Heartless Lover by Faith Summers

Prologue

Summer

One week ago

My heart tumbles into a dark abyss as I stare at the lifeless body of my sister.

That’s really her lying dead on the morgue slab before me.

It’s true. Scarlett is dead.

My sister… my twin sister.

Dead.

Dead because she was wearing my face.

Jake, that fucking bastard, killed her because he thought she was me.

This is all my fault. And I can’t fix it.

Tears pour from my eyes, coming from deep within my weeping soul as the truth sinks in.

I rivet my gaze to her face, unable to look away. Every aspect of her face looks exactly like mine.

Except for the bullet wound in the center of her forehead.

That bullet was meant for me.

As the pain of losing her burrows into my heart, I cover my mouth to keep the anguish from pouring out.

I’m the one who insisted on seeing her like this because I needed to see the ugly truth. With the trouble I’m in, this might be the last time I see her, so I can’t fall apart.

I can’t believe this nightmare is real. Scarlett was never supposed to be anywhere near Monaco.

I had no idea she was here until earlier today when Marquees told me the horrific news.

Marquees is a cop. The kind who takes care of his informants. That’s how we began six years ago.

He’s the only person here I trust with the dark secrets of my past and the knowledge that I have a twin. He’s the only person I trusted enough to run to after I witnessed and heard something I shouldn’t have last week.

I had the worst instance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time when I saw Jake Wainwright, co-owner of Club Montage, kill a man in cold blood in his office. As my bad luck would have it, he saw me, too.

I should be the one dead now, but I made a lucky escape and went straight to Marquees, who’s been hiding me since.

He knew straightaway that the woman who was brought into the morgue this morning after being found dead in her apartment on Monaco Cliff wasn’t me. He knew it was Scarlett and what must have happened to her.

He also knew the fucking suicide note next to her body couldn’t have been written by me either.

It was Jake. He wrote the note. That bastard made it look like I killed myself.

Since a bullet to the head was the way Mom died, and the note she left behind blamed me, hearing that felt like a double-edged blade in my heart.

It was only when Marquees managed to get my bag from the club that I was able to look at my phone and listen to the messages Scarlett sent me two days ago. She wouldn’t have known not to come because I was being hunted. And there was no way I could have warned her.

We were supposed to see each other in a few months for our birthday, and it was my turn to see her. Not the other way around.

She’d flown over from L.A. for a surprise visit to celebrate getting the lead part in the play. It was her biggest life accomplishment, and she wanted to celebrate with her sister—me.

Me, the black sheep of the family.

Scarlett was the goody-two-shoes everyone loved, while I was the bolder, daring twin who always got herself in trouble. I was destined to be the fuck up.

Not her.

Scarlett was chosen to be the new leading actress in Lover’s Purgatory, the latest theater production by award-winning director Nick Fairchild.

In six week’s time, when the play opens, all of L.A.’s theater-goers will be talking about it. I know they would have adored Scarlett as much as the world revered our grandmother and our mother. Hollywood snapped up both, and my sister was on her way to join their legacies.

At one point in my life, that dream was what I wanted more than anything.

I still want it. Scarlett knew that too. That’s why she was always making me promise to seize the opportunity if it came to me. I wanted to tell her I was working on getting my life back on track and planning to go to college next year.

Most of our twenty-four years on this earth were horrible, but I paid the price in more ways than one.

Since college Scarlett has been in ten theater productions, but this one was supposed to be the epitome of her career. I paid with my soul so she could live. Now she’ll never know how proud I am of her.

That’s why she came to see me.

Now she’s dead. All that purity, talent, and beauty is gone.

If I wasn’t here, this would never have happened to her.

I reach out and press my fingertips to her ice-cold arm. Her usually vibrant skin is ashen and ghostly.

I trail down to the tiny little tattoo scribbled on her left wrist. It says, Carpe Diem. I have the same tattoo on my right wrist. The positioning is possibly one of the only things that could differentiate us, and it’s not something I specifically wanted.

I got it for her when we were eighteen. She used to seek those Carpe Diem moments as she would call them. Getting the tattoo was one of them.

Anyone would think I’d be the girl to believe in those types of sayings.

I’m not.

Thrill-seeking sayings like that don’t fly with people like me. They’re for those who need to remember to live. I’ve always had to fight to survive, so I know more than most the true value of life. That’s why I’m so aggrieved there was nothing I could do to protect her.

The door behind me opens, and a second later, Marquees is at my side.

As grief sags my shoulders, he gives me a reassuring squeeze.

“I’m sorry, Summer, but we need to leave,” he says, speaking in a low voice that makes his deep French accent sound thicker. “It was a big risk coming here, and it’s not wise for you to stay out in the open like this where someone could see you.”

He snuck me in through the back under the guise of a black hooded sweatshirt and my long brown hair tucked away. He’s right, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to leave Scarlett here.

“I can’t leave her, Marquees,” I choke out.

“You have to. I know it’s hard seeing her like this, but you have to get out of Monte Carlo.”

When I first came here, I wanted to escape the darkness of my past. I never knew that darkness would follow me. I just wanted to go somewhere where no one knew me. That was a bad idea. It led me here.

“What’s going to happen now?” I ask.

“The captain is satisfied it was a suicide, so the case will be treated as such. There’s nothing to say otherwise. The surveillance in your apartment either doesn’t work or didn’t pick up what happened. That means I can’t do anything that won’t compromise your safety.” He gives me a worried stare. “Summer, most of the cops here are on Micah Santa Maria’s payroll. You know what that means. You also know my hands are tied, and there’s very little I can do.”

I do know. Micah Santa Maria is the prick Jake works for. He’s part of the Italian Mafia. I’ve seen people come to the club to meet with him, and days later, they’re reported missing, or they turn up dead. If you work for him, he owns you.

It was bad enough Jake saw me when he killed that man, but Micah was there as well. I as good as signed my own death certificate when his gaze landed on me.

“Summer, if I even breathe a word of the truth, you’re dead.” He keeps his gaze trained on me. “Everyone thinks she’s you. I hate to say this, but you’re safe for as long as Jake thinks he killed you.”

I know that too, and it makes me feel even more guilty than I already do.

I place my hand to my heart as my pulse leaps. “What about her? What will happen to her?”

“Your father will be notified of her death, and they’ll make arrangements to release her body to him. Of course, they’ll tell him you died.”

“Oh, God.” My whole being trembles.

Dad…

This will break him because he’ll be the first to figure out that Scarlett is the one who died, not me. The moment he sees her tattoo, he’ll know. He might not even need to see it to know. He was the only person who was never fooled when we used to swap places in our younger years.

When he figures it out, I don’t know what will happen. The moment he does, he won’t believe the suicide story either. Not because he doesn’t think I have reasons to do it, but because that will make everything else suspicious as fuck.

With the bad relationship I have with my father, the last thing I want to do is add more to his list of reasons to hate me. He blamed me for Mom’s death.

Back then, he was wrong. This time will be different.

“You need to leave tonight, Mon Cherie,” he points out. “You have to leave tonight. These are mafia men who are way above me. I have no doubt they will figure out what really happened at some point. When they do, you don’t want to be around.”

I believe him. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I can have everything ready for you to head back to the States. You need to get as far away from here as possible.”

“When I get there, I have to hide. It’s going to be risky for me there too.” This isn’t the case of me and Scarlett swapping places. Besides, I would never dream of doing something like that. “Marquees, I can’t just go back and pretend to be her. Doing so could put people in danger if Jake and Micah come after me.”

He nods. “I know.”

“So, if I’m hiding, what happens when people realize Scarlett is missing?”

I know she has five weeks off before she has to go back to work. Normally we speak a few times a week, but she’s been working so hard the most we could manage for the last few months is a message here and there. It’s been like that for the last five months because she wanted the lead role.

Nick was adamant in not giving a definite to any of the three women he’d placed on trial until the close of rehearsals. There’s a week’s refresher before the play begins. When Scarlett doesn’t turn up, that’s when people will start wondering where she is.

“We can’t worry about that,” Marquees replies with an exasperated sigh. “The worst thing that could happen now is Jake or Micah figuring out that you’re still alive and still here.”

“I’m scared,” I mutter.

Marquees sets his hands on my shoulders, and I gaze into his kind gray eyes, searching the hard lines of his face.

“I know. But we need to act fast. This is hard for me as a cop. I have to wait it out until I can do something. But you can do something now by getting yourself to safety. Don’t let your sister die in vain, Summer.”

His words bore into me.

I look back to her, stare for a few moments to commit this last image of her to my mind, then return my gaze to Marquees.

I nod and accept this grief and doom, which will follow me for the rest of my life.

Nowhere is safe. It never has been for me, and never will be.