Heartless Lover by Faith Summers
2
Eric
Present day
“Boss, she’s awake,” Borya informs me, walking into my office.
The same uneasiness I feel is etched into the hard lines of his face. He’s the head of security my team and my second in command. Although we might not have known each other for as long as the other men in the Brotherhood, he knows how to do his job. So, he’ll be as wary as me about this woman in my home.
We don’t know yet if she’s a threat.
Since I haven’t come across anyone who knew Robert that hasn’t been a threat to eliminate, it’s hard to think she could be anything other than that.
My orders from Aiden Romanov, our Pakhan, and my soon-to-be brother-in-law were to get Summer Reeves and keep her at my apartment until further instruction. That came after he told me she knows Robert. I was sent an address and a picture of her with further orders not to interrogate her. Or kill her.
Aiden has a lead he’s looking into with Dominic D’Agostino and Alejandro Ramírez, head of the Ramírez Cartel in Brazil. Now that I’m back, I’m waiting and wishing like fuck I could be part of whatever it is they’re investigating.
“Thank you. I’ll go see her. Stand by and wait for my orders,” I reply.
He dips his head and leaves.
I have both him and Oleg here in my apartment and the other eight members of my team outside on watch in case trouble comes.
This woman is the most recent lead we’ve managed to secure, so there’s no telling what shit I’ve stirred in taking her and who I’ll smoke out. As long as I pull Robert out of whatever hell hole he crawled into, I don’t care who comes. I want revenge, and I won’t rest until I get my pound of flesh—literally. So, taking Summer Reeves could bring forth Armageddon for all I care, as long as the end result is Robert’s death by my hand.
I make my way up to the guest room I’m keeping her in. I’m not surprised she’s awake. She slept the whole journey here, which was just over an hour. I could have done with her being asleep until I heard from Aiden because I’m dying to interrogate her, but this is fine.
I’ve been back in the world of the living for exactly one year and three days, and I have spent every one of those days looking for Robert.
I’ve changed, and my life has changed in more significant ways too, but my mission to find him and end hasn’t faltered.
I’m the owner and C.E.O. of Markov Tech, but now I’m also a Vor. I’m the Obshchak in the Voirik Brotherhood. That’s something I know my grandfather and father never wanted me to be. I’m sure, though, they would have watched from their graves and seen what happened to me and the near destruction of our family.
It was by nothing short of a miracle I was rescued from Brazil.
My only hope of escape from the hell Robert put me in came in the form of Olivia, my little sister, who had to leave my wheelchair-bound mother behind to search for me. That was how she met Aiden.
She discovered I never died in that crash when she overheard a phone call she shouldn’t have heard between Jude Kuzmin and Igor Evanovich, the bastard who gave all the players in the game of my destruction their powers.
From what I found out so far, I’m not sure who enticed Robert more. Jude with his offer of a million dollars to lure me into a trap, or Igor with his promise to hook Robert up with the connections to make unimaginable wealth. Either way, he took the bait, and he got both.
Olivia realized that the fake as fuck story of my death Jude concocted was an elaborate scheme to get our family’s legacy.
However, no one knew about my grandfather’s designs for the weapon until after they found me in Brazil.
Two months ago, when I realized I’d hit a stumbling block, I went to Aiden for help.
When a man like me who can find all sorts of shit on people gets stumped, it fucking means there are bigger things at work. The trail in my search went cold, and the last record I have of the fucker was from two years ago when he did business with a prick just like him called Luke Thornton.
I can only hope this lead we’ve found with this girl garners better success than my previous searches. All I’ve managed to find so far is nothing.
When I get up the stairs, I hear Summer knocking hard on the locked door and calling out for help. I don’t know her story yet, but I’m not sure who she thinks will help her while she is being held captive here.
Her pleas are silenced and the knocking stops when I turn the key in the lock.
She backs away bewildered, when the door swings open, and I walk in.
She’s fucking terrified of me.
Good.Fear keeps people in line.
She should be afraid of me, and I’m right to be wary of her. However, nothing—not even my better judgment—can stop me from looking over her perfect body.
In her black lace bra and matching panties, the fucking woman looks like she just stepped off the cover of Playboy Magazine.
I’d laid her on the sheetless bed just like that and left her there to sleep.
Sin is the only thing a man can think of when he looks at those curves and her generous tits showing off rosy, pink nipples pressing against the floral lace pattern of her bra.
That picture Aiden sent was nothing in comparison to the real-life Summer Reeves.
She’s even more striking in real life.
Long, luscious, velvet brown hair cascades down her shoulders, adorning her heart-shaped face. Thick black lashes frame champagne-colored eyes that look innocent and doe-like—almost too big for her pretty face. But that’s what makes her look striking. Her eyes were the first thing to captivate me.
They hold the fire of a fighter—a person who wants to survive because they want to live. She’s the opposite of me. The fire in my eyes is fueled with death. Hers is life.
She steels her spine and lifts her head like she just thought of something to help her situation. When she presses those pillowy lips together, it’s supposed to harden her face, but all I can think of is what they might feel like around my cock.
How did she know Robert?
Was she his girl?
I don’t know why, but the thought that she could be irks me. Maybe it’s because she’s my type, and from the look of her, she’s a girl I’d want for myself. She could easily distract me for hours.
“You tore off my dress.” She brings her hands together over her chest as if that will do anything to hide her.
“Sorry, Babydoll.”
“I don’t know what you want, but I can tell you now, you aren’t getting a damn thing from me.” She drops her hands and glares at me.
I give her credit for the balls she just showed in trying to defy me. Her words don’t surprise me, though. Any woman who thinks she can shoot me and believes she can actually hit me deserves credit for trying.
I walk up to her, and although she trembles, her intense glare never leaves mine.
“Watch it, Summer Reeves. You don’t want to make an enemy out of me.”
“You fucking asshole, I don’t care what I make out of you. You won’t get anything from me!” she cries.
“Maybe I need to give you a good spanking to tone you down. That mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble.”
“I will fucking claw your eyes out before you touch me.”
Fuck.She’s serious. I don’t know if she hasn’t quite yet realized how much trouble she’s in, or she does, and she’s trying to hang on to whatever sense of power and control she thinks she might have.
“I would love to see you try to claw my eyes out,” I chuckle, making her angrier.
Her feisty personality comes out in full force when I grab her arm, and she slaps my cheek so hard her nails dig into my skin. I can already feel she’s cut me, but I don’t care about that. All she’s managed to do is fascinate me more than I already was.
I must be a sick fucker, and just as fucked up as the next guy who likes a chase because I release her arm. I do it because I know exactly what she’ll do. So, when she runs, I allow her to, just for that chase.
She’s heading for the open door, probably thinking she’ll get through and escape me.
She won’t.
I just gave her a head start.
I smile and pursue her when she races through the door, catching up to her in seconds.
She screams when I grab her, and her kicking and thrashing sends us right back to the ground—just like how we met.
I lean her onto her side and smack her lush ass hard, making her yelp. I want to grab a handful of the succulent flesh and smack her again until her skin turns red, but I hold off.
“Bad girl, consider this your second strike. Strike one was trying to shoot me,” I taunt, and just like earlier, I pin her hands over her head. I’m not going to knock her out again, though. Back at the house, the worry was her attracting attention with her kicking and screaming. I wasn’t sure who was around or how far her neighbors were.
She can scream all she wants here, and no one will question me. My guards are paid well not to hear anything.
“Get away from me, you asshole. What part of my threat didn’t you understand?”
I have to laugh. “Lady, the only thing you managed to do is harden my cock. Unless you want me to fuck you, I’d be quiet if I were you.”
That shuts her down. Those beautiful eyes go wide and glare at me with fright because she must see that I’m serious as fuck. However, the slight color in her cheeks, is a tell that she might be as attracted to me as I am to her.
My gaze drops to the huge swells of her breasts and the rapid rise and fall of her chest.
“Let me go, you asshole,” she mutters in a softer tone that holds no less venom than before.
“No.” I’m supposed to hold off interrogating her, but there’s no fucking way I can hold off on asking the biggest question on my mind for any longer than I have. “You have information I need on Robert Carson. Where is he?”
Her eyes narrow now, and her full lips part. “I don’t know who that is. I don’t know anybody by that name.”
The playfulness I felt previously drains from me because I don’t know if she’s lying. If she is, this would be the part where I’d do something drastic.
“You don’t know Robert Carson?”
“I don’t. Now let me go. Clearly, you have the wrong person.”
Aiden wouldn’t get something like that wrong, but maybe that was why he told me not to interrogate her yet.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket with a message I know will be from him.
Robert used several aliases, so she could know him as any one of them. I have several pictures of him I could show her to refresh her memory, but I’m going to get the rest of the story first before I do anything else. I don’t know how ugly this could get or who she is to Robert yet.
“Let me go,” she says again cutting into my thoughts.
I have an idea for her. Something that will deter her from giving more trouble than the handful she is. Besides, I don’t want anyone else seeing her in her underwear except me.
She gasps as I scoop her up and haul her over my shoulder caveman-style. As she thrashes against me, calling me a bastard and every name under the sun she can think of, all I’m aware of is her fucking perfect ass jiggling next to my face.
That and the honey scent of her is screwing with me.
I take her right back to the room, but instead of setting her on the bed like I did before, I march over to the cupboard and pull out a pair of restraints I haven’t used in a while.
When she hears the clinking chains, she tries to look around.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demands, but I ignore her.
I head over to the wall with her, set her down, and clasp the restraint over her right wrist before she can break free. So she understands where we stand, and she’s not to fight me, I pull out my gun and hold it out for her to see.
The sight cuts off whatever she was going to say to me, and terror replaces the bravado in her eyes.
Good. It looks like I have her right where I need her.
She doesn’t protest when I lift her arm, slide the chain through the metal ring on the wall, and then clasp the other end of the chain to her left wrist.
These restraints aren’t the ones with the cuffs around the wrists to prevent bruising. They’re chains are designed to hurt if you move too much.
Like this, she is vulnerable and completely submissive. She knows I could do whatever the fuck I wanted to do to her, and there’s not a damn thing she’d be able to do to stop me.
With a ruthless smile on my face, I set my hands on either side of her and lean closer. Too close for her comfort, but close enough to scare her even more. A shudder runs through her, and when I press my finger to the edge of her neck, her pulse gallops. I can almost see the blood racing through her veins, fueled by fright.
Her creamy, porcelain skin hides nothing, not what she wants to hide anyway. It can’t hide that she’s scared and—aroused.
The possibility widens my smile, and I have to remind myself of what she is.
“So pretty. I’d hate to have to hurt you, Babydoll.”
“Men like you always hurt. You’re heartless and cold.”
She’s not wrong, but it’s the way she looks as she speaks that gets me. It’s clear she’s speaking from experience and there’s a lost look in her eyes that tells so much more.
I move even closer, so close my nose brushes against hers.
“You will stay here, Babydoll, and shut the fuck up until I get back. Then we’ll talk.”
The fire and will to fight inside her waivers.
I back away and walk out, locking the door behind me.
Eagerly, I pull out my phone and see the message from Aiden.
It says:
Dominic got footage of Robert. Meet us at D’Agostinos Inc.
My God.
Dominic actually found the footage.
Dominic is like me. We both went to M.I.T. and have off-the-charts intelligence.
He’s been in Brazil for the last few days helping Alejandro track someone.
And he found footage of Robert?
I knew my membership in the Syndicate, and asking for Aiden’s help, meant getting assistance from the members and their allies. I just never expected my quest to become Syndicate business. But it looks like it has.
That means I was right; Robert is involved in something big.
Rage pulses through me, and I leave, giving my men the order to watch Summer.
I jump on my motorcycle and ride hard like the mad man I am.
There’s a fine line between sanity and madness.
I crossed that line so long ago I can’t remember when it happened.
I’ve heard it said before that damaged people are the strongest because they know how to survive. However, no one ever truly thinks about what a person went through as they broke.
Everyone breaks differently, and not everyone can be fixed.
I can’t.
I know I can’t. I knew it as the fibers of humanity unraveled from my being, and I became the heartless monster I am today.
