Cruel Hearts (King’s Crossing #2)

Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

Zane

I ’m seething. Hal is supposed to be the best of the best, and he charges me like he is. The son of a bitch. I don’t know what the fucking hold up is. My sources are never wrong. The whore is alive and breathing in King’s Crossing. If my druggie snitches can find her, Hal should have no trouble.

It’s been twenty-four hours since I gave him the assignment, and he should have had it completed by now.

I pour myself a drink and wait, too agitated to do any work though there’s plenty of it that needs my attention. I can’t think of anything except having Stella’s blood on my hands.

Over the emergency PA system, security reports an active shooter outside the building, and all my employees are locked down until the situation is cleared. What a way to start the morning, but maybe that’s Hal finally doing his thing. Stella outside Maddox Industries grates on my nerves like a whore’s fingernails against my back. How dare she waltz right up to my goddamned building and think she can speak to me as if these past five years never happened.

I thought the bitch had common sense, but I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.

Hal strides into my office, frowning. “You didn’t tell me I would have competition.”

Tightening my grip on my glass, I ask, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Someone else is out to get Stella, Zane. Who?”

I scoff. “How in the hell should I know? And why does it matter?” I knock back the rest of my drink. “Do your job.”

I look out over the city. We could have had it all, Stella and me. We could have had the money, the power. The love. She threw me away for a crown. A real one. Not the fake one I promised marrying me would give her. The Queen of King’s Crossing. Fuck. How stupidly trite.

He sits at my desk and wakes up my computer. I don’t ask how he knows my password. He’s paid to know everything and I shouldn’t be surprised.

“Look at this,” he says.

I’m about to tell him nobody tells me what to do when he snaps, “Look at this.”

I walk around my desk and stand behind him.

Security footage from the camera mounted to the front of the building plays on the monitor.

In seconds, I search out Stella waiting to cross, holding the hand of a slim woman who has shaggy black hair. I can tell by their postures they’re good friends. Stella rarely spoke of her personal life, and I don’t recall her saying anything about having a friend in the city, but maybe she did. Or maybe she’s Italian, and she came over to the States with Stella.

My eyes devour her grainy features, the way her hair shines in the sun. She looks exactly the way she did the last time I saw her.

I force my gaze from her figure to her companion’s.

The light changes, and they start to cross the intersection. Several people are coming and going.

I’m growing impatient when suddenly a look of panic flashes across Stella’s face. She’s closer to the security camera now, and I pick out the shape of her eyes, her pert nose, the lush lips I enjoyed kissing. The lips I enjoyed as they roamed my body. Her skin is clear, and her hair hangs beneath her shoulder blades. I loved to wrap my hands in it while we made love. Tangling my fingers in it when she gave me a blowjob.

Now I’ll grip a handful in my fist and slit her throat.

She stumbles, and her friend bumps into her. After the slightest pause, the black-haired woman crumples to the ground.

The crowd crossing the street scatters in alarm. The video doesn’t have audio, but it’s easy to imagine the screaming.

This is what happened not half an hour ago.

Stella drops to her friend’s side and hugs the bleeding woman to her. My heart trips a little, but I still grin. Now she knows what it feels like to lose someone she loves. Like I spent the first couple of years after she left trying to live despite the gaping hole in my chest.

Hal sits quietly, watching the video.

People would rather watch Stella’s misery than find safety, and slowly, a crowd gathers around them. I can’t see any more of her or the woman bleeding out on the street.

Hal doesn’t turn off the video, and I watch until the end.

An ambulance cuts through the crowd. The vehicle blocks our view of the two women completely, until the doors burst open and two paramedics clear the scene. They lift Stella’s friend onto a stretcher.

She stands for a second, watching the paramedics try to save her friend’s life. Then I blink, and she’s gone.

The paramedics secure the woman into the back of the ambulance and drive away.

That’s when Hal cuts the feed and swivels to face me, his elbows resting on the chair’s armrests, his fingertips pressed together creating a steeple. “Do you want to tell me what that was?”

He asks like I should know, but I don’t have any idea who would be after her, or what her reasons are for being in King’s Crossing now, after all this time. “Fuck if I know.”

“She was coming here, to see you, and you can’t tell me why? Can’t guess?” Hal lifts his eyebrows.

“What if this was you? What if you botched this job?” I accuse, shoving my hands into the pockets of my pants. I refuse to be intimidated. Hal is my employee.

“This wasn’t me.”

I scoff. “How do I know that?”

“Because. I. Don’t. Miss.”

“Then you need to find out who did.”

Hal turns around and taps a few keys on my keyboard. “I’ve already started. The woman who was hit, her name is Quinn Sawyer. She’s head of a counterfeiting operation in New York. She grew up in King’s Crossing in a foster home she shared with Stella Mayfair when they were in middle grade. They were separated just before their freshman year of high school, and that family never took any more children. The father went to prison for smacking the kids and his wife around.”

Her name rings a bell, albeit very softly. Quinn Sawyer might be one of the few people Stella kept in touch with after she aged out of the system. “So what?”

It irks me that in a handful of sentences, Hal revealed more information about Stella’s time in foster care than I know.

I claimed to love her, but our relationship had been all about me. About how I was coping without my parents. About how I would run the company without my dad. I didn’t try to get to know her. I didn’t listen in the middle of the night.

My words filled those hours.

I took, and she always gave.

Is that why she left?

Because Cardello let her speak? And when she did, he listened?

“I thought perhaps the shooter had found his target after all. Maybe this Quinn made a mistake—a costly mistake. I asked around the operation they got going over there, and the gent I spoke to said she’s a real pro. He was sincerely upset when I broke the news that some asshole tried to pick her off. Then I got to thinking about Stella again, and I searched the news and found something else.”

“What?” I bark. Her death is my revenge. No one else’s.

Hal smirks, not understanding just how cold-hearted I’ve become. “Not so tough, huh? I can’t blame you. She’s a cute little piece of ass. Sweet in bed, I bet.”

“Fuck off.”

“Watch this first.”

He brings up a feed of a subway station.

The train in King’s Crossing is primarily underground, though there are places it emerges, like the stop near here where Stella would catch it after working her shift. This feed is from a stop under the city, but I’m not familiar enough with the train routes to peg where this was filmed. After Stella left, I never rode the train again.

Stella and Quinn step into the frame, but it’s difficult to keep an eye on them. Maybe that was their intention—to lose themselves in the crowd—but what they thought would protect them was to their detriment.

She’s too close to the edge, and I grit my teeth. “You don’t have to show me anymore.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to watch her fall onto the tracks, or a train nearly slice her little body into bloody pieces?”

“No.”

“You don’t need to pay my fees. Someone will do this for you for free.” Hal rises and adjusts the cufflinks at his wrists. “I’m terminating our contract.”

“Why?” I hired Hal to do the job and to do it right. Obviously, whoever wants her dead doesn’t know how to do it correctly.

“Because I don’t compete for marks. What should it matter? The end result will be the same.”

He leans over my desk and brings up the tabloid photos of Stella and Cardello. He tilts his head as he studies the pictures the way I have a million times. I have a sick fascination with them. I can’t stop looking at her, or the way she gazes at Cardello like he can do no wrong.

She used to look at me that way.

Her heart in her eyes.

“She was coming here to see you—there’s no other reason she needed to be this close to your building. Maybe her relationship went south. Maybe he beat her, and she finally got away, and she was hoping you’d help her. You wouldn’t be so heartless as to turn away a woman who has no family escaping an abusive relationship, would you?”

My answer is immediate. “Yes, I would. She made her bed, she can lie in it, too. You’re awfully sentimental for a hitman,” I say, rounding my desk. I’m tired of looking at the photos. Tired of this conversation. If Hal doesn’t want to be paid for an easy job, there are others who will.

I help myself to another drink.

Hal’s still staring at the screen. “There’s something pure about her. The way she grieves for her friend. That’s real. Who told you she ran away with Sergio Cardello?”

“Ash.”

I remember the night like it was yesterday. Stella had gone to the restroom. I waited, talking to Nigel and Helena. Somehow, I landed in the middle of a conversation with Clayton, Ash’s father, and one of his business associates. A half an hour went by, and I thought Stella was circulating, that I just didn’t see her, or she and the banquet manager were handling an issue that came up. I didn’t see Zarah and Ash, either, and I guessed they were having a quickie to celebrate their engagement announcement.

Then my sister burst into the ballroom, incoherent, blabbering gibberish, and I tried to calm her down, but I couldn’t. She attacked me, screaming, and someone called nine-one-one. The paramedics sedated her.

In the ER’s waiting room, Ash explained Stella and Cardello ran away together. He and Zarah watched them leave, climbing into a limo that was parked at the back of the Lyndhurst. He said he tried to stop her, tried to explain how much I loved her, that she would break my heart if she left, but she didn’t listen. Cardello promised her a castle and a crown, and she wanted it.

I died a million times while Ash told me what he tried to do—keep Stella here. He didn’t want her hurting me and Zarah. It was evident Stella’s defection caused Zarah’s mental break.

I held out hope that it had been a mistake, but the pictures started surfacing online and there was no disputing them. For five years I tried to let Stella go. Apparently, I didn’t do a good enough job.

“And you believed him?” Hal asks, turning away from my computer.

“Ash would never lie.”

“Everyone lies.”

“Not to me.”

Hal scoffs. “I pulled Quinn Sawyer’s cell phone number. Stella Mayfair doesn’t have one, at least, nothing I can find. I know you don’t listen to anyone’s advice, Zane, but heed me now. Find out what Stella wants from you, before whoever is trying to kill her succeeds.” Silently, he lets himself out of my office.

He’s right.

Nigel Wagner helped me steer this company in the right direction, and after that, I never listened to anyone’s opinion ever again. I do what I want, when I want. That includes having a drink whenever the fuck I want. Even if it’s ten in the morning.

I dial Quinn Sawyer’s cell phone number expecting to reach a voicemail. I don’t know what kind of message I’ll leave, if I do. From the look of the security footage, whoever shot her got her good. It would be a miracle if she survives.

Dead people don’t answer their phones, but Stella’s breathy voice fills the line. She’s been running, and she pants. “Hello?”

My cock hardens. She sounds how she used to when we made love. How she’d breathe into my ear as I rammed into her, trying to find some kind of comfort, a tiny sliver of peace.

Little did I know that after we met, I wouldn’t have to try so hard.

I didn’t have to try at all. She gave me whatever she could, whenever I asked.

“Meet me at your apartment.” I disconnect the call.

I should at least find out what she has to say.

Then I can do my own dirty work.

Hal thinks I’m weak, but I can break her neck just as easily as she broke my heart.

I drive myself to Stella’s apartment.

After she left, I bought her apartment building. I didn’t want them cleaning out her things, and I didn’t want to lose the one place where I felt like I could be myself. Where I was wanted for who I am, not what I am or what I could do for someone.

I lost count of the number of times I came here and sat on Stella’s worn couch, made coffee I sipped out of her chipped cups. I started sleeping here, crying into her pillow. Those were dark days, and I’m grateful Nigel saw me through the first six months of Stella’s betrayal. It took another six months for Stella’s presence in the apartment to fade. When it felt more like me than her, if that makes any sense.

Cardello had let her collect a few things. The first time I came here, close to losing my mind, I noticed the picture of her and her foster mom, Maryanne, was missing. I wasn’t familiar with her apartment well enough to know what else she brought with her.

She didn’t plan on coming back.

Stella didn’t bring any of the clothes Zarah bought her. She even changed out of the gown she wore to the party, and the skirts, blouses, and dresses still hang here, five years later, undisturbed.

I sit on her couch, impatiently waiting. Maybe she won’t come, but I was counting on her wanting to speak to me. Forty-five minutes after I called, she opens the door. She’s covered in blood, and thinking she’s been hurt, my heart leaps, but the way she held Quinn in the security footage flashes in my mind and I tell myself to get a grip.

Stella’s eyes are bloodshot, and tears wet her cheeks.

Her gaze darts around the apartment. Her throat works, but no sound comes out of her mouth.

It’s surreal seeing her in person when all I’ve had of her has been on the other side of a computer screen. The coppery scent of blood permeates the air, and strands of her hair are crusted in it. She’s still beautiful. I don’t think she could do anything to her appearance and not always be so.

At least, not to me.

“You wanted to see me?” I ask, standing.

Warily, she nods.

“What is it?” I go with Hal’s speculations. “Cardello beat you? You needed to escape, but once you did, you realized you had nowhere to go? You thought you’d try to pick up where we left off? Did you leave your children behind?”

Her lips part, and tears fill her eyes. I harden my heart. I can’t love a woman who would abandon her children to protect herself.

“I...I need to give you something,” she says, reaching into a purse at her hip, bright red blood popping against the white leather. She pulls out a black, shiny object and holds it out to me. Her cheeks are pale and her eyes glass over. She’s going into shock.

“Stella?”

Her hand trembles, but she doesn’t step closer. She’s scared of me, and she should be.

I walk across her little living room and reach for what she’s offering me. It’s a flash drive, and I turn it over in my hands.

“It’s all there,” Stella whispers. “I’m sorry.”

I should let her go, but someone is trying to kill her and they’ll have an easy job of it if she leaves now. I shouldn’t care, but being near her, being this close to her, it’s like seeing a ghost, and I can’t let her leave. Not yet.

“Wait.”

She pauses, her hand on the doorknob.

“Stay and shower. Change your clothes. I’m sorry about Quinn.”

She starts to cry, and I stop denying myself what I want. I hold her against my chest, her bony shoulders shaking under my hands. As she cries into my shirt, she wipes blood all over me.

“Breathe, Stella,” I murmur.

She jerks away. “I need to go.”

“Someone’s trying to hurt you. Stay and clean up. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Why are my things still here?”

“I bought the building. I was waiting for you to come back.”

She blinks. She doesn’t understand what I’m saying.

“Go shower. Then we’ll talk.”

I push her toward her bedroom and the bathroom located at the end of the narrow hallway. Since Stella left, every six months I’ve had her toiletries replaced and a cleaner comes once a month to dust and vacuum.

Impatiently, I wait for her to shower, but after a half an hour, she’s still not done. Cracking the door open, I check to see that she hadn’t slit her wrists, but all she’s doing is leaning against the wall, crying in the steam.

I sit on her bed and turn the flash drive over in my hands. I drop it into the pocket of my suit jacket and I forget about it as she finally steps out of the bathroom, her hair slicked back and dripping water down her bare shoulders. She wrapped a thin towel around her torso, and the edge hits the top of her thighs.

I want to fuck her so badly, my cock strains against my pants. Why the hell not? There’s nothing stopping me. “Come here.”

She stands in front of me, and I pull the towel from her body and let it drop onto the floor.

Peaches and cream, her skin is a delicate pink, just how I remember. Her breasts hang full and ripe, and her nipples are a beautiful rose. Her belly is a flat plain, giving way to gently flared hips. She hasn’t trimmed in a while, but her soft, golden curls and the treasure they hide turn me on. Her thighs are slim, and her legs taper to delicate ankles. Stella’s body is every heavenly thing I remember.

I’m a bastard for using her, but it’s what I deserve living through five years of hell. Five lonely years of being unable to touch her. “Kiss me,” I demand, desperately needing her lips on mine.

Without argument, she steps between my legs and covers my mouth with hers.

I groan.

She rests her hands on my shoulders, and I fill my palms with her breasts. Her breath catches in her throat. She wants me too, and I want to shout in victory. Even after all this time, she hasn’t forgotten how I made her feel.

I squeeze her nipples, and they harden under my touch. “Lie on the bed.”

She crawls onto the bed but doesn’t pull the comforter back. Her skin is covered in goosebumps, but without the air conditioner running, the temperature in the basement apartment is close to eighty degrees.

Maybe her reaction is fear, maybe it’s desire, but either way, her trepidation excites me, and I smooth my fingers through the curls between her legs searching for her slit.

She jerks away, and in warning, I dig my fingertips into her thigh. “Hold still.”

Squeezing her eyes shut, she says, “I can’t. It’s been too long.”

I continue to play, barely touching the lips of her pussy. “What do you mean?”

Her eyes flutter open but she turns her head and speaks to the wall. “I haven’t been...intimate...in a long time.”

I grip her harder, resisting the urge to slap her. I know she’s lying. “Bullshit. I don’t believe you.”

Sunlight travels over her body, and I want to claim her all over again.

“Then feel for yourself.” She licks her lips and meets my eyes. “But please, Zane, don’t hurt me.”

I drop to my knees, and I’m eye-level with her pussy. Gently, I push away the pubic hair and find her slit. She’s glistening and pink, ready for me.

In reflex, her legs start to close, and I push them open. “Stop it.”

She starts crying, and I almost tell her to get dressed. I don’t rape women—I don’t need to. I can fuck whomever I want, and in the five years Stella has been gone, I have.

I part her pink lips and ignore her sobs.

She yanks away when my finger nudges her, and I need all my control not to spank her ass. I’m annoyed, and I want to prove her a liar.

Carefully, I push a finger inside her, and she whimpers. I pull out and then push back in. She’s so wet, I should be able to finger her easily, but I’m met with resistance. It could be because she’s scared, but my gut tells me it’s more than that.

I twist my finger, searching for room in her heat. There is none.

Nosing her curls, I find her clit with my tongue. The nub’s engorged, encouraging me, and I push my finger all the way inside her and lick.

She inhales a ragged sob.

Her scent is how I remember and she tastes how she does in my dreams. I glide my finger in and out, sucking on her clit. She writhes on the bed, moaning, her hips moving with the rhythm of my thrusts. She’s finally loosening up.

A jagged cry quavers from her throat and she comes, weeping my name. I tease out her orgasm, her muscles tensing around my finger in climax. Cum trickles out of her opening and down the crack of her ass. I loved to touch her there, too, but today I refrain. What I’m stealing will be enough.

I undress, and touching her knee, ask her to scoot up the bed. She does, her heels digging into the mattress. I don’t waste a second, and I settle eagerly between her legs, my cock heavy, dripping, and needy. She barely opened enough to take my finger. This is going to hurt her, but I don’t love her anymore and I don’t care.

I hold my erection and rub the drop of pre-cum over the head. I’ve been dreaming of this for five years. Stella’s pussy surrounding my cock.

She clutches the comforter in her fists, but she doesn’t stop me. Instead, she tilts her hips upward in invitation, and I nudge the tip of my cock inside her. She’s so tight, I need every ounce of willpower I have not to ram my cock deep inside her heat and damn the consequences.

Tears drip from her eyes and unbiddingly, I kiss them away. My lips linger against the pale skin of her cheeks, and I brush the damp hair away from her face. We used to have that softness to our intimacy, but those actions, those emotions, are only dregs of a relationship that no longer exists.

She squirms as I inch into her, her body refusing to accept my size and length. I suck one of her nipples into my mouth, and she gasps. Stella is mine. She’ll always be mine. I don’t care how many men she fucks or how many babies she gives them.

Stella Mayfair belongs to me, and I completely claim her. I grab her ass so hard my fingers will bruise her skin, and lifting her closer, I force her to take me. She wraps her arms around my neck and I devour her lips, hoping she can taste herself on my tongue. I love her sweet flavor. I always have, and I’ll never forget. I can never get enough.

My cock feels like it’s going to explode, and a ball of fire builds in my belly. This is what I wanted. This is what I needed. No one can make me come like Stella.

She knows I’m about to orgasm, she knows as I violently thrust, and she cries against my mouth. Joined as closely as we can be, I shoot my load into her, creamy and hot. I didn’t use a condom, didn’t think to grab one out of the nightstand where she kept them, but I can’t worry about that now. I’m branding her, and I won’t have any regrets...no matter the outcome.

“Stella,” I gasp, emptying inside her. It feels as if my cock will never run out, and I enjoy every second I can, every second she allows me to take.

After several long moments, I still, my heart hammering from the best orgasm I’ve had since she disappeared. My fingers skim over a large bruise alongside her ribs, and I try not to imagine how it happened. “Did I hurt you?” I ask, but I know I did.

She won’t look at me. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, but I’m not. I would do it again. And again.

My cock finally decides to soften, and I pull out of her. Her cum and my semen mingle together on the head of my cock. I rub my fingertip over the moisture and push the implications out of my mind. It won’t be my problem.

Now that I’ve gotten what I want, I’m tired of her.

“I’m done. Put some clothes on,” I order sharply and roll off the sagging mattress. I pick up my shirt and pants off the floor and dress in the bathroom. I don’t want to watch her flinch as she moves.

When I come out, she’s wearing the dress she wore to dinner the night we met Mina and Chase. It looks out of place in the late-morning sun. I wonder if she remembers, or if the two weeks we spent together faded from her mind. She’s brushing her hair, a blank look in her cornflower blue eyes.

“Where have you been, Stella?” I ask, standing in front of her, my arms crossed over my chest. I want the truth. I want to know she’s brave enough to tell me the truth.

Her skin is pasty and pale, and dark purple bruises that match the one along her ribs rest beneath her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter.”

This sparks such an anger in me that I don’t think I’ve ever felt this degree of rage before. A hazy red shimmers in my vision. “What the fuck do you mean, it doesn’t matter? We’re talking about five years of my life...living without you...hating you.”

“You won’t believe me, so what does it matter?” she says, her lips trembling.

“Try me.”

“Ash—”

“ Jesus fucking Christ . Leave Ash, leave the Blacks, out of this. You are the fucking whore who decided what I wanted to give you wasn’t enough. I can afford a fucking yacht, you know.”

She frowns. “What?”

“Forget it. Someone’s trying to kill you, so watch your back. And don’t you dare look for me again. We’re done, and you are on your own.”

I slam out of the apartment, leaving her to do what she likes.

Leaning against the wall outside her door, I sniff my fingers. Her musk covers them, and I breathe in her scent.

She’s a liar, a fucking liar. That hasn’t changed. The fucking nerve bringing Ash into this. Again.

He’s been a rock—visiting Zarah every day, checking in with me every moment he can. Clayton and Ash have given me everything I need to survive Stella’s betrayal and my sister’s breakdown. They’re my family.

In my office, I throw the flash drive into a drawer in my desk. I don’t give a fuck what’s on it.

As I stand there, seething, unsure of what I should do next, my phone vibrates and I open Ash’s text. His jet just landed in King’s Crossing. He says heard about the shit going down and shaved a week off his trip to make sure I’m okay and he wants to visit Zarah ASAP.

The Blacks are a blessing to my sister and me.

Stella’s spreading lies and deserves what she gets.

Someone is out to get her, and I plan to sit back and enjoy the show.