Protected By The Enemy (Hacienda Heights Book 2) Read online

  “But you can’t be sure—”

  “If the others were in on it, wouldn’t they be here?” I could have been spouting a crock of shit, but it didn’t matter at this juncture. Mina and I had to get this event shut down and the pair arrested. We’d only get ourselves killed by charging up there blindly.

  Mina drew herself closer to me, still vibrating with rage. “I’m going to kick her ass,” she vowed.

  Sliding a hand down to her waist, I pulled her against me, grinding into her. My hardening cock against her hip successfully drew her attention away from the balcony and on to me.

  “What are you doing?”

  I skimmed my lips over her throat, kissed up her neck to tug at her earlobe with my teeth. She shivered. “Distracting you. Is it working?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Good. Let’s work our way over to the back rooms.”

  We danced our way across the strobing dance floor. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I still found Mina’s proximity arousing. She smirked down at the bulge that pressed urgently against the front of my pants when we reached the other side of the floor.

  “Someone’s eager.”

  “Once we finish trashing this party, I’ll show you just how much.”

  I regretted the promise as soon as it came out of my mouth. I couldn’t give Mina anything. Not even a goodbye fuck to remember me by.

  Mina had her phone in hand the instant we were out of sight of the balcony. Where she’d been stashing it was anyone’s guess. I hadn’t spotted a clutch on her person or a pocket in the body-con dress.

  I followed suit, drawing my phone from the depths my pocket. “You record, I’ll take photos,” I instructed. Mina nodded and followed me through the back rooms.

  Within the first five minutes, I’d managed to snap a photo of a transaction between a scantily clad prostitute and a vaguely familiar C-list celebrity. Several lines of cocaine were being snorted in the bathroom. I was offered Molly by another of Miss Ginger’s girls.

  “Do you think we have what we need?” Mina asked in an undertone after fifteen minutes had passed.

  I nodded once. I’d already sent the attachments I’d gathered off to my contact, who’d be phoning the police any second. Mina’s files would take longer to upload, and could be shown to the police directly when we left.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Go? But we haven’t even made introductions yet.” A female voice behind me fairly dripped with disappointment. Luciana had slinked up behind us, her mouth turned down into a full pout. “Glad you could make it to my party. I’m Ginger.”

  Behind her, the hulking shape of my ex-friend and fellow solider, Scott Flemming, blocked our exit. With a flick of his wrist, he closed the door that led to the hall, trapping us in the glowing green room. Three thuggish men moved to stand sentry beneath the sullen red glow of the exit sign, hemming us in.

  Luciana nodded to one of the guards, who swiped both our phones in a move worthy of a martial artist, and handed them off to her lackey.

  Scott dutifully dropped them to the floor. One booted foot came down on them, grinding until they came apart in pieces.

  Luciana grinned and clapped her hands like a child. “Excellent. Now that those pesky things are out of the way, why don’t we chat?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Several things happened at once. The men guarding the door closed in, trapping Logan in a tiny square of space. Scott stepped forward, slugging Logan across the face so hard his head snapped to the side.

  Luciana grabbed me by the hair, whipping the wig off my head with such strength that she yanked a lock of my natural hair out of my scalp. Her knobby fist smacked right into the side of my face.

  Tears of pain sprang into my eyes. Even the smarting of my scalp and fury with Luciana couldn’t command my attention for long with the bodies next to me grappling. The thought of Logan being hurt terrified me more than the slide down the ravine or my encounter with Antony Dennison in Morocco.

  “Logan!”

  My cry was lost in the scuffle. I wanted to throw myself into the fray and pry the flailing bodies apart.

  Scott staggered away from the fight, clutching his nose with one hand.

  The imprint of Scott’s fist was a vivid red on the pale canvas of Logan’s jaw. It would settle into a dull blue-black within the next twenty-four hours.

  “Fucking bastard!” Scott snarled. “You’ll pay for that.”

  Scott gestured the three bouncers forward. They oriented themselves in a triangle around him, and he advanced on Logan.

  The first blows of Scott and the men’s fists glanced off of Logan as he batted the attacks away. And it seemed, for a time, that he’d hold them off. But then the biggest of the bunch managed to score a hit into Logan’s solar plexus. His shocked wheeze had my heart lurching into my throat. Logan was too slow to turn and catch the next punch, which hit him squarely in the temple.

  He went down, knees cracking on the tile floor with a sound like splitting ice. The next blow drew a shriek from me, as the bouncer took a fist full of Logan’s hair and slammed his face hard into his knee. Blood fountained from Logan’s nose, splattering on my high heel.

  It was impossible to say how long the beating went on, but by the time they were ordered to stop, Logan’s face was streaked with blood. One eye was nearly swollen shut, and there was a gash in his lip.

  Scott wiped his nose free of gore and knelt next to Logan with a chuckle. “Not so tough or pretty are you now, Farraday?”

  “It still took three of your yes-men to take me down. Didn’t feel like facing me again yourself, did you, you little limp-dicked chickenshit? Had enough last time?”

  Scott rubbed reflexively at the scar beneath his blind eye and scowled. In a move too fast to track, he hit Logan again.

  A whimper escaped me.

  Scott seized Logan’s hair and gave him a sharp smile that would have frightened most sharks. “We used to be buddies, Farraday. And for that I’ll let you keep living as a vegetable. It’ll be a good life. They’ll feed you, change your shitty diapers, and you might even dream about your little whore here. And who knows? I might even fuck your sister before I’m through. Katherine always liked me.”

  “If you fucking touch her—”

  Luciana huffed. “This isn’t what we’re here for, Scott. We need to get to business.”

  Scott’s mismatched eyes swiveled to face me. All my self-defense training had fled the moment blood splashed into my shoe. Useless. I was fucking useless.

  Scott straightened to his full height, dwarfing my five-foot-nine frame by a generous margin. “I’ll let you live, Logan. But your girlfriend, on the other hand, is a nuisance that will have to be dealt with so that Luciana is happy.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “It needs to look like an accident after she signs the papers.”

  “What papers?” My head spun. My blackmailer hadn’t mentioned any papers.

  “The transfer on death papers,” Luciana said with a sigh, as if I was being purposefully obtuse. “The papers that will put me in charge of the Hustler accounts after you bite it.” When I didn’t respond, she rolled her eyes and snarled, “I was there in the very beginning, when you had no one. I’ve earned this. I deserved half back then. Well, now I’m taking it all.”

  Ah, so that had been the game all along. Increase my net worth by conning my ex out of a ridiculous amount of money. Motivate me to action by threatening the one thing she knew I would protect above all else—my girls. Then off me the moment the accounts were worth millions. If I’d successfully come back from Morocco with the six million from Logan, I probably would have been found in the bathtub at headquarters, electrocuted or with slit wrists.

  It all made a sick amount of sense now. Luciana’s insistence on moving back to headquarters. Her vested interest in raising the six million. The business practices she’d lifted almost word for word from my original game plan.

  Luciana produced a wad of paperwork, smoothi
ng them against the wall, as if she were trying to straighten a dollar bill.

  “You’re not going to get away with this,” I hissed. “You’re going to go to jail for a long time.” It was an empty threat. I’d yet to send off the evidence I’d collected.

  Scott shouldered Luciana out of the way, pressing a pen into my hand. The heavy weight of his gun pressed against my temple. My skin beneath the cold metal prickled in the oddest way and the hairs on the back of my neck stood nearly to the point of pain. A telltale click made my heart pause for a few seconds.

  “You’ll sign it, or I’ll paint the wall with your brains.”

  Logan struggled against the arms of his captors, eyes feral and a snarl curling his lips. It was no use. He might as well have been struggling against a bear. There were three burly men pinning him to the floor, and only one badly abused body to fight them.

  With little other options, I twisted the pen cap until the ballpoint appeared and began to sign and initial where directed. It took agonizing minutes as the barrel of the gun dug into my flesh.

  Luciana purred in satisfaction when I was through, rolling the papers into a tube before stuffing them into her cleavage.

  “There. Now what to do with you, boss?” Luciana circled me once and pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Scott, would you escort Mina across town to the sixth street viaduct? I think that’s a suitable place to stage her suicide.”

  Logan surged forward, nearly bucking his captors. Fear and helplessness stole through me and I almost crumpled to the floor. There was nothing I could do. I wasn’t armed, I had no phone, no way to contact the outside world. They’d knock me out and drag me from the club, escorting me to a car like any other passed out party girl in attendance. And then they’d throw me into the river to drown.

  There was no way out. No way to win. Luciana had outmaneuvered me.

  Well, fuck that. If I was going to die, I wasn’t going to make it easy on them.

  I eyed the gun Scott held. If I rushed him, would instinct take over? Would he shoot first and ask questions later? Or could I wrench it out of his hand?

  I took a shaky step forward, gearing myself for the charge.

  And then the doors burst open and a group of dark-clad men fanned out around us, guns pointed squarely at Scott.

  “This is the Los Angeles Police Department!” the leader snarled, his mustache bristling with barely contained aggression. “Drop the gun and put your hands where I can see them.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Logan

  For the second time in as many weeks, Mina was draped in a thick blanket as the police took her statement. The arrests had taken place sometime around one in the morning, and the police had managed to detain most of the party attendees.

  It was nearing eight in the morning as an officer asked her the same set of questions again. “And you say Luciana Allende wanted to steal your money? Were you two close?”

  “We lived together,” Mina said dully. It was the closest thing to the truth she could offer them. She wouldn’t out the rest of her girls and risk getting them arrested for prostitution charges. Not that those charges would stick, but the media frenzy around the mere idea would tank her business far more effectively than Luciana’s harebrained scheme to pry six million from the pair of us.

  I was going to have to drag Mina to counselling. The trauma was probably going to give her a complex.

  When the officer moved away, she visibly relaxed.

  “They’re not getting away with this,” I assured her, trying for an authoritative tone, not sure I managed it. My voice was thick and barely recognizable, my nose and jaw throbbing. “I’ve got a lawyer on speed dial. We’ll throw the book at them.”

  “I know,” Mina said with a sigh. “The police were able to catch most of Scott’s confession and are charging him with conspiracy to commit murder. Luciana is being charged with prostitution and conspiracy to commit murder. I saw them take her away five minutes ago.”

  But the two being brought down didn’t seem to give her much comfort. She still looked small and drawn, hunched as she was beneath the blanket.

  “Let’s go,” she said quietly.

  “Sure. I can take you home.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “To your father’s funeral, Logan. It’s supposed to start soon, and if we hurry we can make it.”

  I wanted to argue that she needed to go to bed. I ached all over, and she couldn’t be faring much better. A deep bruise was blooming on the side of her face. But the earnestness in her eyes gripped me. There was no way I could argue with her while she was in this state. Not when I knew what was coming for us both.

  “Alright,” I relented. “Let’s go.”

  The Queen of Heaven Cemetery was beautiful, even obscured as it was by an early morning mist. My father’s stone of rose quartz stood as tall as he had been, a double slab that had been erected when my mother died. I tried not to think about that day as I took a seat at the front, pulling Mina into the chair next to me. The gatherings’ whispers picked up steam, gossiping about what could have happened to my face and hers. I knew they’d think we’d beat each other to a pulp, and since I was sporting the lion’s share of bruises, wonder if she’d gotten the best of me. If only.

  The pastor gave the eulogy, a long list that included many of my father’s accomplishments, leaving out the mention of brides he’d collected like another would trophy mounts. Shadowed by a large oak, we stayed until my father’s casket was lowered into the ground. Grief was a restrictive band around my chest, making it hard to breathe as he was planted in the earth. Only the soft pressure of Mina’s hand in mine kept me from completely losing my shit when the backhoe scraped the dirt into the hole, burying him forever.

  I needed to be anywhere but here. I let my hand fall to her waist and we walked quietly back to the car.

  We were silent most of the way to her home. Mina’s rental car had a good sound system, which she put to use, blasting a local radio station to cover the silence between us. She did seem to brighten when we finally reached the penthouse.

  I set about making her something to eat and drink. Neither of us had eaten anything since the night before, and I doubted the cops had the forethought to offer her anything either. She took the piece of toast I offered her gratefully.

  “You know what this means, right?” she said, nibbling on her toast as she watched me make her a hot drink. The clumps in the premade hot chocolate mix refused to dissolve completely.

  “What?”

  “My blackmailers are gone. That means I can return the money to you. I won’t need it anymore. And when we find out what Owen Mason has on your father, we can finally be together.”

  My heart constricted painfully. How the hell could I tell her the truth now? She’d been beaten and held at gunpoint. I couldn’t abandon her at a time like this, could I?

  “Don’t worry about that right now.”

  I handed her the mug and she sipped gratefully. “No, seriously. No more skulking around. No more disguises. You and I could go out in public again. I’ve had enough of traveling for the time being, but we could have a little staycation. Watch some TV, stay in bed all day, never put clothes on.”

  My hands balled into fists around the counter. I wanted it. I wanted her so badly it hurt. But I couldn’t let her continue planning for a future that could never be.

  “Mina, just listen to me. There’s something we have to talk about—”

  Mina shushed me. Feverish hope danced in her eyes and she stood, brushing the crumbs from her black dress in a way that shouldn’t have been compelling but was. It drew my attention to the milky white skin of her cleavage, the lush curve of her hip and the long expanse of leg bared by the dress.

  “We could start now,” she offered, seizing me by the tie.

  Before I could offer any protest, she’d plastered herself to my front and thrust her fingers into my hair, bringing her mouth up to meet mine in a tender kiss. I surrendered with
a groan.

  I had to be unusually careful with her. She was a mottled quilt of bruises, purple and green and yellow dotting her skin at odd intervals. She’d been battered so much in these last few weeks. Anger coursed through me in a hot rush. Scott and his little whore girlfriend had been responsible for every single injury Mina had sustained. They’d be going away for a long time, if I had anything to say about it. Mina would never fear for her safety again while I lived. Even if I had to keep tabs on her from afar, I’d do it. I owed her that peace of mind.

  When we reached her bed, she’d already wriggled out of the body-con dress. She flung herself on top of the bedspread, pulling me down on the mattress, where I knelt over her. She was so beautiful, her round breasts tipped in pink, the v at the juncture of her thighs graced with a dusky patch of hair. Despite the ache of my body, I wanted her. Wanted this. I wanted to fix this moment in time and never have it end.

  Mina fumbled with my zipper, forgoing foreplay. I wondered if she sensed the finality too. Or was she too stubbornly focused on her goal that she couldn’t see the sword of Damocles poised above our heads?

  A breath hissed from between my teeth when she wrapped her delicate fingers around my cock and gave me a gentle squeeze.

  “Please make love to me, Logan,” she whispered. “I need you.” Tears glistened in her eyes.

  Oh, God, I was such a bastard. I had no right to touch her. But either way, I would hurt her. If there was a way I could cease her pain after this moment was through, I’d take it. I’d do anything to stay by her side. Anything to shield her from the pain that was coming.

  She pushed my pants off my hips, baring me to her. Then she knelt. Leaned forward and licked a long, wet line from the base of my cock to the head.

  I was powerless to stop her then.

  She wrapped her lips around me, swirling her tongue around the tip like I was a particularly juicy lollipop. I thrust shallowly into her mouth, needing more. She released my cock and pressed her hand to my hip, pushing me slightly away. The message was clear. Don’t move.