Page 33 of Heart of a Devil

He laughs long and hard and waves a finger at me. “You know me too well, my friend. I do love chaos—it’s good for business. On a more personal level, it wassick puppieslike Volkov who made my childhood a living hell, and helping you deal with him would be a pleasure. What did you have in mind?”

I outline the situation to him, and a dark cloud passes over his handsome face when I tell him about young Nicky. He drinksvodka steadily throughout, and I match him, which I will regret tomorrow. He asks a few pertinent questions about my interest and seems satisfied when I tell him Volkov represents a threat against my daughter and her colleagues.

“Ah, the lovely Samantha. I would walk on hot coals and swallow poisonous asps to keep her from harm,” he says.

“You’ve only met her once, Sasha. Give it a rest.”

Again he feigns hurt feelings and replies, “Once was enough. She slapped me in the face for being inappropriate and said she would let me off with a warning that time, but next time, she would tell your large friend Gabriel. Delightful. Anyway. I can help with this, Sebastian. I know people inside his organization. I know where he lives and the tricks he is likely to play. I even know some of the people he is blackmailing. If the legal options fail, and we both know they will, then that is when men like you and I come out of the shadows, no? We shall drink to it.”

He calls the girls back over, and they bring another bottle of vodka. The glass is encrusted with diamonds and seems to be made from crystal, so I’m guessing we’re out of bargain-booze territory. The four of us drink and chat and dance to the live band that takes to the tiny stage later in the night, Carla swaying against my hips and wrapping her arms around my neck. We drink some more, we play cards, and we drink again. I have no clue how many bottles we get through, but I’m so drunk I eat caviar, and I fucking hate caviar—give me a doner kebab from a street corner van any day.

I’m probably only there for about three hours, but it’ll feel like a week to my liver. I don’t give a shit, I decide as we spill out onto the wet London streets right after midnight. This is exactly what I needed. I needed to forget about Lauren fucking Hayes and her magic pussy for a night. I needed to forget about that gorgeous big ass, and those big brown nipples that crinkle up like walnuts whenever I look at them. I needed to forget aboutthe way she looked with my cock in her mouth and tears in her eyes, and the flush of protective warmth I felt when I carried her out of the bed.

Shit.

I haven’t forgotten any of it even after drinking a bathtub full of premium Russian vodka.

Sasha and Elizabeth announce that they’re going to a club for some kind of showbiz after-show party, but I call end of time on this adventure. Carla, though, has other ideas, and she looks up at me with a promising gaze as I flag down a cab. “Give a girl a lift on a rainy night, eh, Seb?” she says, clinging to my arm.

“All right. Where do you want to go?” She eyes my dick and licks her lips. “I want to go wherever you’re going, big fella.”

It’s a mistake. She seems to be looking for something, and I might be drunk enough to give it to her, but I bundle her into the cab with me. As I suspected, she dives at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and smashing her lips against mine. But no amount of vodka could make me want to kiss anyone but Lauren. She has well and truly fucked me.

I push Carla off, and she pouts. And then she turns an unusual shade of green and promptly vomits all over the back of the cab.

The cabbie swears up a storm, and I tell him to calm the fuck down, promising him an extra couple of hundred quid to get his cab cleaned. From the smell of the thing, she’s not the first person to have thrown up in it.

He refuses to take her any farther than my house though, and truth be told, she’s no longer in any state to go anywhere alone. The fresh air seems to knock her for six.

“Come on then, princess,” I tell her, scooping her into my arms and carrying her up the steps to my front door. “You can sleep it off in the spare room.”

She mumbles sleepily, her head lolling against my chest. This was definitely not how I was hoping my night would end.

Chapter

Seventeen

LAUREN

After he leaves, I try to stay busy with a bit more work and washing the dishes. When I’m done, I amuse myself by dancing the Macarena in front of one of the cameras, complete with all the actions. I even call my sister, which is something I rarely do as we aren’t particularly close. Carlos often pitted us against each other when I was growing up, and we never quite recovered from that dynamic.

Jax messages me to say they lost track of Diego Torres after he landed at Heathrow—or Dover or Gatwick. He appears to have arrived in all three on the same day.

He’s a sneaky little bastard. Might not be in London at all, but stay alert Lauren. He’s interested in you and having a different name won’t protect you now.

I probably know the reason he’s interested in me. Carlos was technically part of the Montoya family, but I later learned his own brothers were wary of him, and one of the reasons my dad kept him so close was so he could keep an eye on him. Ha. That didn’t turn out so well for me, but I suppose my father had noway to know that Carlos would look so close to home for his sick kicks.

He had a small cabal of men who were loyal to him and not to the family, which later allowed him to go rogue and try to take control from Alejandro. The result of that was Carlos dead and his men rotting alongside him in an industrial-sized acid bath at a facility at the LA docks.

Rafe Torres was one of those men. It’s feasible to imagine that my uncle told him about the games he played with his niece. Maybe he showed him the photos of me sleeping, maybe they laughed together at the video he faked of me masturbating with a big black dildo, my head superimposed on a porn star’s body. It’s possible Rafe was involved. There were definitely times I sensed I was being watched and followed on the way home from school, my skin prickling and my eyes darting all around me. But when I got back to the house, Carlos would be there, sitting at the kitchen table and smiling at me knowingly, making me wonder if I was going mad.

And if Rafe was in on it, is it impossible to assume that he went one step further and let his only son in on the game? Diego is four years younger than me, but Carlos tortured me for years. What if he wasn’t only in on it, but part of it? I puff out a frustrated breath and head to the shower. I’m going round in circles and coming up with more questions than answers. All I can do is put my faith in my family, remain vigilant, and remind myself that I am nobody’s victim. If Torres wants to come after me, I’ll be ready.

I also, of course, have Seb, Gabriel, and Archangel watching my back—quite literally now that the cameras are in. I shampoo my hair and lean against the tiles as the water sluices over me. My wrists still have faint red marks, and there’s a visible red line of now-dried blood on my thigh from where Seb cut me.Thinking about it has heat building inside me, and my hand drifts between my legs without me telling it to.

No! I tell myself firmly, snatching my fingers away. I can’t afford to be like this right now. I have clients to take care of and Torres to deal with. I have a million and one more important things to think about than this bullshit with Seb. I quickly dry off and dress in fresh clothes before heading back into the living room.

It’s not only the sex that’s distracting me—it’s everything about Sebastian Donovan and the way he makes me feel. The fact that he makes me feel at all, that he has bulldozered his way through all my layers of defense. I’m usually comfortably numb when it comes to men—I enjoy the sex, and the rest doesn’t matter. They can’t touch me any way but physically. At least they never used to be able to, but now I’m sitting here, staring into the distance in my little apartment, wondering how I can make things right with him. Wondering what it would be like if he were still here with me. Wondering why the hell Imisshim so much.

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