Bleeding Heart (Scions of Sin Book 1)

by Taylor Holloway

  “No, of course not. I think I’m shitty.” That wasn’t much better. I tried desperately to backtrack but my mouth was just doing its own thing. “I think most people are happy to make decisions from a self-centered, selfish perspective. I expect that from people, because they’re all just looking to get ahead in the rat race. Not you though. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Madison looked at me strangely. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” she finally said.

  “It’s a compliment, believe me,” I told her honestly, deciding to give up on trying to be anything but truthful. Anything else was too difficult, “I just wish the rest of us deserved people like you.”

  Madison smiled, and I finally felt like I’d said the right thing. It was even true.

  26

  Madison

  I should have worn more comfortable shoes because the day seemed to stretch on forever and my toes had a very finite tolerance for four-inch stilettos. I like high heels since they make me taller, but I’m not particularly good at wearing them. The extra height just isn’t worth the pain most of the time.

  Alexander and I spent the remainder of the afternoon working on the ‘new and improved’ version of the deal. He picked the investments and I picked who to bribe— oops, I mean who would receive the ‘local facilitation fees’. It felt evil just to write the darn thing. Alexander and I made a surprisingly effective and efficient team though, so at least I had an accomplice that I liked.

  The FBI happily provided us with a list of bribe-taking and generally corrupt Colombian government officials. While it shouldn’t have surprised me that they would have such a thing, it was disappointingly long and thorough. There seemed to be more corrupt politicians and civil servants in Colombia than honest ones. It wasn’t difficult to rework the legal language so much as just plain depressing to turn the deal I’d worked so hard to develop into something that looked almost the same but would have totally and completely opposite outcomes for the people of Bogota.

  Even though I knew this wasn’t the deal we’d end up signing, I felt dirty. The devil really was in the details. It took longer than I expected, and then Alexander Durant Junior, my dad, and the FBI all had to sign off, but by the time Alexander and I met everyone at the restaurant for dinner, the tainted version of the agreement was already sitting in the inboxes of all parties like a poison apple.

  The dinner itself was not nearly as awful as I’d feared. As if turns out, dining with people who might want to kill you is a lot like dining with people who don’t. Small talk is small talk; it pretty much sucks no matter what. The Senator bloviated, the Durant-Breyer clan traded poorly veiled slights with one another, and the Colombians drank too much. Angelica, who invited herself, made a fool of herself by playing footsie and making eyes at Frank, who apparently didn’t take his wedding ring too seriously when on international trips. If you didn’t know the subtext, you might think it was just an average Monday night with big shot business people. Lord knows I’ve had plenty of practice at that. Alexander sat next to me, and just having him near made me feel irrationally safer. The senator’s dour-faced giant guards who were posted everywhere might have helped with that too.

  “Where’s Mariana tonight?” Luisa asked me at one point, granting us both a reprieve from Frank and Angelica’s antics. Perhaps Angelica was looking to line up a second wealthy oil tycoon to marry once her first one died.

  “Oh Luisa,” I replied to her seriously, in a voice just over a whisper, “Mariana’s got the stomach flu. I didn’t want to say in front of the men earlier. But it’s brutal. She can’t even leave the bathroom. She said she’s never had diarrhea like this in her whole life.”

  Luisa didn’t ask any follow up questions.

  At the end of the evening, by which time we were both incredibly exhausted, Alexander and I went back to his house together. From the time I awoke to the moment the festivities finally concluded for the day, I’d been active nonstop for nineteen hours straight. I never made the conscious decision to sleep at Alexander’s house, and he never explicitly invited me over, but we didn’t need to discuss it. He just drove us there and we went inside. Despite the day we’d had, we were both still in need of company as much as rest. Taking off my torturous heels, stripping off my confining work clothes, and throwing myself into his arms was positively transcendental.

  “Did you mean what you said at lunch earlier, about thinking most people are out to get you?” I asked Alexander as we snuggled up next to each other in his bed. This point had been bothering me all evening. His expression turned pained.

  “Why does it matter?” He replied, stroking my neck and shoulder absently. I was wearing one of his t-shirts to sleep in. Not sexy, but the way he looked at me in it made me feel that way anyway. “I don’t think you’re out to get me.”

  “Are you sure?” I purred at him seductively, “I’m doing a pretty good job of getting you in the sack.”

  “Oh no. Help. Stop,” he said sarcastically, rolling his eyes and smiling, “If that’s the worst I can expect from you, please, bring it on.”

  “You’re right though it doesn’t really matter,” I said, turning more serious again and burrowing into the space between his neck and chest, “You’re entitled to your own perspective. I just want you to be happy.”

  Alexander was quiet after I said that. I started to get worried, but when I pulled back to look at him, I saw that he was smiling widely. It was a real smile, too—even the corners of his eyes were a bit crinkly.

  “I want you to be happy, too, Madison,” he finally said, pulling me toward him and laying a soft, gentle kiss on my lips that made my heart flutter wildly. “I’m sorry this is all happening right now.”

  “It’s hardly your fault. This whole situation is so bizarre. I still can barely believe we’re working with the FBI to catch a Colombian turncoat working for a pair of gangsters though. It’s like something out of a movie.”

  “What kind of movie?” Alexander asked, dropping the hand that had been stroking my shoulder down to cup my rear end. He pinched it and I giggled at him.

  “Not that kind,” I smirked, wriggling away from his fingers only to come right back a moment later. I wanted to make love, hell, if Alexander was there I pretty much always did, but we were both too tired to do anything but tease. As much as my body wanted Alexander, especially when he was all sexy and shirtless in just his pajama pants, my brain was demanding sleep.

  I could see myself getting used to this—the cute, lovey-dovey snuggling part of Alexander—not the gangster wrangling high-stakes adventure part. Somehow it didn’t feel like ‘just sex’ with him. Despite the lies I was continually telling myself about this being a regular, no-strings, rebound fling, it was starting to feel real. That scared me as much as anything else, gangsters included. But instead of doing the smart thing and running away, going home and trying to forget about Alexander before he crushed my heart to bits, I closed my eyes and fell asleep in his arms.

  When I awoke only a few hours later, sitting straight up in bed, crying and gasping out of a terrible nightmare, Alexander was there to pull me back down.

  “It’s ok Madison. Everything’s alright it was just a dream,” he shushed, repeating the words and rocking me until I stopped shaking.

  “Do you want to talk about your dream at all? Would it help?” He asked me when I’d calmed down from a shivering, weeping mess into just a regular mess.

  I shook my head and wiped the last of the tears away on the hem of Alexander’s T-shirt. I wished he hadn’t seen me crying. I’m a tremendously ugly crier. He didn’t seem to mind though. His dark eyes were full of concern.

  “I don’t even remember what it was about,” I replied haltingly, “it was something about the car bomb, but it’s all jumbled up now. I never remember my dreams, but I know it was scary.”

  Alexander’s arms tightened around me. He buried his face in my hair and I hugged him back in a crushing embrace for a long moment. He smelled so good.

&
nbsp; “I was terrified when it happened, Alexander,” I finally admitted to him. “We both got thrown back when the bomb detonated, but you didn’t get up. You were just lying there in the street and there was fire and smoke everywhere. I really thought you were dead. And my ears were ringing from the noise from the explosion, so I couldn’t hear anything at first, and then I could hear again but the people were all saying not to touch you. The paramedics said you could have a broken neck or horrible internal bleeding. It was all so awful. Do you remember anything?”

  “No,” He replied, “I remember getting knocked back like I’d been punched really hard, a big noise, and then waking up in the hospital the next day. Everything between those two memories is just a blur.”

  “That’s probably a good thing,” I replied enviously, “I wish I didn’t remember it.”

  “Wait… I didn’t do anything too weird or embarrassing though right? I mean, when I was concussed, that is. You know like asking a firefighter to let me play with his hose or something?” He asked, visibly concerned now that the thought occurred to him.

  “No, nothing like that,” I reassured him, “you woke up a few times, but you just looked around for a few seconds and went right back to sleep. They put sedatives in your IV drip. They said it was to make sure that you wouldn’t move around and hurt yourself. You probably couldn’t have hit on those sexy, burly firefighters if you’d tried.”

  “I’m glad you were there with me,” Alexander said next, and my heart squeezed painfully in my chest, “I mean I wish we both hadn’t gotten blown up at all, but, I’m glad you were there. I think I knew you close even though I was really out of it. When I woke up and saw you sleeping next to me in that little chair… I knew everything was going to be ok.”

  I smiled at him in the darkness, not knowing what to say. We both drifted back off to sleep again a little while later and I didn’t wake up again until morning.

  I had no clue about what was happening to me, or to Alexander. Until a few days ago I would have told anyone who would listen that he was a jerk. I thought he was incapable of the emotional range he was exhibiting, but I was grateful to be wrong. Maybe Alexander really had suffered a head injury and it radically altered his personality. Or woke something up that had been buried. Or maybe I’d been misreading him all along. Whatever this was between us, and even though it was destined to be temporary, I was glad that I got to have it. I knew it was going to hurt when it was over, but until then I would take what I could get.

  27

  Alexander

  By the time I awoke the next morning, Madison had already gotten up and taken a shower. I snuck quietly toward the bathroom with the intention of surprising and dragging her right back in with me but paused at the door when I heard her voice. She was talking to herself.

  “You can do this Maddie,” she was saying evenly to her reflection, “Just make it through this morning. All you have to do is figure out who the bad guy is and then the FBI will come in and take them away forever.”

  “Um, Madison?” I ventured. I pushed the door to the bathroom open and was rewarded with the sight of damp, towel-wrapped Madison—a welcome sight, indeed. I couldn’t help but smile. “Are you giving yourself a pep talk?”

  She flushed deep reddish pink, but her expression was resolute. She attempted a dignified expression before replying. The towel detracted significantly from her gravitas.

  “What?” She said defensively, “It’s a well-documented psychological phenomenon that positive affirmations affect your mood. Your mood affects your performance.” She raised her eyebrows at me in challenge. “You should try it.”

  I shook my head at her. That would never happen. Ever. Not even for Madison. “Yeah, ok. There is no way am I ever gonna do that,” I replied, “but I’m happy to watch you. It’s pretty cute, even if you look a little bit schizophrenic.”

  She smirked and turned away, resisting my attempts to block her and get her back into the shower. She might be small, but Madison was quick. She darted under my arm and back into the bedroom.

  “Ok tough guy, no affirmations for you,” she teased as she danced all the way out of my reach, “but we don’t have time for whatever it is you have in mind, either. We need to get over there early. Remember? The FBI surveillance dude wants to talk to us, look at the room, and put the wires on us. We said we’d be there early.”

  I checked the clock and groaned when I realized she was right. Grumpy now that I’d have to shower all alone, I watched Madison saunter off deeper into the bedroom to get dressed. I caught sight of myself in the mirror as I was getting the water situation in the shower just right. Madison apparently preferred her bath water to be the temperature of the surface of the sun. My reflection shook its head disapprovingly as I fiddled with the faucet.

  An hour later, Madison and I arrived once again at the Clark and Jeffries offices. I was getting tired of spending my time there. I missed my cool corner office in Dubai on the forty-second floor of an office building so big it made its own weather. The Clark and Jeffries offices, while nice in a sedate, middle-aged lawyer way, had zero appeal for me. I couldn’t imagine reporting to an office like this every day for thirty years; I’d go absolutely nuts. It was just too boring. Pennsylvania itself was boring most of the time, but lately, it had been a bit too exciting for my tastes.

  Before we got out of the Range Rover that Madison insisted we drive instead of my motorcycle (she had an irrational fear of them, clearly), I scooped her out of the passenger seat and pulled her into my lap. She kissed me thoroughly once I got her settled atop me, shifting to straddle me with such eagerness it made me wish we could just turn around and go back to my house. Or get in the back seat. Honestly, I just wanted to sit right there in the driver’s seat and make out with her.

  Madison’s mouth was still minty-fresh from when she’d brushed her teeth, and I buried my hands in her soft, long hair and explored every inch of it. She was so warm on top of me and her weight pressed teasingly into my body at every place we touched. She let me run my fingers up along her legs and around the curves of her ass but pulled away frustratingly when I tried to pull her shirt loose from her waistband to touch her tits.

  “We need to get in there,” she said, panting when she broke our kiss, “we’re gonna’ be late.”

  “Just a few more minutes?” I begged her, not caring that I was reduced to pleading to get more of her attention. If we were walking into danger this morning, I definitely needed to see her nipples again first.

  “Ok, just a few,” she agreed, clearly just as eager as I was.

  When we finally dragged ourselves inside after a full forty-five minutes of making out in the car like teenagers, the FBI were waiting impatiently for us in Madison’s office. We were late. The rest of our negotiation team was already nervously nibbling on today’s selection of breakfast pastries in the conference room. I waved at them as I passed by the door and received a set of bleak and nervous stares from my father and Madison’s.

  At least we didn’t have to deal with the Senator or my cousins today. They weren’t participating in today’s ‘real’ negotiations. The Senator only came for the golf, food, and brown nosing. I’m not even sure why my cousins came yesterday, actually. Maybe just to be annoying to my father and me. And potentially each other. I wouldn’t put it past them.

  Instead of just McKinney and Wallace in Madison’s office, we now had two new guys in suits to deal with. There was no way I’d be able to pick either of them out of a lineup. The FBI apparently recruits for the most average looking men possible.

  “These are agents Harlow and Kota,” Wallace told us, “Harlow is going to do your wires and Kota has already finished putting the microphones in the conference room.”

  “The ones you’ll be wearing are very small,” Harlow told us after the obligatory handshakes, “just talk normally and try not to fuss with them.” He extended a pair of small devices to us. They looked like fat, squishy binder clips and were almost weightles
s in my palm. “All you need to do is clip these somewhere inside your clothing and not get submerged in water. They’re water resistant, always on, and despite the name, there are no actual wires.”

  “Where’s Mariana?” Madison asked Wallace during Harlow’s sound check, “Is she ok?”

  “She’s safe,” was Wallace’s only reply. Both Wallace’s and McKinney’s faces were inscrutable. Madison responded with a pouty look and he relented slightly, adding, “I promise to tell you everything once we finish this, but I need you to stay focused.”

  Madison didn’t like that either but nodded stiffly and sat down to review the deal for the one-millionth time. Looking for the cinnamon roll I smelled, I wandered down the hall to see Kota poking around the conference rooms and Harlow talking on the phone next to him.

  “Yes,” Harlow was saying, “we’re ready to go over here. Is the team on the roof in place and ready?”

  I wanted to know more about the ‘team on the roof’ but didn’t have time to ask anyone. A moment later Harlow stood straight up and strode purposefully back into Madison’s office. He waved me over as well. I followed obediently, despite being annoyed that I was being gestured to like an animal instead of addressed politely like a human-fucking-being. The expression on Harlow’s face made me instantly nervous rather than angry.

  “They’re early,” he announced, “their SUV is around the corner. ETA two minutes.”

  28

  Madison

  “Good morning ladies and gentlemen,” I began, trying to project an air of genuine confidence and competency instead of the fear and insecurity that was really swimming around my brain like hungry piranhas. “I hope everyone had a chance to get some coffee and something to eat this morning from the breakfast spread that Clark and Jeffries kindly provided. We are all looking forward to discussing the remaining outstanding aspects to this deal today and hope to close tomorrow.”