body in front, shielding Marie-Terese. “Leave. Now.”

The laughter that sounded out was all nails-on-a-blackboard, high and cringe-worthy. “Ever since we first met, things have been on my terms, Vin, and that isn’t going to change now. I’ve invested a lot in you, and I do believe it’s time to call you home.”

“Fuck you, Devina.”

“You certainly did,” the woman drawled. “And very well, I might add. But you weren’t the only one. Your friend Jim also did right by me, and I think I liked him better than you. With him, I didn’t need someone else.”

“Yeah, I had to have more than you gave me as well,” Vin snapped.

A wave of coldness rippled out from the woman, and her eyes, those awful black holes, shifted to Marie-Terese and locked on. “You’ve met Jim, haven’t you. You ever been alone with him? Maybe…in a car? Maybe when you were taking him back home yesterday?”

How the hell did she know that? Marie-Terese wondered.

As Vin’s body stiffened, the woman continued. “When you took him back to that shitty studio of his over the garage, you liked the taste of his cock, didn’t you—but you would have blown him even if you hadn’t. You need all the money you can get, and he was willing to pay for it.”

Marie-Terese glared across the room. “That never happened. Never. I didn’t go to his place.”

“So you say.”

“No, so you say. I know what I did and didn’t do and with whom. You, on the other hand, are a desperate bitch who’s trying to hold on to someone who doesn’t want her.”

The woman recoiled a little, and Marie-Terese had to admit there was some satisfaction to be had with that.

But then Vin stepped away, and one look in his pale face made her realize that Trez had been tragically right. A past like hers had a long reach, and Vin and she hadn’t known each other long enough for even rudimentary trust to have developed—much less the kind of faith required for a man to believe that a prostitute wouldn’t be doing her “job” with his friend.

Thank God for all the towels she had on, she thought.

Because she suddenly felt as though she were out in the frigid wind.

“Jim.”

Standing in front of Devina’s bathroom door, Jim measured the expression on Eddie’s face: dead serious. More to the point, that big-ass body was going to be in the way if Jim made any move for the doorknob.