“Maybe it was Frank Epstein who sent the notes,” Jenna said, pushing. “Maybe Lex was right, and bad business blood had Epstein wanting to avenge some old deed.” She took a step closer to her father. “You don’t want the feds digging into your relations with Epstein, either. Why? Because of old mob ties?”
He stilled. The color of his eyes seemed to fade, flat and hard as ice.
“Epstein didn’t do this. He had nothing to do with Candace.”
“How do you know?”
“Trust me. I know.”
She frowned. “What exactly—” she said, taking another step toward her father “—happened in the past with Frank Epstein, Dad? What makes you so darn sure about him now?”
Harold’s neck corded, and a hint of nervousness seemed to flicker through his features. Which scared Jenna.
“You—” he pointed with his index finger off his whiskey tumbler “—have to understand, Jenna Jayne, that messing around with that FBI agent, leading him to look into Rothchild business dealings is going to end up bad news.”
“You,” she said, meeting his pointed glare, “were the one who set me up to get involved with Lex Duncan in the first place.”
“Solely for information about the ring.”
Again, the ring.
“You set me up to seduce him, Dad.”
“Not be seduced by him,” he snapped.
“Oh, like you can control the whole damn world! My emotions to boot.”
He set his glass down slowly, seriously registering for the first time that his daughter might actually have some real and very dangerous personal allegiances with the federal agent. His daughter was falling for the cop who could take him down. If she let him.
“It’s gone too far with him, Jenna. End it.”
She swallowed, shaking inside with fury. “You don’t control me,” she whispered. “You don’t tell me to switch my feelings on and off at your own whim, for your own personal gain.”
“Pick a side, Jenna Jayne. Choose your family, everything we own, or pick that man—a blue-collar federal agent,” he spat the words out derisively. “For what? One night of hot sex, for the novelty of sleeping with a law enforcement officer?”
“No,” she whispered. “For something real, Dad.”
“Consider your actions very, very carefully, Jenna Jayne.”
“Oh, I am.”
“Consider, too, that your agent friend might know that you went to visit Candace the night of her murder and that he may have pegged you as a suspect, too.”
Shock rocketed through her. “Rebecca Lynn told you?” she whispered.
He said nothing.
Hatred rustled like an ugly thing under Jenna’s skin. Rebecca Lynn wasn’t just trying to drive a wedge between her and her father; she wanted to see Jenna go down.
A very dark and dangerous thought occurred to her—was Rebecca Lynn crazy enough to commit murder? Could she actually be behind all of this?
“Special Agent Lex Duncan is using you, Jenna. Once he is through, you will be left with nothing, because you will have alienated me.”
“Is that a threat, Dad?”
He glared at her for several beats. “No, Jenna. That’s a fact.”
Chapter 8
Vibrating with anger, Jenna got into her car. “Damn him,” she muttered to Napoleon, who was sitting in the passenger seat on buttery leather. She slammed her hand down on the dash. “How could my own father threaten me like that?” Jenna clenched her teeth, turned on the ignition, setting her convertible engine to a smooth, low growl. She didn’t want to feel hurt. Vulnerable.
For the first time in her twenty-five years of life she wasn’t going to give in to her dad, to her own subterranean need for her father’s affection.
But that meant she was alone.
She should go find Lex, tell him everything. She should let him know that she’d gone to Candace’s apartment that night to try and talk her impossible sister into a rehab program—if not for her own sake, for the sake of her two toddler sons. But Candace had wanted nothing of it. Sky-high on a cocktail of drinks and drugs, she’d launched a Ming vase at Jenna’s head.
And yes, Jenna had cut her finger picking up the pieces. It had bled pretty badly. Her blood very likely had been left at the scene. Rebecca Lynn might be right. Perhaps Lex was spending time with her solely to glean information that could secure him a warrant for her DNA, or something, so he could match her to the blood. Jenna didn’t want to deal with that thought right now.
She’d tackle it all tomorrow, because right at this moment, she was falling into her tried and true coping mechanism. And she knew it. She inhaled deeply, glanced at Napoleon. “Ready, Naps? Because we’re going to partay. We’re going to the Desert Lion, and we’re going to make sure Cassie has the best damn birthday celebration of her life.”