Unlovable King

Chapter One

The company Christmas party was awesome.

Cora danced and swayed to the music, laughing with her friend, Betsy. Being an introvert,

she’d never been truly comfortable in her own skin. Growing up, her parents expected her to always do the right thing. Be the good girl. Helpful. Reliable. Study hard and make good grades. Throughout her life, it had been difficult to make friends, so having Betsy in her corner meant everything.

The bodies around her acted like a blanket, trapping heat against her.

Needing a cool breeze, she waved at Betsy and pointed to the doors leading outside.

When she got a thumbs up, she wove in and around people, and caught a glimpse of her nemesis, an assistant named Ranelle.

For some reason, she didn’t like Cora and made her work a little harder to do.

She skirted around Ranelle’s orbit to keep off her radar and pushed open the doors that led outside.

Smoking wasn’t allowed inside, so there were a lot of people on the terrace.

Some said hi to her. Most ignored her. The venue was the Sinclair Club, located in the heart of West Hollywood, with a huge outdoor oasis that offered a cool respite.

She walked down the stairs to the lower deck, where a couple of people were locked in a passionate embrace.

Not wanting to disturb them, she kept to the shadows and went even further down, where the stairs led down to the underground parking.

Not exactly a picturesque place to meander, but as she turned to head back, a faint, feminine cry bounced between the concrete walls.

Cora leaned over and saw a couple in what she thought was a romantic moment.

They were half obscured by a large pylon, but they seemed to be embracing each other, and the last thing Cora wanted to be was a peeping tom.

“Let go of me!”

With those words, suddenly the whole context of what was happening took on a darker side. The girl struggled, pushing against his chest in an effort to break away. It was clear she didn’t want to be in his arms.

“Go ahead,” the man taunted. “Fighting is better for what I’ve got planned.”

“Let me go,” she begged. “I won’t say anything. I promise I won’t go to the cops.”

“Even if you did, they wouldn’t do a damn thing. They like me because I’m a nice guy.”

Cora’s eyes widened and her heart sped up with dread.

Her mind went blank on what she should do.

Go find someone? Say something? She’d never been in the situation where she might be a witness to an assault, and it made her sick in her stomach.

Should she get involved with the dispute between them?

Didn’t she have an obligation as a female to help another in distress?

Would he hurt her if she did step in to help?

That last mental question made her ashamed.

I’m a nice guy. What did he mean?

As she watched what she could see, the woman managed to get one hand free and the slap she leveled on his cheek reverberated through the parking structure.

An angry growl followed and the man placed his hands on the woman’s shoulders.

She couldn’t see his face, but she saw some kind of mark on the back of his left hand.

A circular tattoo maybe. In the dim overhead lights, it was impossible to discern.

Suddenly, he pushed the woman away from him.

She flailed her arms as the harsh shove sent her stumbling backward to teeter on the connecting level ramp, and right before Cora’s eyes, gravity caught hold of the woman and she toppled backward.

Right off the steep drop where she landed awkwardly on her neck that snapped with a decisive crack.

“You’d still be alive if you had let me fuck you, you stupid bitch,” the man sneered.

He backed up and looked around, making Cora jerk back in terror.

She stood frozen, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

Her breathing was close to hyperventilating, and only then did she realize she was crying.

The voice in her head told her to run. Run like hell and never look back, but the angel on her shoulder told her she had to check and make sure the woman was truly beyond needing help.

Forcing her legs to move forward, she carefully tread down the rest of the steps and slowly approached the girl’s sprawled form.

Even in the dim light she saw the blood, looking like malevolent ink as it spread out from her broken body.

A noise had her spinning around, searching the shadows, although she had no idea what she’d do if the killer had returned. The warning bell in her head told her she needed to get out of there. Someone was watching her. Someone had known she’d been spying.

Bile rose up in her throat and Cora turned away, running as if the hounds of Hell nipped at her feet.

Back up the stairs to the level where the company party still continued.

The only thought was what if the man had seen her?

What if he’d been hanging around, monitoring if or when someone found the woman’s broken body? The thought terrorized her.

Once she reached the oasis, the only thought she had was to get the hell out of there.

As she glanced over her shoulder, making sure she was alone, she bounced off a wall and fell on her ass.

Blinking up at a big, muscular man whom she’d never seen before, she felt trapped in the dark depths of his cold, sinister eyes.

There wasn’t any doubt in her mind these were the eyes of someone dangerous.

Perhaps even a killer. Her gaze zeroed in on his hands, but there wasn’t a tattoo on them.

One eyebrow raised as if waiting for her to say something.

Scrambling to her feet, she cast a quick look once more over her shoulder before apologizing.

“Sorry,” she whispered, then rushed past him. She needed to get home to relax and think. Maybe have a drink to calm her nerves. This is what she got by deciding to have some fun.

She tried to reassure herself the killer had left the area where the woman had died, so he probably didn’t see her get a closer look. She was safe. She had to be safe.

“Oh, God,” she muttered as she pulled up her rideshare app. “I should go to the cops.”

I’m a nice guy.

They like me.

“Is he a cop?” she whispered to herself.

I’m a nice guy.

****

Hades Sinclair watched the woman run away.

She’d been terrified, and he didn’t think it was because of him.

He turned his gaze to where she had emerged from, which was the parking structure, and his gut told him something happened to her in there.

Heeding his suspicion, he retraced the way she had come and studied the stairway area.

Not a damn thing.

Not until...

“What the fuck?”

The sprawled body of a woman lay like a shattered porcelain doll.

Neck obviously broken, her eyes stared into nothing.

Ribbons of blood flowed from where her head had cracked open on the concrete, matting the blonde strands of hair together.

Immediately, he turned to his lieutenant and right-hand man, Acheron.

“Get this cleaned up,” he ordered. “Grab the surveillance footage and find that woman.”

“Yes, Boss.”

Did she have anything to do with this? Was it an accident? Or was she a witness to something that was going to get her killed, too? His gut was telling him she knew a little too much for someone to simply let her walk away.