by Sybil Bartel
Copyright © 2020 by Sybil Bartel
Cover art by: CT Cover Creations
Cover Photo by: Wander Aguiar
Cover Model: Andrew Biernat
Edited by: Hot Tree Editing and Peggy Smith
Formatting by: Champagne Book Design
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
Warning: This book contains offensive language, alpha males and sexual situations. Mature audiences only. 18+
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Books by Sybil Bartel
Heartless
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Epilogue
Alpha
Victor
Acknowledgments
About the Author
BOOKS BY SYBIL BARTEL
The Alpha Bodyguard Series
SCANDALOUS
MERCILESS
RECKLESS
RUTHLESS
FEARLESS
CALLOUS
RELENTLESS
SHAMELESS
HEARTLESS
The Alpha Elite Series
ALPHA
VICTOR
ZULU
The Uncompromising Series
TALON
NEIL
ANDRÉ
BENNETT
CALLAN
The Alpha Escort Series
THRUST
ROUGH
GRIND
The Alpha Antihero Series
HARD LIMIT
HARD JUSTICE
HARD SIN
The Unchecked Series
IMPOSSIBLE PROMISE
IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE
IMPOSSIBLE END
The Rock Harder Series
NO APOLOGIES
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HEARTLESS
Bodyguard.
Sentry.
Explosives expert.
There was a reason I was the only Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician in the Marines who’d never sustained any injuries. I didn’t take chances. Ever. My actions were precise. My thoughts were controlled, and I lived by one creed—no second chances.
Except serving my country as an EOD in the Marines had a shelf life. Promoted off the front lines, I didn’t want to ride out my career behind a desk. A civilian job with the best security firm in the business seemed like a better solution… until a frightened client with haunted eyes lied to me about everything.
Now she was going to find out how heartless a bodyguard could be.
For my beloved son, Oliver.
You were, and still are, my entire world.
I love you more than words, and I desperately miss you.
I am not sure how to go on without you,
But I know you would want me to.
I love you, Sweet Boy, I love you so much.
Oliver Shane Bartel 2004-2020
Ten years ago.
My front door wide open, a tumbler in my hand, I watched the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles on the street cut across the darkened yard.
Bringing my glass to my lips, intent on pouring more alcohol down my throat, I opened my mouth.
Goddamn glass was empty again.
The EMTs lifted a stretcher with the bloodied asshole that was still alive and put him in the ambulance as the ME drove off with the unlucky asshole that didn’t make it. The cops, a couple detectives and a dick in a suit hovered nearby. One EMT got in the back of the ambulance while the other shut the door and got behind the wheel.
The cops scanned the crowd as the ambulance left, but the suit turned and looked toward the house, making eye contact with me.
I smirked.
Fucker took it as an invitation. Pushing through the crowd that’d been in the house only moments before the sirens sounded, keeping his beady-as-fuck eyes on me, he came straight up the walk. Striding through the front door like he owned the place, he aimed right for me.
Reeking of money in his custom suit, the slick asshole held his hand out. “Leo Amherst.”
I knew who the hell he was. Everyone who was anyone knew who he was, but I didn’t shake his hand or play into his power-trip bullshit. Giving up on the glass, I picked up the bottle of Jack and threw back. My throat numb, the bottle already half gone, I wanted to forget about this whole fucked-up night. None of this would’ve happened if I’d kept my goddamn hands to myself.
Resigned, I spared Amherst a glance before looking back at the cops. “What do you want?”
The prick cut right to the chase. “Where’s Sanaa?”
I snorted. “You’re late to the party.” I’d handed her a wad of cash a half hour ago and told her to get lost until I could clean this fucking mess up. “You already missed her.” The beautiful, innocent Sanaa, too goddamn innocent and the one woman I never should’ve touched. She didn’t want me. She thought I was him, and I didn’t fucking stop her.
The asshole Amherst didn’t leave. “Where’d she go? She’s not at home.”
“Fuck if I know.” Attempting to dull the memory of what I’d done, I took another swig.
Amherst pulled a chair out from the kitchen table, kicked the leg aside of some prick passed out on the floor, and sat right in front of me. Leaning his elbows on his knees, he steepled his fingers and leveled me with a look. “Do you know who I am?”
“Do I look like I care?” Anything this asshole could do to me would pale in compa
rison to what my bosses were capable of. Besides, running guns for the past year for people I wasn’t stupid enough to speak of out loud made me about as untouchable as this asshole’s bank account made him. If he was smart, he’d realize there was a reason I wasn’t talking to the cops from the back seat of a cruiser with my hands cuffed.
“You should,” Amherst warned.
Squinting to focus, I pretended to look at him. “Why’s that?” I didn’t give a single fuck about this conversation or where it was going. I’d already paid the cops off.
“For one, I make more money in an hour than you make in a year.” He tipped his chin toward the front door. “But more importantly, the guy going to the morgue and the guy being taken away in the ambulance, both of whom were beaten outside your house party tonight, they work for me.”
Wasn’t my party. At least, it wasn’t being thrown in my honor. There wasn’t a damn thing honorable about me. Technically, the house wasn’t mine either. I just lived here, courtesy of the people I worked for.
“Sounds like a bad night for both of them.” I drank again, but I couldn’t taste shit anymore. “Or maybe their bad night started long before this. Maybe they made a shit decision when they decided to work for you.” When the hell did Jack Daniel’s start tasting like water?
Unimpressed with my reasoning, Amherst kept talking. “Do you know what my manager said right before his injuries rendered him unconscious?”
I took a calculated guess. “That your dick’s small and you pay shit?”
“That you’re the one who beat him up and killed his assistant, right after he informed you that he’d signed Sanaa and he was her new manager. He said you had a problem with that.”
I smirked. “Funny, the cops said his assistant beat the fuck out of him right before he punched the dude in the face. One strike and the fucker was dead.” I took another swallow of the Jack. “At least, that’s what they surmised because there were no witnesses. And for the record, if I’d bothered to beat the fuck out of anyone, you can guarantee they wouldn’t be conscious long enough to speak, let alone say my name.”
“He pointed at you,” the asshole clarified.
I glanced from the open front door to the mess around me. Two people fucking on the couch, some dick passed out on the floor, a chick snorting lines off the coffee table, and a handful of stragglers doing shots in the kitchen who couldn’t be bothered by the spectacle of cops and an ambulance outside. I never should’ve invited these losers from work to this party. “Right. He singled me out among all the other assholes in here.” I took another swig. “Good luck proving that.”
“Do you see anyone else in here in a black T-shirt who’s Sanaa’s boyfriend?”
I laughed.
Then I couldn’t stop laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Amherst demanded.
“I’m not her boyfriend, you fucking dick.” I laughed harder.
The chick on the couch screamed right before the dude pounding her growled out a “Fuck.”
Amherst glanced at them in disgust, then looked back at me and leaned closer. “Let me explain something to you very clearly. Your little girlfriend shows up at my office tomorrow morning by nine ready to fulfill her contract, or I’ll make sure the cops know it was you who killed one of my employees and beat the other within an inch of his life. And when they come to arrest you? Trust me, it’ll be decades before you see the outside of a jail cell.”
Fucking prick. He had no idea who he was screwing with. “So let me see if I’ve got this straight. Your manager signed Sanaa, then beat the fuck out of his assistant, and now you want to blackmail me, who’s not her boyfriend, to get your shiny new toy to show up for work tomorrow?” This shit was almost laughable. “Did I forget anything?”
“Yeah, the part where I have a witness that says you killed a man tonight.”
“And I have a woman who was with me all night who says otherwise.” Or I would as soon as I paid someone to lie for me.
We glared at each other.
Amherst broke first.
Standing, the asshole pulled a business card out of his pocket and tossed it on the table. “Sanaa better be there tomorrow.” Then he leveled me with a warning look right before he kicked my house of cards. “Or I’ll make sure your side gig of hustling guns becomes your last shit decision.” Leaning close, he dropped his voice. “Remember this about me, Conlon. I make the big bucks because I do my homework.”
The whiskey doing nothing to take the edge off, I fucking seethed.
Then I played the only card I had left.
“Do you know what your asshole manager and his assistant said in front of witnesses about an underage seventeen-year-old girl?” I didn’t wait for the fuck to guess. “They said they were going to take Sanaa for a test drive before passing her around to every executive prick who works for you.” My grip tightened on the bottle of Jack. “How many young recording artists do you think are going to want to sign with Trinity Media Group once your company makes headlines for statutory rape?”
Straightening, the fucker didn’t even blink. “Make sure Sanaa shows up tomorrow and you won’t be taken out by the people you work for.”
Maybe they’d kill me, maybe they wouldn’t. At this point, I didn’t care. “You think I have control over Sanaa?”
“I don’t think. I know.”
“Then know this.” I stood and got in his face. “She’s not walking into any goddamn recording studio or anywhere else where she’ll be cornered, coerced, assaulted, fucked, or taken advantage of.”
The asshole ran his hand down his tie, calm as shit, like he was talking about the weather. “I’ll personally take her under my wing.”
I’d heard plenty about his reputation and seen him in action enough times at the club to know exactly what that meant. “So you can fuck her first?” No goddamn way. “Not happening.” Everything I’d done tonight, I owed it to Sanaa to protect her from this asshole, but the bottom line was there was someone I would protect more.
Amherst, the conceited fuck, smiled. “You seem to think you have leverage here.”
The only leverage I had was that he had a hard-on for Sanaa. “You seem to think I don’t.” I wasn’t a fucking saint. I’d use that to my advantage if it meant making a second-degree manslaughter charge go away.
“Don’t be obtuse. If it wasn’t me who signed her, it’d be someone else. And trust me, I’m her best bet at making it in this business.”
I pointed out the obvious. “You didn’t sign her, your would-be rapist employee did.”
The fucker’s gaze narrowed. “For someone who claims to not be her boyfriend, you seem awfully invested.”
“Says the man who threatened me over a seventeen-year-old.” And I was invested. Full fucking throttle invested as of a couple hours ago when a hot brunette with a killer voice mistook me for someone else and stripped in front of me. Then I’d fucked three people’s lives all to hell, mine included. Not to mention the piece of shit going to the morgue and the asshole on his way to the hospital.
Amherst sighed like he was bored. “Since you seem to not care about your future and I want Sanaa on my label, we can handle this one of two ways.”
I hated Amherst, but he was right about one thing. I didn’t give a shit about my future anymore. But I did about someone else’s. “I’m not going to handle anything. You are.”
The fucker arrogantly lifted an eyebrow.
I laid it out. “You’re going to make sure when your pedophile manager wakes up, he sticks to the story the cops have. Pay him off, make him disappear, I don’t give a fuck. But you’re going to guarantee me he never works a single day with Sanaa or any other young girl. Then, when you decide you can control yourself and keep your dick in your pants around her, I’ll bring her in.”
The fucker didn’t even hesitate. “Deal.” He nodded at his card on the table. “Bring her in to my office tomorrow, or I’ll be back with the cops. And trust me, that’ll only be the beginning of
your troubles.”
Knowing I was a complete son of a bitch, I tipped my chin and snatched the card, shoving it in my pocket. “We’re done here. Get the fuck out of my house.”
“Gladly.” Shaking his head at the chick doing lines, Amherst walked out.
I picked up the Jack and chugged.
Present Day.
Sitting in one of the cubicles at Luna and Associates, I stared at the picture on my cell. My attention half on the details, half on my surroundings, I heard my boss come up behind me.
Without turning around, I gave the photo one more cursory glance. “André.”
“Mierda,” André Luna swore in Spanish. “Still not sure how you can tell it’s me, but it gets me every time.” He leaned against the desk and crossed his arms. His shrewd gaze taking in the photo on my screen, he tipped his chin. “Keeping up with current events or taking a walk down memory lane?”
I closed out the image of the detonated IED and shoved my phone into my pocket. “Last deployment,” I answered vaguely.
Luna nodded as if he understood. “One of yours?”
It should’ve been, but I’d missed it. I’d only caught its twin placed two meters away and disabled it before giving the all clear. The armament carrier moved on my go and, seven seconds later, took the hit. There were no fatalities that day, only minor injuries, but it didn’t matter. I’d fucked up. It was the second time in my life I’d completely fucked up.
Ignoring Luna’s question, I turned in my chair to face him. “What’s up?”
Luna studied me for a beat, then he inadvertently gave me one of his tells. His gaze drifted over my head. “I got a call a few minutes ago.” He looked back at me. “It was Vance.”
I didn’t react.
Luna fished. “You heard from him recently?”
“Define recently.” Every muscle in my body controlled, I gave nothing away.
Luna held my gaze, then he muttered under his breath. “Dios mio, amigo. He’s your brother.”
