Heart of a Devil

Chapter 8 – Lauren

Chapter

Eight

LAUREN

H e pays particular attention to locking up the building, and then he insists on driving. He settles me into the passenger seat and leans across to fasten my belt, giving me a whiff of his Chanel cologne and a scent that is entirely his and one hundred percent man.

When we arrive at the restaurant, a cute little Italian joint tucked away on a side street, the place is already full. I’m not sure we’ll get a table, but Seb knows the owner, Vincenzo, who soon makes a quiet corner booth available for us.

“I’m disappointed,” Sebastian says once we’ve ordered. “Pasta arrabbiata instead of the lobster tails? A beer instead of the Bollinger?”

I shrug and sip the beer in question. “Yeah, I know. Sorry to disappoint. I’m a simple girl at heart.”

“We both know that’s not true.” His eyes flash at me, and his sinful mouth quirks up at one corner. “So, first things first. Let’s clear the air.”

“Do we have to? I prefer the air a little murky.”

“We have to. Sam gave me a right telling off earlier. Doesn’t want me to mess things up at the firm. So truthfully? I’ve been thinking about you a lot. I get the feeling you’re not looking for anything serious, and being brutally honest, I’m not so great at serious myself. But I have to tell you, I enjoyed our time together… And there are still a lot of things left on the list.”

“The list?”

“The list of filthy things I’d like to do to you. The list of ways I want to make you come. The list of your body parts I’d still like to fuck.”

Every cell in my body sits up at attention and screams at me. I squeeze my thighs together to relieve the pressure that suddenly builds between my legs, and my vision goes a little blurry. I suck in a deep breath and hope I don’t look as aroused as I feel. “That’s not friendly dinner talk, Seb. Did you bring me here under false pretenses?”

He laughs and rubs his beard, grinning at me cheekily. “Maybe, although I didn’t plan it that way. I had every intention of being the gent tonight, but something about you seems to bring out the animal in me… I’ve got a rock-hard dick just sitting across from you in public, for fuck’s sake. But I’ve had a hard dick before, and that will pass. Friendship lasts longer, and I do want us to be friends too. Whatever you want from this, I’ll be fine with it.”

“Are you sure about that? You’re saying the right words, but you’re looking at me like you want to throw me over your shoulder and carry me off to a cave.”

“I strongly suspect you wouldn’t mind that at all, sweetheart. But that’s a game for another day. How about we take this one step at a time? Dinner, drinks, conversation.”

I nod and sip more beer, unwilling to open my mouth because I’m still stuck on the image of him carrying me out of here, complete with his hard dick. I’d like to slip a shoe off and run my toes over it under the table. Hell, I’d like to run my tongue over it under the table.

The waitress arrives with food as I’m imagining licking those heavy balls of his and picturing him shooting his load on my breasts. That’s a thing I don’t typically enjoy much, but the idea of him finishing on me is enough to make my pussy contract.

He gives me a smug look. “You look distracted. Something on your mind?”

The damn man knows exactly what’s on my mind. He knows exactly what he’s doing to me, and I fight to regain control. “Just how delicious this dish smells. Nothing on earth sexier than a plate of good pasta.”

“If you say so, Hot Sauce. Now. Do you want to tell me about Caroline, or would that ruin your sexy pasta?”

His tone is more serious and businesslike, like he’s flipped from playful Seb to security firm–owner Seb, and I wonder if that’s his way of coping with difficult emotions. I’m not an idiot. I saw the way he was with Nicky and heard the things he said to him while he thought I wasn’t listening. I can’t imagine anybody being able to hurt this big man now, but he was a once vulnerable little boy, a boy somebody took advantage of. Probably someone he should have been able to trust. I don’t let myself go down that heartbreaking rabbit hole, and instead follow his lead of being professional.

“No, let’s talk about it. I’m worried about her, Seb. She’s been with her husband for eleven years, married for ten. They met when she was working as a personal shopper in Harrods—he was a high-roller client. At first, he was charm personified, and it was all a fairytale. I’m pretty sure you can guess the rest.”

“Sadly, I can, yeah. He’ll have cut her off from her family and friends, started with the odd slap, persuaded her it was all her fault for setting him off. Usual blood-boiling bullshit.”

I nod, saddened but unsurprised at the weariness in his words. Caroline’s story isn’t a unique one. Far too many women have similar stories to tell. “Exactly that. But things have escalated beyond the usual. For the last few years, he’s been sharing her out among his friends, forcing her to endure gang rape. His favorite game is to throw a party, tie her to the bed, and invite friends and business colleagues to take their turns. They’re allowed to do whatever they want to her.” I swallow down the bile that works its way up from my stomach and force myself to go on. “The last time, it was over twenty men, and she ended up in the hospital with horrific internal injuries. It was a private hospital, paid for by him, so everybody turned a blind eye.”

Reciting the awful details like this is actually helping me distance myself from the trauma of it all. I learned long ago to compartmentalize with my job, to separate my emotions from my words—there’s a place for passion in the law, but it’s mainly a world of logic and reason. I won’t be helping Caroline or Nicky if I can’t clearly describe what she’s been subjected to without bursting into tears. Seb obviously isn’t quite there yet and slams his massive fist down on the table so hard the plates shake. “The evil piece of shit. How about I tie him up and do the same to him? Cut off his cock, cover it in barbed wire, and shove it up his arse until he bleeds out.”

I nod, not at all distressed by that image. “Believe me, I hear you Seb—but that can’t be our first choice. She’s so scared, she isn’t even sure what she wants to do yet. I need to try to get her out of this the right way.”

“And if you can’t? If the civilized crap fails her? This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to you, Lauren, but I don’t exactly have a huge amount of respect for the law or the system. They both let too many people down.”

“Like you?” I ask quietly. “I heard what you said to Nicky.”

He shrugs and looks away before he speaks. This is hard for him. “Yeah. Like me. Not going to give you the whole sob story—Samantha doesn’t even know the details. My dad was an ex-con who liked hurting people, and my mum was… Well, fuck knows what she started off as, but by the end, she was his partner in it all. The pair of them were at me from the day I was born, right up until I was taken into care.”

“And how was that? Any better?”

He gives me a bitter smile. “I’m sure you’ve seen the care system in the States, and I’m guessing it’s not much different from here. I was almost thirteen. I was too old, too angry, too everything. I was never going to be adopted by some cute couple who nurtured me, was I? Weirdly, it was getting Sam’s mum pregnant that changed things. When her parents took her away from me, I let them, because I was only a child myself—and because I knew I had nothing to offer them. I genuinely thought the girl I loved and my own kid would be better off without me. It made me feel worthless, pathetic, and I decided I never wanted to feel like that again.”

There is unguarded pain in his dark-brown eyes, but it’s the strength in his voice I focus on. This is a man who has suffered and has overcome, and I, of all people, respect that. I place my hand over his. “Is that when you started Archangel? When you were that young?”

“Nah, that didn’t come ’til later, when I met Gabriel and was ready to turn my back on the wild days and really achieve something. No, back then there weren’t a lot of options for a kid like me, so as soon as I was old enough, I joined the army.”

I’m surprised—Seb doesn’t really seem like the army type. “Huh. How did that work out?”

He flashes me a wicked grin. “About as well as you’d expect. I was shit at doing what I was told, but it gave me a little discipline, taught me a few tricks. Made me grow up a bit, I suppose—though Sam would argue that part is still a work in progress. Anyway. Enough about me. Nicky’s broken arm. The dad?”

He’s obviously had enough of digging into his own past, and I get that. I’ve turned avoidance into an art form. “The dad, yes. At first, she didn’t know. Genuinely believed he fell the first few times the bruises showed up. You’ve met him, he’s a lively kid, always on the go. But when his arm was broken, he finally told her who’d been hurting him. Even more than that, she started to suspect he was being prepped for something else. One of the men who came to the parties, she said, only ever liked to watch as the others raped and abused her. She heard him saying his tastes ran much younger. She suspects the beatings are a way of breaking Nicky down, making him more malleable, that he’s getting ready to… getting ready to sell him to some sick pervert. His own damn father. Who, by the way, is a Russian ‘businessman’ named Ivan Volkov. He’s protected by layers of powerful connections. The kind that carry AK-47s and own private helicopters. It’s only the threat to Nicky that’s made her take the steps she has. When it was only her, I think she was willing to tolerate it…”

I finally lose it, and all my professional calm disappears. What the fuck is wrong with the world? I swipe the angry tears away from my eyes and realize my hand is now wrapped in Sebastian’s bear paw. He squeezes my fingers. “I don’t care if he’s Bratva, the KGB, and Joey fucking Stalin all rolled into one, Lauren, we’ll help them. We will not let anything worse happen to that kid or his mum. If your route doesn’t work, mine will. I’ll kill the fucker and track down every single cunt who ever went to one of those parties and kill them too. I’ll make them suffer, and I’ll fucking well enjoy every moment of their pain.”

I have no doubt he means it or that he’s capable of it. Part of me wishes we could skip right to that step now, because I would enjoy every moment of their pain as well. I’m not exactly an innocent.

He frowns. “You’re a lawyer, but you don’t seem shocked. In fact, you look quite keen. Most women would be repelled, and they certainly wouldn’t nod in agreement when I talked about cutting off his cock earlier.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not most women, I don’t suppose. And being a lawyer doesn’t negate everything else about me. My life, my family… It’s complicated.”

“How so?”

I look into his eyes and remind myself that earlier, when Caroline asked me if I trusted this man, all my instincts screamed yes. I might not have known him for long, but I trust him.

I take a deep breath. “Okay. So, I’m originally from Los Angeles.”

“Really? Sam said you moved here from Florida.”

“I did, and Florida is a whole different story. The brief version: I was born and raised in LA. Left there at eighteen. Spent some time studying here. Got married and moved to upstate New York. Got divorced, traveled around, settled in Florida.”

“Married?”

“Yep. Married. Not for long. I thought we were in love, which was a sweet delusion, but we were never compatible. That’s an understatement—we were a total shitshow. Not going to get into that now, though.”

He doesn’t look happy with the shutdown, but nods at me to continue. “Back to my family. I use the name Hayes. That’s my mother’s maiden name, which I legally changed mine to. I love my parents, my sister, my cousin, all of them—but I needed distance from them. I needed to build a life for myself that was removed from their world and its… darkness.”

I feel disloyal even saying that. My family’s business practices, both legitimate and not so legitimate, paid for the home I grew up in, my education, my privileged start in life. I’m not such a hypocrite that I ever condemned them, but I also knew I didn’t want to stay there and live that life. Especially not while Uncle Carlos was on the scene.

“What’s so dark about your family, Lauren? Did they hurt you?” The anger in his voice is barely suppressed, and I know he is imagining the worst. Who can blame him, given his background?

“One of them did, my Uncle Carlos… He was a sick fuck. He gave me this.” I hold out my palm and show him the thin crescent-shaped scar that is still visible on my flesh.

He traces it with his fingertips, then soothes it with a gentle brush of his lips, like a father kissing away the pain. “Tell me where he is. He’ll be the first one I end.”

I shiver slightly, at both the touch and the words. “He’s already gone. He died last year, and he died like the pig he was. I felt so liberated when I found out. My cousin and his friend, who are not men you mess with, rid the world of that particular evil. I’d left LA at least partly to escape him, but it wasn’t that simple. It wasn’t only one bad man, it was the whole culture of my family. Their past, their present, probably their future. The violence… This will probably mean nothing to you, but my birth name is Lauren Maria Montoya.”

I see immediately that the name does mean something to him. Of course it does. My family might be based in LA, but it’s known the world over, and depending on what side of the law you’re on, the Montoyas are viewed with either fear or envy for the way they have combined ruthless origins and enforcement with a multibillion-dollar business empire. Seb straddles both sides of that moral and legal line, I suspect, which might be why I’m so drawn to him. Despite my desire to escape, I’m obviously drawn to the familiar. Perhaps it’s a part of my DNA.

“You’re a Montoya?” he asks, frowning. “A fucking Montoya?”

“Only half a fucking Montoya, to be fair.”

“From what I’ve gathered, the Montoyas don’t do anything by halves. Shit. Does Sam know?”

I shake my head. It’s not something I talk about easily, even with close friends. I mean, it’s a bit of a conversation killer: Hi, I’m Lauren, and my family is in charge of the West Coast Mafia. I like cozy nights in, long walks on the beach, and torturing my enemies to death with power tools.

“That must have been one crazy-ass childhood. I’ve heard stories,” he says, looking at me intently. “Always thought Alejandro sounded like a guy not to be messed with.”

“Alejandro’s my cousin, and we’re close. And he’s a total badass. Despite that though, despite what circumstances sometimes force him to do, he’s a good man at heart.”

He nods, accepting this for the truth. It makes sense that he would understand how a good man can also be capable of terrible acts. “Well, I can see now why you have so much fight in you, sweetheart.”

“I do now, yes, but I didn’t always. Not for a long time. I ran away from Carlos and what he did to me.”

“And what did he do, Lauren? You don’t have to tell me, but it’s supposed to help isn’t it, this sharing bullshit? Just pretend I’m your therapist.”

That actually makes me laugh out loud, and then, even though it’s hard, I force myself to talk. To share some of this for the first time ever. I don’t know why I’m choosing Seb to confide in, and he certainly doesn’t look like any therapist I’ve ever encountered, but between his own scarred past and the straightforward way he discussed it, I feel comfortable enough to finally open up.

“He tortured me for years. He effectively ended my childhood at the age of ten, and on the day it started, he sliced my hand open to keep me quiet about something I saw. I never told, but I guess he must have developed a taste for it. He got a real kick out of keeping me permanently scared.”

I pause, shaken by how vividly I remember it all. The mutilated stuffed toys were only the start of it. “He’d leave me sick notes on my pillow or make up stories about me to my mom or lock me in the pool house for hours on end. I’d find my underwear drawer reeking of urine, and he’d stalk me on the way home from school. He told my first boyfriend I gave great blowjobs, when I hadn’t even seen a penis in real life, and he stole my sister’s favorite necklace and hid it in my room so she thought I stole it.”

“He isolated you.”

He’s right, of course—that was one of the worst aspects of what happened to me as a child. The loneliness.

“Yeah. He always had me worried. Sometimes he’d leave me alone for a while, and I would hope he lost interest. But then he’d send me photos of myself in bed at night, with him holding a knife to my throat. Once, he cut off my hair while I was asleep, and I had to pretend I did it. It was endless, and it turned me into a nervous wreck. Nobody suspected a thing and put it all down to me being difficult .”

“Fucking bastard. Why would he do that to an innocent girl? His own family, for fuck’s sake.”

“There’s no answer to that. Now, I know there wasn’t a reason—he was just a psycho. But back then, I blamed myself. I assumed I was weak, or maybe downright bad. Why else would he be doing those things to me? I never told a soul, he had me so wrapped up in terror. He ruined me, made me distrust my parents, isolated me. Made me realize our whole family business was built on blood when I was way too young to handle the complexities of it all. Uncle Carlos dominated my life for too long, and it was running away from him, and from the Montoya legacy, that drove me into the arms of my husband. The safe bet. The boring, ordinary guy who ran an accounting firm and seemed to offer me a world a million times different from the one I grew up in. I made a lot of bad choices based on fear, based on the way Carlos Montoya manipulated me, and once he was dead, I swore to myself that I would always try to be fearless from that point on.”

I look at my half-eaten plate of food. My almost-empty glass of beer. Anywhere but at Seb. Talking about my childhood is hard, like using a muscle that has atrophied, and I don’t have any more words. I’m deflated and sad, and also pissed that, even from beyond the grave, my scumbag uncle is still exerting power over me. I feel like crying and only hold it together because I’m in public. Because I’m with Seb, and I don’t want him to pity me.

“And are you?” he asks, touching my chin and turning my face so I’m looking at him. The expression in his brown eyes is intense, and he props his elbows up on the table as he leans forward. His lips are inches away from mine, his breath a warm caress on my skin.

“Am I what?” I murmur, losing myself in his gaze.

“Are you fearless? Right now, Lauren, are you fearless? Or do I scare you a tiny bit?”

Just like that, he has flicked a switch, and the mood has gone from confessional to inferno. It’s exactly what I need to drag me out of my low mood, and he seems to instinctively know that. Turns out that my nipples tightening with arousal is an excellent distraction from the pain of my past.

My pulse speeds up, and I wonder if he can actually hear my heart crashing against my rib cage. The way his eyes swoop over me leaves me in no doubt about his intentions, and none of them are honorable. Fearless? I’m goddamn terrified.

The waitress returns to clear our plates, giving me a merciful moment of respite. She leaves us with dessert menus, and I study it with way more commitment than tiramisu and zabaglione merit. I risk a glance at him over the sheet and see him smiling smugly. He understands how he makes me feel, damn him, and he enjoys it.

I slam the card down on the table so hard he jolts. “Yes, you scare me a tiny bit. I can admit that without it making me weak, and you can get that shit-eating grin off your face as well, buddy. You feel it too, this thing between us, and I don’t care how much you pretend to be the tough guy—we both know you want me as much as I want you. Or is it just the chase?” I lean forward, wrapping a lock of my hair around my finger and licking my lips. “You seem like the kind of man who is all about the chase. Is that what I am? A challenge?”

His nostrils flare, and he grabs my wrists with both his huge hands, holding them tight in front of him. I can’t move without snapping one of my forearms, and he knows it. “Yes, you’re a fucking challenge, Lauren. And yeah, I love the chase. I really love the chase, and I think you do too. It’s been a tough day, and I’ve spent most of it with blue balls because you’re right, sweetheart—you are lodged in my mind like a splinter, and I can’t stop thinking about you. I want to flip you over on this table right now and fuck you ’til you scream. I want to eat your pussy until you forget your own name. I want to fill every single hole you have and mark you with my cum. I want to make you mine, Lauren Maria Montoya Hayes, to possess you in every way a man can possess a woman. But first, I have a very important question to ask you.”

I’m trembling with arousal, my panties wet and my clit throbbing a needy beat. His grip on my wrists is tight, painful, unrelenting. I have no doubt he could do all of those things and more, and my body shamelessly wants him to. He sucks one of my fingers into his mouth, swirls his tongue over the skin, then kisses his way down to my captive wrists, nuzzling the butterfly-wing pulse point that is giving away my excitement.

“What kind of shoes are you wearing?”