you’re anything like her, my girl will be protected.”
“She’s safe,” Talent says. He takes a cautious step forward, holding his hand out. “You don’t have to worry about Lydia. But this doesn’t have to go down like this.”
“Naomi unwittingly soiled Phillip’s plans by bragging about the arrangement she had at Ridge & Sons, and I sent Lydia instead. To make up for her mistake, she put Hush on the table to make a deal on Phillip’s behalf, and I’ve had the motherfucking feds following my every move for weeks as a result. It’s funny she came to me when she had nowhere to go, like I haven’t had a bullet with her name on it since I found out.”
Inez presses the gun against Naomi’s head, and she cries out, begging for a chance to tell her side.
“It’s too late. Without Naomi and me, they’ll only have enough information to dismantle the spa. They’ll make an example out of a few of our girls, but the heart of Hush can be salvaged.” Inez nods toward a large folder of files on the kitchen counter. “Everything you need to oversee Hush is there, Lydia. The names of our girls. The names of our clients. Where the money is. All of it.”
Without me…
Her words play like a broken record inside my mind, and when I realize what she means, panic seizes my lungs and I can’t breathe.
“No,” I plead. Talent holds me back, and I’m too overcome with fear to get free. “Inez, no. There has to be another way. Let them take Hush. We can start over. We can do something else.”
“Tesora, this is the only way. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” She takes one hand off the gun to pick up the file and tosses it in our direction. The file folder slaps against the countertop closest to us, and Talent reaches forward to retrieve it. Inez’s eyes meet mine, and for a split second, her expression crumbles and she cries. “I love you, Lydia. And I’m so sorry.”
Holding my hands over my mouth to keep from screaming, I feel utterly helpless and worthless when all I can do is cry. It’s like losing my mother all over again, except this time I don’t run away.
Inez’s expression hardens and she squares her shoulders resolutely, ready to follow through with her decision. The last words I ever hear her say are, “Talent, please take her out of here.”
“Wait,” I shout as he pushes me away from the kitchen. “Please, wait.”
“Baby, we have to go,” Talent begs. “We have to go.”
And not for the first time tonight, he picks me up off my feet and carries me away. We’re outside when we hear the gunshots.
We lay low until the investigation involving Hush ends.
For three months, Talent, Camilla, Wilder, and I follow the probe on television, on the internet, and in the newspapers. Talent and Wilder also listen for inside information at their meetings with the Coppola family. Just like Inez said, the spa was disassembled, and a few girls were arrested for solicitation. Not one single client’s name was exposed, and I’m never called in for so much as an interview. The majority of Hush’s operation sneaks by unscathed.
“I’m as shocked by the news as you are,” Jessica, an esthetician from Hush, says in an interview for the nine o’clock news. She shakes her head incredulously, like she doesn’t believe the rumors that a prostitution ring was operated out of the spa. “I never suspected a thing. Sounds like a setup to me. Inez was a pleasure to work for.”
Camilla scoffs from the couch. “That’s the woman who did my Brazilian, right? She knew for sure.”
“That’s her,” I say from the dining room table where the treadmill used to be. “She totally knew.”
“Too bad we can’t reopen the spa. She seems like a real asset,” Camilla says. She lifts the remote and turns off our new living room television. “How many more times are you going to look over those files, Lydia? Inez left you everything you need to resume operation.”
Flipping through the stack of documents Inez left for me, I slide them back into the folder and exhale a large breath. Aside from the money funneled in and out of Hush for tax purposes, Inez didn’t leave a digital trail behind. Maybe it’s a sign of the times when she and Gino started Hush, but she wrote everything down on yellow notebook paper and kept it close for safekeeping. Her files