by Tessa Dawn
The laptop fan began to hum beneath her, even as the soft, pastel glow illuminated the couch. Natalia bit her nails. “C’mon, Santos,” she whispered beneath her breath. “Say something…anything.” When her eyes misted with tears, she knew she was a foolish little girl.
She was an idiot.
A child.
A twenty-five-year-old virgin who had been born into a criminal empire.
An expert hacker who was toying with the very best—her superior.
And she had just tainted the only pure, untouched fantasy—the only potential coveted friendship—she had ever hoped to contrive.
The daydream that kept her sane.
One minute turned into five, then five turned into ten, and Natalia felt sick to her stomach. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she reached for the screen to close it: “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she whispered.
He was too smart to play silly games with a child.
And then her screen lit up with a message from Santos.
Natalia…
Giovanni…
Where are you?
Can we meet?
Santos Olaru leaned back in his leather recliner, staring at the wall of monitors in his modern glass-and-steel domicile beside a private lake on the northwest end of Dark Moon Vale. The moonlight was shimmering like a spotlight on the serene, crystal water below, and it merged with the glow of his monitors, creating a peaceful halo effect.
She was at it again.
The human female.
Playing her coy cyber-games and following Santos all over the Web.
From what he could tell, she had followed him for years.
At first, he had found it cute…entertaining…something to cut through the boredom on his house of Jadon days off, but now, it was no longer amusing. The woman was an expert hacker, and for a moment, she had gotten the best of him, with her multiple layers of diversion and encryption.
But this time, the vampire had been ready.
Ready to follow her, ready to slip into her machine, ready to trace her expertly disguised, hidden address…the moment she reopened the chat box.
Only what he’d found was chilling.
The IP address led back to Luca Giovanni, the reclusive billionaire. And the human female’s administrative credentials led back to several expensive software purchases, all under the name of Natalia. A quick scan of vital records, and Santos Olaru knew, at least with 95 percent certainty, that he was being followed…through cyberspace…by Giovanni’s daughter.
What. The. Hell.
Human concerns—even human crimes—were off-limits to the house of Jadon.
Napolean’s law was inviolable!
But this?
This was something altogether different.
Jocelyn Levi had come to Dark Moon Vale as an agent of ICE, investigating a human-trafficking ring, one she believed was run by Luca Giovanni, but she had never had a chance to follow up. It was no longer her concern: no longer her job…no longer within her legal purview.
Not to mention, she got derailed by Shelby and Dalia’s tragic story.
By her and Nathaniel’s Blood Moon.
But then Xavier Matista, a lycan enemy from the land of Mhier, had interfered with Saxson’s Blood Destiny, holding the woman hostage for nearly a week while he’d kept another human sex slave in the Swingle-Duplex Suites: a pair of lavish Denver penthouses owned by Giovanni, Inc.
According to Nachari Silivasi, Zayda Patrone—Keitaro’s wild, feral guest who just happened to be Xavier’s biological daughter—was the offspring of one of Luca’s human prostitutes, born in some nefarious brick structure where she grew up as a slave.
It was all supposed to be a coincidence.
Until now…
Luca Giovanni’s daughter, following Santos on the Web…
For years?
This was no accident.
It couldn’t be.
ArabianNight500—my ass!
He hit a button to activate voice dictation and spoke each word, including punctuation, clearly: Natalia, ellipsis. Giovanni, ellipsis. Where are you, question mark. Can we meet, question mark.
It didn’t matter if she answered in the affirmative…
He was already looking up her physical address from an incredibly reliable source: her most recent bank statement.
Chapter One
Santos Olaru enlarged the screen in the upper left quadrant of a series of monitors, zeroing in on Natalia’s bank statement, specifically, the paragraph at the top: Pine Ridge Credit Union; Giovanni, Inc.; Natalia Giovanni; 231 Upper Mill Creek Road; Morrison, Colorado…
He had it.
Her address.
He leaned forward in the soft, comfortable recliner and fixed both crystal-blue peepers on the center screen, once again worrying his full bottom lip with his upper teeth. “C’mon, sweetheart,” he drawled beneath his breath. “Answer the question, Natalia girl. Can. We. Meet?”
Thanks to his heightened vampiric senses, what might have been a low, audible hum, buzzing from the base of his PC unit, was rapidly approaching a steady, high-pitched drone: His heartbeat quickened, his mind on high alert, and he began to tap his fingers on the edge of his desk, rolling them in quick succession like a highly skilled drum major.
“Speak to me, baby,” he murmured beneath his breath.
Time stood still.
And then the iChat box began to glow with a pulsing, incandescent light, which informed Santos that Natalia was typing.
Not possible, she shot back.
Why not? he asked.
No answer.
Returning to the upper left screen, he maneuvered the mouse, entered some code, and slipped effortlessly into the Department of Motor Vehicles’ main frame, where he entered Natalia’s full name and address. While he waited for a photo ID or a driver’s license to pop up, he dictated another line in the center screen’s chat box: You’ve been following me for years. He was no longer playing games. I know you’re intrigued, baby girl. And so am I. Why not meet?
He might have been flirting too hard, but he didn’t think so—something about this woman struck him as unusually lonely, perhaps even isolated…an island unto herself.
If hesitation, nervousness, and fear could have shown up on a screen, then Santos’ monitor would have been pulsing to the rhythm of a frantic heartbeat—Natalia’s discomfort was just that palpable, her chaotic energy mixing with the signals in the Wi-Fi.
Just what was her game? he wondered.
So she knew she’d been caught—cyberstalking, that is—but so what?
Santos played his own fair share of virtual hide-and-seek. If anything, she should have been proud, perhaps even arrogant, about how deftly she had matched his cyber prowess.
Natalia???
She didn’t respond.
Speak to me, angel, he tried again. We’re hardly strangers…right?
Her driver’s license popped up in the upper left quadrant, and Santos had to catch his breath. Whoa. Typically, state IDs resembled hideous, nondescript mugshots, but there was nothing typical—or nondescript—about Natalia Antoinette Giovanni. He studied her photo in earnest: long, luxurious hair, falling all the way to her waist; perfectly sculpted brows framing dark, mesmerizing eyes; a nose that could have been painted by Michelangelo, such was the structural perfection; and lips—holy hell, that bottom lip—Santos could almost taste it.
He turned his attention to a light-green bar expanding slowly…horizontally…across the top left screen. Eighty percent. He was almost there. He was this close to being logged into Natalia’s computer: this close to accessing her files; this close to downloading her calendar; and this close to viewing her photo library. “C’mon, cyber-magic; you’re workin’ with a powerful CPU. Just a little bit more.”
A pale glint of moonlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows towering above the crystal lake, and as if interacting with a prism, the moonbeams cast a subtle red halo against the living room wall, cau
sing the hairs on Santos’ arms to prickle and a corner of his heart to soften.
Like all the sentinels in the house of Jadon, Santos Olaru was merciless when it came to protecting the Vampyr’s interest or hacking a human’s computer, especially the daughter of Luca Giovanni’s—Natalia was no exception—however, something told him he might want to approach this with a softer touch…
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than Natalia’s reply popped up: SANTOS. She typed each letter in caps on a single line—was she angry? I have to go!
Santos leaned forward in his chair, deciding to push harder, faster, stronger.
He had to keep her attention.
You live at 231 Upper Mill Creek Road, he shot back, hoping to startle her with the information. Don’t go, Natalia. The vintage clock, sitting on a sleek, high-gloss steel shelf just above his desk, ticked ten times, the seconds advancing like hours, as Santos waited for Natalia’s reply. He stared at the dual, old-fashioned hands adorning the Roman numerals; he unwittingly rocked to the timepiece’s rhythm; and he twirled the end of a number-two pencil.
You know where I reside? she asked.
He smiled reflexively. I do.
Stay away!!! she shot back, the outburst catching Santos off guard.
I’m not going to hurt you, Natalia. He chose his words very carefully. As I said before, I’m deeply intrigued. You’ve followed me, and now you’ve found me—why not bring the cat-and-mouse game to a close? I could come to your front door, but I imagine your father would frown on that. Giovanni, correct? You’re Luca’s daughter. Meet me, Natalia girl. I want to see the eyes and the smile behind all those brains. He sat back and waited, wondering if he hadn’t gone too far this time, pushed a bit too hard, whether flirting might have been the wrong approach.
Still…
Something in his gut, something in his instincts, was screaming: Dangle a romantic carrot! This woman is savvy. She’s smart. And she may even be cunning or dangerous, but all she had done—following Santos for years, creating layers upon layers of encryption between them, just to fashion her own end-around chat box—was all in order to meet him. No, Natalia Giovanni was more than just curious…and industrious. The female was lonely, and she was equally intrigued by Santos. She wanted something…intimate…a connection with another soul, even if the connection was through the safety of a computer.
Please, she wrote cryptically. I—
She skipped a line and tried a different word. You—
Yet another line and another entry: If you really do know who I am—
I know who you are, he interrupted.
Then you know that us…that we…that meeting is virtually impossible.
Santos stared at that last sentence like it was written in Greek, but before he could fashion a shrewd reply, the light-green horizontal bar in the upper left screen reached 100 percent.
He was inside Natalia’s computer!
He toggled through her programs first, using vampiric speed and alacrity to store them in his photographic memory, and once he had the programs stored, his analytical mind began to race: What to view first? What to save first? He might only have a couple of minutes. He stopped at her calendar, opened the month of June, and began to take a series of screenshots, just as a flashing red warning popped up on his monitor.
Incoming Virus!
EXIT NOW!
The program you have accessed may be harmful to your computer!
Son of a jackal, Natalia had caught him—that quick—and if he didn’t act fast, she was going to infect his entire system.
Growling in frustration, Santos closed all the open windows, backed out of Natalia’s machine, and shut down his PC—he would reboot it in a couple of minutes, check for any damage, and see if he had managed to grab the screenshots of her calendar…or any other data.
Rising from his anxious perch in the familiar leather recliner, he paced across the white-oak floors to the glistening wall of windows and stared down at the placid lake below, drawing from its tranquil energy. He brushed an absent hand through his black-and-blond locks, and then he smiled wolfishly…
Natalia Antoinette Giovanni…
Coy, beautiful, and smart as a whip.
Now that was a human woman he could pass some time with.
He sighed…
But then again, she was Luca Giovanni’s daughter, and he had to keep that fact in mind.
Luca had imprisoned a half-human, half-Lycan sex slave in a brick fortress on his property, and more than likely, Giovanni, Inc. had been supplying the Dark Ones with human sacrifices—women to procreate with and dispose of—for years, if not decades. Natalia may or may not be innocent of her father’s crimes. She may or may not be involved. And beyond that troubling information, there was the matter of General Xavier Matista: a degenerate lycan from Mhier who had used that same sex slave—his very own daughter, Zayda—to incite and bait Keitaro Silivasi, the day Keitaro and his son Nachari had found her in the Swingle-Duplex penthouse.
Too many enemies.
Too many coincidences.
Too many overlapping layers.
If Santos had managed to save a legible copy of Natalia’s schedule, then absolutely, the two of them would meet.
And soon.
But not for a romantic liaison.
In the meantime, Santos would pull some satellite images of the Giovanni compound, try to get the blueprints for Luca’s (and Natalia’s) residence. He would pay a visit to Keitaro at the old Silivasi homestead, on the northeastern end of the vale, and see what the Ancient Master Warrior had discovered. Keitaro had been nursing Zayda back to health for the past four months; perhaps after all this time, he had managed to make a breakthrough.
Perhaps Zayda had revealed something useful.
Regarding the moon’s reflection on the crystal lake below, Santos thought about the house of Jadon and his duty as one of its four sentinels. Both Ramsey and Saxson were mated now, and maybe that was why he felt so restless, so solitary…why a part of him could relate to Natalia. He didn’t yet know how the pieces of this puzzle would intersect, but he was definitely up to the challenge…and the distraction.
Chapter Two
In the corner of her bedroom, Natalia stuffed her laptop inside the elegant Louis XIV walnut armoire, slammed the ornate panel doors shut, and leaned against the antique wood as if she could simply shut out the distress of all that had happened—lock Santos Olaru out of her life and her mind—by turning her back on the related equipment.
Lord have mercy…
You’ve been following me for years…I know you’re intrigued, and so am I.
The man was so direct.
Why not meet?
He couldn’t be serious!
We’re hardly strangers…right?
Oh, they were definitely strangers, and it needed to stay that way.
I know who you are…Luca Giovanni’s daughter.
How much did Santos know about her father?
Meet me, Natalia girl. I want to see the eyes and the smile behind all those brains.
The man was the devil in blue jeans, and if his smooth, sexy banter hadn’t been enough to underscore that point, he had hacked into her computer and begun to sort through her files! How in the world had he done that?
Natalia braced one hand on her lower belly and drew in a deep breath of air, trying to quiet her racing mind: A fantasy was one thing—imagining the exquisite, crystal-eyed stranger as some kind of friend, an imaginary lover, and a make-believe escape—but meeting him, speaking to him, actually standing in the same space and time as the powerful, gorgeous, flesh-and-blood man? That was quite another matter.
No way.
No how.
Natalia’s heart would give out, and her knees would buckle beneath her.
She wrung her hands together, then shook them out to relieve some tension.
I’m not going to hurt you, Natalia, he had said, but hurt her, he had…already.
He knew where
she lived. He had her full address. And he had stepped into her room, burrowed into her laptop, and entered her sacred space as easily—and eerily—as mist traveled through fog.
Her father would kill him.
Oskar would kill him.
Hell, knowing Natalia would be Santos’ demise…
And even if he made it out of the encounter alive, could she really withstand his presence, dare to meet him in person, give in to a singular flight of fancy, even for one evening? Or would she be just like Eve in the garden of Eden, staring at that damnable apple, contemplating the repercussions of taking just one little bite…
Hell, Natalia wasn’t stupid.
She might be ignorant, naive, and even pathetic, but she wasn’t entirely brainless.
Her life was owned by her father, and it was soon to be owned by Oskar Vadovsky—her future was sealed and prescribed. Not to mention, there were dozens of women living in a stronghold less than seven miles away on the Giovanni property, and each and every one of their lives depended upon Natalia’s obedience.
She could never be that selfish.
Romeo and Juliet…Marc Antony and Cleopatra…Prince Paris and Helen of Troy—all romantic stories that came to tragic ends.
Love was not a game.
Lust was not a low-cost wager.
And Natalia was not a fool.
She had no doubt that Santos had blocked the virus—and if not, he could easily reverse the damage—but that was the beginning and the end of their short, interactive dalliance…such as it had been. Once Natalia had taken a long, hot shower, cleared her mind, and slipped into a comfortable pair of familiar pajamas, she would retrieve her laptop and do the unthinkable: She would remove every trace of Santos Olaru from her life, her world, and her hard drive. From her memory and her imagination. She would delete iChat Platinum from her machine and erase the end-around chat box, once and for all.
She would wash her hands—forever—of Sentinel2000.
He was a childhood fantasy she could no longer afford.
Chapter Three
