Hearts Of Darkness (The Santiago Trilogy Book 1)

by Catherine Wiltcher

  “You promised to behave, Eve Miller.” His fingers are clawing into the soft flesh of my upper arm – crushing, tearing. I cry out as the pain shoots all the way up to the tip of my shoulder. “Are we still being followed?” he calls out to one of his men.

  “No, señor. We lost the tail a while back.”

  He nods as if this news is expected. “Tell Tomas I’m ready to leave immediately.” He glances back at me and my head is filled with a million questions. Why did he walk into liquor store and hold a gun to my head? This man has money, serious money. I have $2000 in a checking account, no savings, a mortgage…

  “Why am I here?” I scream, losing control suddenly, fighting like a hellcat to free myself from his grip.

  “Calm down, Eve.” His dark eyes are perfect circles of fury.

  “Never! Not until you tell me!”

  He considers me coldly for a moment. “You’re here because I take what I want.” And before I can stop him he’s yanking me back against his body and crushing my mouth with his own, forcing all of his darkness and violence onto me.

  My lips part in shock, a silent scream, and his warm tongue delves hungrily into my mouth. I try to move my head away but a large hand grips the base of my neck, holding me immobile. My palms find his chest and I push with all my might but it’s no use, a fool’s quest. He’s an unmovable rock of hard muscle and determination, and I can do little but moan my protest. He kisses me harder in response, expertly thrusting his tongue between my teeth, corrupting me over and over again with his raw masculinity.

  Does this man make love with the same skill and intensity?

  My thoughts seem to kick-start my senses. My reticence switches to submission and I find myself melting into his rough embrace, my fingers reaching up to burrow into his silky, black hair as a throbbing beat awakens between my thighs. A moan escapes me when I feel the thick bulge of his erection nudging against my stomach and I’m starving for something I never knew I wanted. How has this happened? I hate this man. He’s the antithesis to every quality I celebrate – kindness, tenderness, parity… This tyrant only knows how to take and take, and there’s absolutely nothing gentle about his touch.

  All of a sudden he’s pulling away again, leaving me gasping, wanting and breathless for more. “Goodbye, sweet Eve,” he murmurs, his expression unreadable, his dark eyes giving me nothing. “It’s high time I returned you to Eden.”

  And just like that he’s turning away and walking towards his aircraft.

  2

  Dante

  “We’re ready to go when you are jefe.”

  I nod in Tomas’ direction but my eyes are fixed elsewhere. I’m striding up the aisle to where Rodrigo is sprawled out across his seat, tapping out a message on his cell. Two seconds later I’m hauling him to his feet by his neck and slamming him against the side of the aircraft. He’s a big man but I’m a fucking mountain. The plane goes deathly quiet around me. No one makes a move. No one intervenes.

  No one dares.

  “You ever say shit like that to me again and I’ll cut out your tongue,” I say calmly but my words are spiked with intent. My grip on his throat tightens. “Well?”

  Rodrigo’s remaining eye is bulging out of its socket with fear. “Sorry, Señor Santiago,” he gasps, his voice nothing but a harsh wheeze through a crushed windpipe. “It won’t happen again.”

  Damn right it won’t. There is no place in this universe where this man is my equal. What he said to me in the car crossed a fucking line.

  I release him with a hard push and he slides to his knees gasping for air. I take a seat at the back of the aircraft as far away from him as possible.

  Breathe, Dante, breathe.

  My rage is blinding and bloody, a beast of unspeakable evil. Some days I can barely control this insidious darkness inside of me, and it’s not just Rodrigo and his careless comments that are fanning the flames tonight. This operation was meant to be a cut and dry. Twelve hours in Miami. That’s all the time I needed to take out a rival who has been encroaching on our territory and fucking up the natural order of things. But someone talked. Someone leaked the plan. Now I have ten dead recruits on my hands – skilled men I trained myself – and my target is still strutting about making a fool of me.

  The aircraft begins to taxi. All the seats adjacent to me are empty. These men know better than to try and make small talk when I’m in this kind of mood, when I’ve got nothing but harsh retribution on my mind. Tonight was a shit show and I’ve no compensation for any of it apart from a lingering kiss from the purest of angels.

  I didn’t turn back once after I released her from my arms. I didn’t stop to see her fall to her knees in tearful relief but I imagined it all in my head. It played out like some perfect movie scene – the good girl granted a stay of execution at the last minute by the bad man. Because that’s exactly what I am, a very bad man.

  I shocked myself by walking into that store and holding a gun to her head. I’m not a man who makes his decisions lightly but I wasn’t thinking straight. All hell had broken loose on us ten blocks away, twenty vehicles were burning and a local nightclub had been decimated by firepower. The authorities were all over it and my men were on the ropes. It wasn’t supposed to play out like that. My ops are swift, precise and deadly. There’s no margin for error. I’ve built our entire name on my particular brand of effectiveness.

  And now this…

  I’d only just managed to escape when I messaged Rodrigo to meet me at the rendezvous point, a quiet street about half a mile from the target. She’d walked past me and caught my attention right away. Something about the generous curve of her breasts and the fact that she’d tried so hard to hide them underneath her black sweater; how the evening breeze kept mussing up her hair and slicing at those cheekbones with strands of black silk… Best of all was that sexy, determined look on her face. This woman had someplace to be. Somewhere that didn’t include yours truly. That thought had eaten away at me until I found myself stepping inside that liquor store with my gun in my hand.

  It was a perfect storm of attraction. She never stood a chance. Skin like porcelain, tall and slender with fire in all the right places, soft pink lips that called out to my dick like a siren. I didn’t lie when she asked me outright why I took her, I did so because I wanted her. I’m not in the habit of making women bend to my will. I have the money, the power and the looks to get what I want with minimal effort but I had a hunch she’d need a little more persuasion… and damn I wanted to be the one doing the persuading. It caught me by surprise. I’ve learnt to curb these sorts of feelings. I consider them dead to me like a couple of other things called decency and compassion.

  Once I made my move there was no turning back. Something inside snapped the closer I got. Then there she was, two feet away and smelling like heaven. Not that a man like me will ever know.

  Everything about her was intoxicating. The feel of her soft ass pressed tightly against my throbbing dick, the way she’d felt in my arms – so slender and fragile, the smell of her fear mixed with her perfume… Did she sense my lust for her? She must have done. It took every ounce of restraint not to take her in my arms and taste her then and there; forcing her to submit to me before we’d even left the liquor store.

  We’re airborne now. From my vantage point I can see the top of Rodrigo’s blonde buzz cut from five rows away. In the car he’d requested a share of her once I was done, like she was some prostitute I’d picked up on the street to lose myself in for an hour or two, a cheap and easy consolation for tonight. His words were disrespectful to me, to her… It stoked the beast inside of me. The thought of that prick laying a finger on her had made the ramifications of our aborted mission pale into insignificance.

  I’m feeling the urge to unfasten my seatbelt and go beat the living shit out of him, to finish what I started, to watch his ugly, scarred face dissolve into blood and bone beneath my relentless, pounding fists. He’ll be dead in under a minute and I can almost taste the satisfac
tion I’d feel from it. He’s not one of my usual men. He works for my elder brother, Emilio, which puts an even bigger target on his back as far as I’m concerned. I have no loyalty to this man. If he survives this plane journey he’ll never do another job for me again.

  Miami’s a couple of hundred miles behind us now and I’m replaying that kiss in my head. She tasted like the sweetest damn honey. The way she’d kissed me back had promised such a contradiction to her straitlaced clothes and prissy manner, and I’d envisaged long nights of hot sin wrapped around her body. I was halfway drunk on her light and innocence until some long, forgotten sentiment clawed at me from the darkness.

  Mercy.

  That bullshit didn’t belong in that aircraft hanger but when I felt her fingers delving into my hair I knew I didn’t want her by force anymore, I couldn’t risk breaking her. I’m not known for tender touches and soft kisses. Hell, there are damaged women all over the world who can testify to that. So I let her go.

  I let her go…?

  Bad move.

  Now I can’t stop thinking about her. She’s planted a seed that I’m aching to fuck into fruition. My good girl, my angel, has another side to her and it’s one that I intend to discover. One night, that’s all I need. Just one. When things blow over I’ll return to Miami and take what I’m owed. I need to see her again, I don’t have a choice. This kind of lust will never be satiated until she’s in my bed and I’m buried deep inside of her, with her nails tattooing her need for me across my skin and that long dark hair spilling all around her face.

  Mine.

  That woman is mine.

  She has no choice in the matter… I always take what I want.

  3

  Eve

  It’s 2am. I can’t sleep. I’m lying underneath the covers in total darkness with all four walls closing in on me. Seventy-two hours have passed since my ordeal but I can’t stop reliving it in my head. Everything about that man is wrong. He’s shattered my life with his appearance and now he’s tormenting me with his absence.

  I lied to the police. I gave them a false description of the dark-eyed devil who abducted me at gunpoint and left me stranded in a private hanger on the edge of Miami Beach. The man whose aircraft I stood and watched fade into the night sky until there was nothing left to see except a flashing, tri-color blur. I told them he was five-seven, with blonde hair and blue eyes – a complete contradiction to the deadly foreigner who has bought such terror into my life, the heartless criminal, the trained killer. The man who didn’t think twice about forcing himself on me…

  My cell beeps. It’s my friend, Anna.

  You still awake? x

  Her shift at the bar must be nearly done. She volunteers at an animal shelter by day and transforms into a cocktail-shaking vixen at night. She’s a hot blond with a heart of gold and people always tell me she adds triple the amount of tequila to their margaritas.

  I message her back straightaway:

  Friends reruns are for life, not just for insomniacs… x

  Another lie. I haven’t switched on my TV for days. A few seconds later my cell rings.

  “That bad, huh?” Anna sighs. “You wanna come down? I’m not supposed to finish my shift for another thirty minutes but I could duck out early if you want? My boss owes me.”

  I smile at the concern in her voice but at the same time I’m put off by the loud voices and thrumming beats in the background. The aftermath of my abduction has left me suspended in this weird alternative universe where all I want to do is hide away. I don’t want to be the centre of attention. I don’t want to face anymore probing questions. I don’t want to have to think about him anymore than I already do.

  “Not tonight,” I say quickly. “Thanks anyway. I think I just need to hunker down.” I chuck in an elaborate yawn that makes the sides of my jaw ache.

  “You still thinking about him?”

  All the damn time.

  “I’m worried about you, Evie,” she says, breaking my silence for me. “You haven’t been yourself since it happened. You’re safe now you know that, right? The police will hunt him down and lock him up.”

  No they won’t.

  It doesn’t matter what I told the police. My assailant has been playing on the wrong side of the law for years. Evading capture is a sport to him, not an inevitability.

  “Are you chewing on your thumbnail again?”

  “No,” I lie, whisking it out of my mouth. It’s a cute habit leftover from my childhood that all my friends tease me about. I do it when I’m uneasy and that man is making me as edgy as hell.

  “Have you thought about talking to anyone about this?”

  I finger the outline of a business card on my nightstand. “The police gave me this number to call…” I trail off, uncertain.

  “Then call it,” she urges. “Promise me, Evie. First thing tomorrow. If anything you’ll get a couple of Xanax out of it.” A voice starts talking to her suddenly, asking where the juice mixers are kept. “Look, I gotta run, I’ll call you in the morning, ok?”

  “Fine.”

  “And promise me you’ll call that number?”

  “I promise,” I lie.

  “Do it, Evie!”

  “Ok, ok, I’ll do it!”

  “You know you look cute when you pout, right?”

  “Bye Anna…”

  I hang up and stare at my cell in despair. The truth is I don’t want to talk to anyone about what happened. I’m scared I’ll let something slip and implicate myself… and him. Why do I feel this way? Why do I feel the need to protect this man?

  Because that kiss changed everything.

  Is this lust? Hate? Some kind of messed-up fusion of both? I’m frightened by the pull of emotion I feel but I’m strangely curious about it too. Have I really existed for twenty-five years without experiencing this crazy firebrand called desire before? I realize now that I’ve been living a half-life. I’ve given my body to men in the past, I’ve even convinced myself I’ve been in love with them, yet I’ve never felt a physical connection like that. One kiss, that’s all it was, and in those few short moments he managed to set fire to every single part of me.

  I kissed him back. I couldn’t help myself. It was instinctive. He’s a natural-born hunter and I’m the hunted. I had nothing left to bargain with except my total and utter submission. He said it himself, “he takes what he wants”, and in that moment my body was craving a man like him.

  The shrill ring of my cell shatters the silence again. I pause before answering. No Caller ID. What if it’s him? What if he’s tracked me down? What if he’s returning to finish what he started?

  With a trembling finger I hit the green button right before it rings out. Straightaway my mom’s voice filters down the line.

  “Honey? Did I wake you?”

  “Jesus mom, do you know what time it is?” My words come out a little harsher than I intended.

  “I’m sorry to call you this late...” Her voice trails off with a wobble. “It’s Dad, Evie. There’s been an accident. I thought you should know.”

  I fumble for the light switch, my heart pounding like a drum. I’ve been dreading this phone call for weeks. I’m the proud daughter of a DEA special agent and right now the streets of downtown Miami are like a warzone. Two local gangs are fighting tooth and nail over a territory and my dad and his team keep getting caught in the crossfire.

  The same evening I was abducted he was on duty about half a mile away. He followed a tip-off and lost two colleagues in the ensuing gun battle at a well-known nightclub. Twenty-eight dead. That number still shocks me. Twenty-eight lives lost needlessly; twenty-eight lives destroyed; twenty-eight families wounded forever more by the events of that night.

  Up until three days ago I’d been covering the story for my paper. Now I can’t look at my laptop. I can’t concentrate. I barely eat. But outside the war is raging on just as fiercely. One family, the Garcia’s, are chancers and risk-takers, determined to gain power and notoriety by any means nec
essary. Their rivals are the Mendoza’s with connections to the notorious Santiago cartel from South America who rule the southern states with an iron fist. The Santiago’s are faceless strangers, men who prize their anonymity above everything. There are whispers of two brothers but nothing more.

  You could say I have a vested interest in all of this. I hate narcotics with every fiber of my being. I’ve seen what they do to people, what they did to my brother. I’ve been fighting my own private war against the illegal drugs trade for years, trying to expose the ringleaders and bring them down one newspaper article at a time.

  “What sort of accident?” I whisper. “Is dad going to be OK?”

  My mom stifles a sob.

  Shit, it’s bad. Real bad.

  “He’s been shot, Evie. I’m at the hospital now. They’ve just taken him down to theatre.”

  “Oh my god! I’m coming straight there. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

  I hang up and dress in record time. Not dad, not my wisecracking, lion-hearted bear of a father who never misses a football game or the chance to tell his only daughter how much he loves her. This can’t be happening, I won’t let it. If I force my mind into a state of vacant limbo then I’ll ward off all the painful thoughts that are closing in on me.

  I focus on zipping up my boots and grabbing my car keys and cell, and for the first time in three days my focus shifts to someone other than him.

  I reach the hospital at around 4am. It’s still dark. The first colors of dawn are still evading the skyline above the great, grey building in front of me. The temperature is a couple of degrees cooler than comfortable and I pull my denim jacket tighter around my shoulders as I lock my car and hurry towards the entrance.

  The sliding doors drift open as I approach. Once inside they swallow me whole. The reception area is a chaotic mix of people and gurneys, a discordance of noise and sharp, unfamiliar odors. Twilight hours are not defined in a place where the sick and injured have no schedules.