Hearts Of Darkness (The Santiago Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  “No!”

  I try to scramble out of reach but he catches my wrist and pulls me back to him. I feel a flash of anger then. Does he really think I’ll submit to him that easily? My chest starts to rise and fall with indignation.

  “There it is,” he says, gazing down at me with a curl of his lips. “There’s that fire I covet so much.”

  “Screw you!”

  I slap him hard across the face, the ugly sound ricocheting off the white walls of his cavernous bedroom. With a growl he yanks me closer and I cry out as his fingertips brand my slender wrist with his fury. There is no scenario here that will end favorably for me. The next few moments will define my life forever.

  “At least tell me where I am first!”

  “I said, LATER!” he roars, grasping my jaw with his other hand and wrenching it upwards. I’m terrified by the expression that greets me, daunted by the sheer physicality of him. I have to calm this man somehow. I have to get out of this alive…

  Trembling, I place my free hand on his chest. His skin is like burning embers beneath my fingertips. “Not like this,” I plead softly.

  He doesn’t respond. Did he even hear? I try to take my hand away but he moves swiftly, imprisoning it there with his own. I try again but his grip is too strong so I just kneel there facing him, his rich scent intermingling with my fear, trying to appeal to whatever humanity still lingers in him. Hoping it might lessen the amount of pain he wants to inflict on me.

  “Stop fighting this, mi alma,” he says suddenly, his unfamiliar endearment rolling smoothly off his tongue. “You want this as much as me. Let me show you what true pleasure is.”

  My core starts to pulse at his words – hard and insistent – awakening a base need deep inside of me. My nipples stiffen to aching peaks and my breath turns to soft, shallow gasps. I’m torn between lust and hate again. How can I want him after the terrible things he’s done to me? After the terrible things he could still do?

  He goes to kiss me then, catching me off-guard, inclining his head and pressing firm, warm lips to my own. They part instinctively, silencing my thoughts straightaway. Encouraged, he releases my wrist and cups the back of my head to deepen our connection, deftly stroking his tongue in and out of my mouth and giving me no option but to accept all of him.

  I return his skill with a heat and intensity of my own. My arms curl around his neck and he roughly cups my bare breast before trapping my nipple between his finger and thumb and twisting. I gasp as the sensation shoots straight to my core and intensifies the ache between my legs. How can this man evoke such a physical reaction in me? I want to grab his hand and force it downwards to the place I need him the most.

  “Where am I?” I repeat breathlessly, tearing my mouth away from his.

  “Paradise,” he murmurs, unbuckling his belt and ripping open his flies as he guides me down onto the bed, never breaking contact with my body for a second. Now he’s trailing silken kisses all the way across my jawline and cheek.

  I force my eyelids open as he looms large over me, gasping as he cups my chin in his hand and tips my head back to look at him again. Up close, I can see flecks of gold around the iris of his eyes but there’s no warmth there, only a need to claim what he thinks is his. Something breaks inside of me then. I’ll do anything to save my father but if this man takes my body like this a part of me will die forever.

  I wrench my head away from him. “Don’t.”

  My tears start to fall, silently at first, but before long they’re tearing the breath from my lungs, blinding me from the fury that has descended over my captor’s face. I sense it though. The atmosphere in the room has switched from heavy and charged to dark and menacing, breached only by the broken sounds of my misery.

  His body weight feels unbearable to me now, his hips are still pinning me to the mattress. I want to push him away and scrub my face clean of his kisses. I feel dirty and violated. I hate myself for allowing him inside my mouth again, for letting him steal inside my defenses.

  He stares at me for the longest time before releasing me and rising from the bed. I hear the swish of the mosquito net as it’s angrily pushed to one side followed by the sounds of his zipper and belt buckle. I try to compose myself, swiping the heel of my hand across my face over and over again.

  Is this a reprieve?

  Is there still a trace of compassion left inside this man?

  “Look at me,” he orders suddenly. “Turn that pretty little face to the side, Eve Miller, and give me the benefit of your full attention.”

  The tone of his voice is a warning. The heavy burden of consequence is right there waiting for me. What have I done? What horrors have I set in motion by refusing him my body tonight?

  I do what he asks but I keep my eyes firmly fixed on the wall beyond him. I can’t bear to face what’s coming.

  “You’re tired. You should rest.”

  There’s a pause and I wait for the killer blow.

  “You will never reject me again, Eve. Do you understand? You will submit to me. You will uphold your side of the bargain. One call, that’s all it takes, my angel. One call. One bullet that has your father’s name written all over it.”

  Silence follows as I struggle to comprehend the cruelty of his words.

  He turns to leave.

  “Where am I?” I plead weakly, my voice shadowing the sound of his footsteps as he strides towards the door. If I repeat the same words over and over perhaps one day he’ll answer me with the truth.

  “Home,” he says harshly, slamming the door behind him.

  6

  Dante

  Joseph, my second-in-command, raises a questioning eyebrow at me as I storm into the office and lay waste to the pile of papers on my desk, sweeping them onto the floor in a fury. My iPad and laptop swiftly follow. From his vantage point on my black leather couch he regards me with something dangerously close to amusement.

  “She’s awake then?”

  I clench my fists and lean across my now empty desk, grinding my knuckles into the polished glass. Right now I’d kill any other man who spoke to me with such confidence, but Joseph Grayson isn’t like any other man. We share a history together – a long, violent and bloody one. In our business that creates an unspoken bond, which is exactly why I’m allowing him to open his fucking mouth and still stay breathing.

  With my silence showing no signs of quitting, he wanders over to the bar in the corner and pours out two neat shots of tequila. He returns and places one on the table in front of me. “Drink this. You’re going to need it. Emilio wants a debrief.”

  “Emilio can go fuck himself!” I pick up the shot glass and drain it in one, slamming it back down on my desk with a crash.

  My elder’s brother relentless scrutiny into every facet of our organization is a constant source of irritation to me. It’s unnecessary and invasive. He handles the deals and I ensure that they’re adhered to. Why complicate things further?

  Our partnership offers me the opportunity to satisfy certain proclivities of mine. I don’t give a damn about narcotics but I do have a particular skill set. It’s this culture of fear, the one that I’ve built around the Santiago name, which has allowed us to rule this game unchallenged for fifteen years. Still, it’s safe to say there’s little love lost between us. We tolerate each other because it’s mutually beneficial but beyond that the family ties start to unravel.

  “He wants to know what went down in Miami.”

  There’s a questioning look on the American’s face and the unspoken truth weighs heavily between us. There’s no transparency with Joseph. He knows something’s up, and I know his suspicions are leading him right to the source of my anger tonight. To the seemingly incorruptible angel lying naked in my bed upstairs.

  “How did Garcia find me?” I demand, switching tact. “How the hell did he know I was back in the States?”

  “One of Nicolas’ men,” he says, tossing me a couple of photographs. “Turns out he was a double-crossing son of a bitch.
He’s been passing Garcia intel. You can see from those that he’s already been dealt with.”

  I glance down at the blood-soaked images. My cousin has a propensity for knife-work that might even rival mine. Still, I owe him one for getting me out of that hospital alive. I went in expecting to leave a bullet lighter. Instead, I’ve come away with more baggage than I can handle.

  “Did he learn anything new?” I say, tossing the photos back to him.

  “Not a lot.” He bends down to pick up the remains of my iPad and laptop from the floor. “Garcia’s been lining the pockets of several prominent DEA agents this past year. It explains why his merchandise has been flowing so freely and ours hasn’t.”

  “And the leak from the other night?”

  Joseph shakes his head. “I’m still looking into it.”

  “What about Myers?” I say, referring to Eve’s father. “Is he compromised?”

  “Not as far as we know.”

  So he’s not a dirty cop, that’s something I guess. It’s true what they say – a code of honor does exist amongst thieves. The lowest of the low are always cops on the take. I decide to keep quiet about their connection for now. Eve’s an innocent in all of this, in more ways than one.

  “Who is she anyway?”

  “An irritation,” I growl, holding out my shot glass for a refill.

  Rejection is a whole new experience for me. I’ve never had to work for a pretty face before. Usually they’re primed and ready just looking at this body, and that’s before they figure out who I am. First, I entice them in with my darkness and soon they’re begging me for my pain. Something tells me the rewards will be worth it with her, though.

  I could have stayed kissing her all night. It took everything I had to stop when she begged me too. My frustration came damn near close to overwhelming me. I was right, she has a body of a goddess underneath her clothes – all smooth and ripe and ready for corruption. I wanted nothing more than to sink my dick into her soft folds and lose myself completely.

  “I’ll put together a dossier on her straightaway. Name?”

  I pause. “Eve.”

  “Surname?”

  Prick-tease… cunt… angel…

  “Miller, I believe.”

  As if I didn’t know. As if her fucking name hasn’t been circling around my head for days and days on end. Something odd strikes me then. Why has Eve elected to take a surname that’s different to her father’s? Could my angel be lying to me? My hand convulses around my shot glass. Jesus, I need to calm down.

  “I take it she’s the same woman from the liquor store last week?”

  My head snaps up. “How the fuck do you know about that?”

  “Your brothers’ men aren’t the most discreet,” he says mildly, tipping more tequila into my glass. “They couldn’t shut up about her.”

  “They better do or else.” I knock back another. “Whatever you find out I want it kept between us. I don’t want Emilio on one of his paranoid witch-hunts again. I want her kept off his radar. She’s got nothing to do with business.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  There’s a pause. “Any news from Colombia?”

  “The latest PI report came in an hour ago.”

  “Give me the highlights.”

  “The lead was a dud.”

  “Shit.”

  It’s a bitter pill to swallow. Fifteen years on and this girl is still eluding me.

  “Tell the team to keep searching,” I say curtly, “and I want Garcia and his whole operation eliminated by sunset tomorrow. He’s making a fool out of us. I should have taken my own team in the first place. You and I are heading back to Miami to see to it personally. We’ll start by having a little chat with those crooked DEA agents… Tell Tomas I want my plane fueled and ready within the hour.”

  “What about the woman?”

  I down the next shot before answering. “She stays exactly where she is. Tell Valentina to keep an eye on her and make sure she keeps the damned door locked. She’s not to leave my room under any circumstance.”

  The time for niceties is over. I’m done backing off. If Eve Miller thinks I’m a monster then I’ll happily reinforce that belief. She’ll soon discover just how cruel and manipulative I can be. Forty-eight hours of solitude should give her more than enough time to reflect on my parting words. When I return from Miami I expect her to acquiesce to my every desire, tears or no tears.

  When I return she better be begging me to fuck her.

  7

  Eve

  There’s no clock in his bedroom. Time turns into my enemy. Minutes fade to hours as I sit and watch the sun creeping slowly across a crystal-blue skyline from behind six locked windows and a pair of sliding doors that refuse to open no matter how hard I rattle them. I’ve counted every pane of glass and every chip in every frame more times than I can remember. These are the delicate bars of my prison cell but his threats are the ones that really hold me captive.

  Another interminable, tear-stained night gives way to another hopeless dawn and soon the sinking sun is setting fire to an unfamiliar horizon again. I spend my incarceration searching for clues of where in the world I might be. The heat and humidity suggest somewhere off the coast of Africa. The plush palm trees and cerulean sea remind me of a travel advert I once saw on the subway in New York. But this is not a paradise. I’m a prisoner, kept here at the whim of a man with no kindness or conscience.

  Three times a day the lock turns and a young Hispanic woman with shoulder-length, copper-colored hair delivers a tray of food to me. She keeps her eyes fixed on the floor. There’s never a flicker of interest my way. I’ve tried speaking to her, asking for my captor and then demanding to talk to him, but she shakes her head each time as if she doesn’t understand my words.

  The food she brings is bland and simple – bread, water, a vegetable broth and the occasional piece of fruit. He doesn’t want me to starve but he’s tightening his grip on me just the same. I’ve been given no clothes to wear, I have only this bed sheet. He’s humiliating me. His message is simple yet effective. If he’s denied the pleasure of my body then I will suffer the cost.

  There are no books to read, no TV set. There’s nothing to pass the time except my thoughts. But that’s the point… I see that now. He’s left me to rot away in this cage with nothing but my imagination running wild. It’s a taste of what my brother must have felt during the last few agonizing days of his life, locked inside the prison of his mind whilst his body was wasting away in front of us.

  The tears come hard and fast when I think about my parents. If they survived the hospital explosions do they think me dead? This crucifies me more than anything else. The ugly scars from my brother’s passing are still etched upon their hearts. I doubt they’ll recover if they’re forced to bury both of their children. This thought alone strengthens my resolve. I will get out of here alive. I will see them again.

  I think about my captor frequently too, more often than I’d like. He’s a foreigner but there’s something so American about him. His English is excellent, his accent flawless. Has he lived in my homeland? I know his name but I refuse to call him that, even to myself. I want to dehumanize him as much as possible because it makes him easier to hate. But who is he, my beautiful tormentor? There are no clues hidden in this room. The white walls are devoid of his personality. There are no picture frames or photographs, the furniture is sparse and functional and the walk-in wardrobe is empty of all his clothes. There’s not even an old t-shirt to wrap myself up in.

  I replay the events of the last few days over and over in my mind. This man walked into a hospital with every intention of killing my father – a DEA special agent. Surely that makes him some kind of an assassin? At least that would explain his military training, but it also makes him an employee for the cartels. Who else would want my father dead? My heart begins to pound. Was my hunch right? Did my dad get too close to the Santiago brothers? Is this man working directly for them?

  That night
I lie awake piecing together everything that I’ve learned about the cartel in the last few years. Two brothers from South America. No first names. No recognizable faces. Billionaire criminals who manipulate the narcotics game from the shadows. Master puppeteers who control the strings of this whole business. Does my captor hold the key to uncovering their true identities? Is this my chance to get close and expose them as the immoral, murdering sons of bitches that they are?

  I make my decision then and there. I’ll give him what he wants. I’ll keep my mouth shut and my legs open. I’ll whore myself to this man, I’ll make him trust me, and then I’ll bring every single one of those bastards down.

  I’m not doing it for myself. I’m doing it for my brother.

  I sense him even before I’m fully awake. He’s sitting in that chair again wearing black jeans and a t-shirt, a dark and a dangerous juxtaposition to the lightness of his bedroom.

  Watching.

  Waiting.

  I ignore him for as long as I dare, putting off the barrage of heartache that’s coming my way. I’ve spent the last two days demonizing this man, believing he’s nothing but a savage with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, but now that’s he here, smelling like he does, looking so damn sexy sprawled out across that chair, my feelings are swinging from hate to lust again.

  “I know you’re awake, mi alma.” He sounds amused.

  “If I keep my eyes shut then it’s easier to pretend you’re a bad dream.”

  As I say it I deliberately turn my back on him. He likes it when I challenge him. It turns him on. I can see his erection whenever I reveal the sparks behind my eyes. As expected, he exhales with a hiss.

  “I see… my angel wants to play.”

  “Not with you. Never with you.”

  I tense and wait for the sheet to be ripped from my body again.