Free Taking Jana (Paradise South #2) by Rissa Brahm Page A

serious, with not an ounce of awareness as to the sickness of her comment, of her mindset.
    “Mom, you’re exhausted. Go home. Rest.” She attempted to sprinkle her words with sugary sweetness, but they turned out to be a powdery poison instead. Whatever. She needed the woman out of her face.
    Jin picked up her purse in a slight huff and left, thankfully, without another word.
    Jana folded herself into the chair her mother had made warm for her, and despite the ridiculousness of the hard arms and seat of the damn thing, and the maddening thoughts overrunning her blood-boiling mind, she fell asleep.
    *
    Antonio had told dispatch to ignore all of Jocelyn Carlson’s future requests. And he’d deleted all of her lengthy and abusive voicemails from his company cell, too. Pathetic.
    Now he had to prepare for a high-ticket replacement, or replacements. It would more than likely take a few better paying clients to make up for the loss of his one, but he had no choice. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he crawled back to that depraved lunatic and her obscene displays, her oozing, deplorable melodrama.
    Making the phone call to Jake Demonte would be somewhat easier to stomach than letting that wealthy, gold-digging whore back in his back seat.
    Before Antonio had left his seaside town on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, he’d had a great cooperative arrangement with Jake Demonte. The man owned the largest gentlemen’s club in Vallarta until, rumor had it, competing drug cartels had pressured him out for allowing one source over another to supply his club’s patrons and dancers. It became too much of a hassle, and Jake owned a chain of other clubs that he could fall back on anyway in Florida, Jersey, and New York.
    Antonio had made out well promoting and bringing new clientele to Jake’s Vallarta club at the time. The kickbacks from Jake had actually funded Antonio’s travel to New York.
    But more than a good business co-op , Jake made it clear that he felt he owed Antonio. “You need anything when you’re up there, Tone, anything at all, you call. You hear me? I still haven’t forgotten what you did for my kid,” he’d told Antonio before he’d left. Jake was referring to the time Antonio had pulled his son out of the way of a dumb-ass drunk in the club parking lot some ten years back. Antonio had been in the right place at the right time was all; anyone would’ve done the same.
    But still, he did as Jake told him and didn’t hesitate to call. He hadn’t really had a choice after he was laid off by the Manhattan limo company, an inevitable next step after Michelle had slept with the owner of the damn outfit. Antonio had had nowhere else to turn. A proud Mexican man would never risk whatever vestige of pride that remained by calling on his family for help. His brother-in -law had already done enough by hooking him up with work papers and the New York connections.
    Instead, he’d called Jake Demonte.
    And when he had, the man hadn’t hesitated to help him get out of the City and over to Jersey. Not only was Antonio’s New Jersey limo license thanks to Jake’s connections, but so was his access permit to the Newark International Airport and his first round of regular higher paying clients. The man also contributed to the down payment for his first owned limo and then financed everything else Antonio needed as his business grew. And Jake didn’t gouge him with the interest rate on the loan, but he wasn’t doing too badly for himself either. It was more or less a win-win , and Antonio knew it didn’t have to be. Antonio needed Jake, not the other way around.
    But Antonio, being the most prudent of the twelve Ruiz kids, knew to be careful and stopped asking for help for a good long while. Even though he knew Jake Demonte wasn’t connected to any big-time Italian families, the bottom line was that the man had money and clout, which was all gotten by less than pristine means. He was just not a man Antonio