Hearts On Fire (The Santiago Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  There’s a pounding in my head and a stinging ache in my cheek. A red blanket has been tucked around me, and there’s a rock-hard mattress beneath me.

  “Dante.” My faint whisper pierces the gloom.

  He doesn't respond. He doesn't turn. Instead, he grinds the lit cigarette into his palm without flinching and then tosses the dead butt away. Eventually, his head jerks in my direction but the rest of his body stays immobile. His expression is back to cold dispassion. His eyes are an indecipherable puzzle.

  “How long was I out for?”

  “Three hours.” He sounds as jagged as I do. He leans against the wall and props one heel up, hands sliding into the pockets of his black fatigue pants.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” he says gruffly. “I’m the one who should be fucking apologising.”

  “I don’t know what–”

  “Do you know what PTSD is?”

  “Is that what happened to me earlier?” I sit up slowly and hug my knees to my chest. I’m still fully dressed. His sweater is still damp from my tears.

  “I’ve been around enough soldiers to recognize the signs.”

  “So you’re saying I have PTSD?”

  “Are you surprised? After everything I’ve…” He springs away from the wall and slams his fist into it. “Fuck!”

  “It wasn’t anything to do with the last year, Dante.”

  He pauses. “What are you saying?”

  “I think there’s another trigger.” I try to shake the memory loose but I’m not trying hard enough. I don't want to. I’m frightened of what might fall out of me if I do. “All I remember is how helpless it made me feel.”

  “Is it Miami?”

  “No.” I go to brush my hair away from my face and my fingertips catch my swollen cheek. “Shit. Did I fall?”

  He looks shifty all of a sudden. “You were freaking out, Eve. I had to do something.”

  Oh my God. He hit me. “Attempted rape and battery.” I smile tightly at him. “That’s quite an eventful wedding night you gave me there, Señor Santiago.”

  He grits his jaw and his dark eyes ignite with anger. “We play these fucking games all the time, Eve. You defy and I pound my retribution into you.”

  “I told you to stop!”

  “If it makes any damn difference, I did,” he says coldly, “as soon as you said that word. As soon as I figured out you weren’t pissing about anymore. That’s when you started screaming the place down. I even had Joseph banging on the door like the Women’s Rights asshole that he is.”

  “What causes the flashbacks?” I say, mulling it all over.

  “Sights, experiences… The brain latches onto to something that sparks the memory.” He shrugs. “Speak to Joseph. He knows more about it than I do.”

  “Has he experienced it as well? After Afghanistan?”

  There’s a pause. “No. But someone close to him did. What else do you remember?”

  “I really don't want to talk about it. Not yet.”

  “Suit yourself.” I watch him move toward the door. No final glance in my direction. No comfort. Nothing. “We sent out a surveillance crew two hours ago and I’m expecting them back. We might have an insider with the Romanians.”

  Message received: Now isn’t the time to fall apart.

  “It wasn’t you that hurt me, Dante.”

  He stops but doesn't turn around. “I shouldn’t have hit you.”

  “Kiss me. Make it better. I don't blame you for what you did.”

  “I have to go.”

  An icy wave of fear, more powerful than any nightmare, threatens to pull me under and wash my heart away. “You’ve never denied me before.”

  “Jesus, Eve!”

  “Forget the kisses. We’ll make love instead.” I start tearing at my clothes, wrenching off his sweater and my T-shirt.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” His gaze has finally moved in my direction. I unclip my white bra and tear at my jeans but his eyes don't stray from my face.

  I’m close to tears again. Any minute they’ll be spilling over the brim. Why? Because he’s making no move to claim me. To hold me and make it all go away.

  In that moment I hate him more than I ever have. More than when he locked me up in his bedroom.

  “Fine,” I hiss. “If you don't want me anymore, Dante Santiago, I’ll go downstairs and find someone who does.”

  Lies. All lies. But I’ll try any deception for his touch. Only the strength of his embrace can slice through the last poisoned roots of that memory.

  “If another man so much as looks your way, Eve Santiago, his blood is on your hands!” he roars at me.

  Not so indifferent now.

  I’m naked. Standing by the bed and frantic. “Do you not want to consummate this marriage? Is it all a sham? Am I just a piece of paper? A trophy wife? Do you even care about me anymore?”

  He curses something in Spanish. “You have no idea, mi alma.”

  “Then why won't you fuck me?” I scream my anguish at him, acting like a crazy woman who’s lost all control.

  “I’m not breaking you.” He’s flashing those warning signs at me again. “Not like I’ve broken every other fucking thing in my life.”

  “This isn't about you. It’s about me. It’s about needing something so desperately I’ll die if I don't have it! Please don't deny me.” I’m begging him now.

  “Not like this.”

  “Then screw you!” I pick up the nearest object, my iPhone that’s sprawled across nightstand, and hurl it at him. My aim is improving. It hits him square on the arm but it barely makes a dent. He can handle my pain. My words are packing more of a punch. I hold my breath for the next instalment.

  “Get some sleep,” he says, heading for the door again, attempting to chuck some closure on a fire that’s raging fiercely. “I’ll be back to check on you in an hour.”

  14

  Dante

  I stand in the hallway outside the room, breathing hard. Trying to collect my thoughts but they’re making a mess all over the goddamn floor. I can hear her crying again. Agonizing strips of pain that make me want to grind my forehead into the wall.

  What the fuck just happened in there?

  “Dante.” Joseph is waiting for me at the top of the stairs. “The crew’s arrived with a present for you. There’s an auction happening this evening. High-end. Hush hush. The insider’s downstairs singing his heart out. He thinks the girl is on the list to be sold with ten others.”

  “Do we have a location?”

  “Soon.”

  “Then keep chucking quarters at him until we do.”

  He opens his mouth to reply, and then stops. He’s seen something on my face, some foreign expression that shouldn't be there. “You okay?” he ventures. “You look like shit.”

  “I will be after tonight.” I yank my cool back into place.

  “You sure about that?”

  I glance at Eve’s door. “Tell me everything you know about PTSD, Joseph.”

  Blue-grays lift a notch. “Is that what went down earlier?”

  “Hmm…something like that.”

  “It’s been coming on since Emilio. Get back in there. She needs you. When I hear a woman pleading with you to fuck her, Dante, I don't expect to find you in the hallway.”

  A split-second later he’s up against the wall, my forearm crushing his throat. “That’s my wife you’re talking about, Grayson. Show some respect.”

  He makes no move to push me off but blue-grays narrow to frozen slits. “Who are you really angry at here?” he drawls in that cocky Texan twang of his. “Me, or yourself for dragging her into a world that’s gonna have her crying every night for the rest of her natural life?”

  “It’s not that,” I mutter, releasing him. I’m too worried about Eve to pander to my darkness. Joseph spoke the truth. He doesn’t deserve my punishment for that.

  He rubs at his neck. “You mean there’s something in her past?”


  My silence gives the game away.

  “Well, we know her father’s a sick fuck already. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that–”

  I hold up my hand. “Not here.” My gaze shifts to her door again.

  He nods, accepting this. “Have it your way. I’ll see you downstairs.”

  “My, my, my! Senor Santiago, what a great honor it is to meet with you, the greatest honor of my life. I am Marco and I am at your service.”

  The Romanian insider double palms my hand as I swallow the urge to slit his throat. The pimp is a walking, talking cliché of his profession – short, fat, sallow skin, thinning hair and a cheap leather jacket. Even his accent is cut-rate.

  Obsequious little shit. What does he know about honor? The man is selling out his squad to us for the tune of half a million.

  “Sit,” I tell him, nodding at the table. “Reece, get this man a drink. One for me too while you’re at it.”

  Marco seems to swell with pride as a bottle of Bourbon is banged down between us. Joseph’s hovering near the doorway and I catch his eye.

  Are we done with this guy yet? I’m itching to execute someone today and he just strayed into my kill zone.

  He shrugs. It’s my decision.

  “Tell me about the deal with Sevastien,” I say, pouring us both a drink.

  “He came to my brothers with a proposition we couldn't refuse.” He leers at me, exposing yellow teeth and a missing hole where his left cuspid used to be. He’s had it pulled by force, and recently. I’ve done it to a couple of assholes myself.

  Interesting.

  I smile blandly and clink our glasses together. “And the girl?”

  He shrugs. “She was part of the agreement. Rich men pay big money for pretty blond Americans, especially in this country. She’s okay, but she’s no match for your lady, señor.” He leers again, attempting to draw me into some sort of weak compadre banter. “I hear that she is a real beauty.”

  She’s a broken beauty now but somehow I’m going to fix her.

  “Let me see your hand,” I say idly.

  “W-w-hat?” The leer is gone, killed stone dead by my request. He glances nervously to each of my men in turn. There are five of them standing around the table and they each offer him the same deadpan expression. But Joseph’s clicked. I hear his soft hiss from here.

  “Your hand, Marco.”

  “But I-I–”

  “I don't like to ask for anything twice.”

  The cheap leather jacket starts shaking. Idiot. If he wanders into a lion’s den, what the fuck does he expect?

  A sallow, scrawny, liver-spotted excuse slowly inches across the polished mahogany toward me.

  “Lay it flat,” I order. “Palm down.”

  Marco’s eyes keep darting across my face, trying to read into nuances that don’t exist.

  “How much are they paying you to double-cross us?” I ask casually.

  He tries to wrench his hand away but I’m too quick. The blade of my favorite knife is already driving through the delicate bones in his left hand and lodging in the wood underneath it.

  My men curse and jump back in surprise. Joseph doesn’t move a muscle as Marco’s grunts reverberate off the walls. He clutches at his bloody hand and tugs helplessly but my knife is buried too deep in the table. This man’s not going anywhere.

  “You’re going to sing for me again, vile bird,” I tell him, leaning back in my chair to watch the spectacle unfold. “And this time you’re going to tweet your fucking guts out about what Sevastien has over you, why he pulled your tooth last week, and what my men are really walking into tonight.”

  “Please, señor. I had no choice!”

  “You double-crossed me, Marco. That’s the worst choice you could have made.”

  The pimp’s fat face dissolves into noisy sobs and my thoughts stray to Eve again. “He knows you're here,” he wails. “He knows you and Petrov are on bad terms.”

  “This bird really can sing,” I muse to Joseph. “What else?”

  “Tonight’s an ambush. He sold Petrov the same story. He knows you’re not sharing information right now. He wants to kill two birds with one stone.”

  “How resourceful of him.” I’m dying to twist my knife and really make him scream, to drown out the sound of Eve’s anguish from earlier. “And the girl?”

  “Still in Amsterdam. I swear it.” The guy is starting to bleed out. There’s a new crimson tablecloth on display. “The auction is genuine. The girl will be there, but so will Sevastien’s Bratva.”

  “And why the fuck would we trust anything that comes out of your filthy lying mouth, Marco?”

  “I never wanted to betray you in the first place! He threatened to take my clubs away. He tortured me…please!”

  “And how many girls have you tortured over the years?”

  His face contorts with pain and confusion. “The whores? But they don't count.”

  Oh yes they do.

  “The address please, Marco,” I say, lifting my hand and beckoning to Joseph. He slips his gun into my hand and retreats to the doorway again.

  The Romanian is so lost to his misery he doesn't even notice. He reels off an address at top speed and I ask him to repeat it twice. “Are you going to let me go now?” he croaks hopefully.

  Pity the fool.

  “Goodbye Marco,” I say, and then I pull the trigger.

  “How did you know?” Joseph’s voice carries loud through the gun smoke and the stench of blood and shit.

  “Instinct.” Again. The same stuff that’s urging me to get my ass upstairs and hold the woman I love for as long as she needs me to. I rise to my feet and pass the gun back to him. “Bury this asshole and search his cell phone. We’ll have the girl back here by midnight.”

  A flash of something crosses his face. Anger? Relief? “And Petrov?”

  “Get him on the phone,” I say tersely. “Tell him we need to meet.”

  15

  Dante

  My angel sleeps. Her pale, slender body is cocooned in a red blanket, her long dark hair spinning her naked shoulders into a spider’s web. Her clothes are still lying on the floor where she dropped them, next to the cell phone that she threw at me, along with her discontent.

  Curled up on her side in the middle of the bed, she looks peaceful. Finally. Her mouth is a soft pink bud; her eyelids are fluttering like butterfly wings. She’s in a safe place where none of her nightmares can touch her.

  Kicking off my boots, I lie down facing her, taking care not to jolt her awake. The fading afternoon sun is spilling roses and reds around the closed curtains. It’s a fitting end to a day that promises a night of bloodshed and violence for its grand finale.

  I’m scheduled to meet Petrov in two hours in neutral territory – at a café near Dam Square in the heart of the city. Joseph and a couple of my men are discreetly scoping it out now. Petrov may be an enemy but I’m coming to this meeting with an olive branch. I don't do apologies, I still want to rip the guy in half, but I do offer tentative truces in the guise of information.

  I also need his men. The Romanians are heavily armed and dangerous, like Sevastien’s Bratva. I have a hundred at my disposal. Petrov has the same. The fake auction is scheduled for nine pm. I’m planning to infiltrate, and then kill as many of these fuckers as I can. I’m counting on him wanting a piece of the action too.

  I can almost taste your vengeance, Isabella.

  Eve stirs beside me. I find myself holding my breath as she opens her eyes.

  I both love and hate what greets me. Her sapphires are dull and lifeless, and the red mark from my hand is merging with all the other bruises on her cheeks. But her smile… It’s a suggestion, a soft sigh of a thing. And it’s all for me. A smile that I don’t deserve.

  “You came back,” she murmurs.

  I press my lips to hers without hesitation. It’s my request. My confession.

  I never should have walked away. Let me make it up to you.

  “I
can’t believe I said such hurtful things.” She bites her lip and I nudge her teeth away with my finger.

  “You were in a bad place, my angel.” I brush a strand of loose hair away from her forehead. “Rest up while you can.”

  “Any news on Anna?”

  “There have been some developments, yes. I have a meeting with Petrov shortly to discuss them.”

  Her smile falters. “Is that wise?”

  “I’m not planning to shoot him in the head, if that’s what you’re worried about. Not unless he pulls a gun on me first.”

  “Did you get all that out of your system earlier? I heard the shot,” she adds quickly as I open my mouth to refute it. “I can smell the kill on your skin.”

  “I’ve had a shower since. My clothes are clean.”

  “It’s not something you can wash off that easily.”

  I muse on this for a moment.

  “Can I come with you?”

  “Absolutely not.” I need to keep her away from the more brutal aspects of my business, just until her flashbacks subside. She’s too fragile. “If everything goes to plan, we’ll be flying home tomorrow, all parties verified and accounted for. I’m leaving ten men to look after you while I’m gone. Ten of my best.”

  “You’re not coming back after the meeting with Petrov?” She starts biting her lip again when I shake my head. “Will it be dangerous?”

  Oh my angel, you have no idea.

  “It’s a means to an end.”

  She scrunches up her face for a moment. She wants to say something else but the right words won’t form in her head.

  “If I asked you to make love to me again, would you do it?”

  “I’ll never deny you again, mi alma.” I can’t explain why I denied you before. “Consider this a consummation fuck.”