Heartless Lover

Summer.

One week ago.

My heart tumbles into a dark abyss as I stare at the lifeless body of my sister.

That’s really her lying dead on the morgue slab before me.

It’s true. Scarlett is dead.

My sister… my twin sister.

Dead.

Dead because she was wearing my face.

Jake, that fucking bastard, killed her because he thought she was me.

This is all my fault. And I can’t fix it.

Tears pour from my eyes, coming from deep within my weeping soul as the truth sinks in.

I rivet my gaze to her face, unable to look away. Every aspect of her face looks exactly like mine.

Except for the bullet wound in the center of her forehead.

That bullet was meant for me.

As the pain of losing her burrows into my heart, I cover my mouth to keep the anguish from pouring out.

I’m the one who insisted on seeing her like this because I needed to see the ugly truth. With the trouble I’m in, this might be the last time I see her, so I can’t fall apart.

I can’t believe this nightmare is real. Scarlett was never supposed to be anywhere near Monaco.

I had no idea she was here until earlier today when Marquees told me the horrific news.

Marquees is a cop. The kind who takes care of his informants. That’s how we began six years ago.

He’s the only person here I trust with the dark secrets of my past and the knowledge that I have a twin. He’s the only person I trusted enough to run to after I witnessed and heard something I shouldn’t have last week.

I had the worst instance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time when I saw Jake Wainwright, co-owner of Club Montage, kill a man in cold blood in his office. As my bad luck would have it, he saw me too.

I should be the one dead now, but I made a lucky escape and went straight to Marquees, who’s been hiding me since.

He knew straightaway that the woman who was brought into the morgue this morning after being found dead in her apartment on Monaco Cliff wasn’t me. He knew it was Scarlett and what must have happened to her.

He also knew the fucking suicide note next to her body couldn’t have been written by me either.

It was Jake. He wrote the note. That bastard made it look like I killed myself.

Since a bullet to the head was the way Mom died, and the note she left behind blamed me, hearing that felt like a double-edged blade in my heart.

It was only when Marquees managed to get my bag from the club that I was able to look at my phone and listen to the messages Scarlett sent me two days ago. She wouldn’t have known not to come because I was being hunted. And there was no way I could have warned her.

We were supposed to see each other in a few months for our birthday, and it was my turn to see her. Not the other way around.

She’d flown over from L.A. for a surprise visit to celebrate getting the lead part in the play. It was her biggest life accomplishment, and she wanted to celebrate with her sister—me.

Me, the black sheep of the family.

Scarlett was the goody-two-shoes everyone loved, while I was the bolder, daring twin who always got herself in trouble. I was destined to be the fuck up.

Not her.

Scarlett was chosen to be the new leading actress in Lover’s Purgatory, the latest theater production by award-winning director Nick Fairchild.

In six week’s time, when the play opens, all of L.A.’s theater-goers will be talking about it. I know they would have adored Scarlett as much as the world revered our grandmother and our mother. Hollywood snapped up both, and my sister was on her way to join their legacies.

At one point in my life, that dream was what I wanted more than anything.

I still want it. Scarlett knew that too. That’s why she was always making me promise to seize the opportunity if it came to me. I wanted to tell her I was working on getting my life back on track and planning to go to college next year.

Most of our twenty-four years on this earth were horrible, but I paid the price in more ways than one.

Since college, Scarlett has been in ten theater productions, but this one was supposed to be the epitome of her career. I paid with my soul so she could live. Now she’ll never know how proud I am of her.

That’s why she came to see me.

Now she’s dead. All that purity, talent, and beauty are gone.

If I wasn’t here, this would never have happened to her.

I reach out and press my fingertips to her ice-cold arm. Her usually vibrant skin is ashen and ghostly.

I trail down to the tiny little tattoo scribbled on her left wrist. It says, Carpe Diem. I have the same tattoo on my right wrist. The positioning is possibly one of the few things that could differentiate us, and it’s not something I specifically wanted.

I got it for her when we were eighteen. She used to seek those Carpe Diem moments, as she would call them. Getting the tattoo was one of them.

Anyone would think I’d be the girl to believe in those types of sayings.

I’m not.

Thrill-seeking sayings like that don’t fly with people like me. They’re for those who need to remember to live. I’ve always had to fight to survive, so I know more than most the true value of life. That’s why I’m so aggrieved there was nothing I could do to protect her.

The door behind me opens, and a second later, Marquees is at my side.

As grief sags my shoulders, he gives me a reassuring squeeze.

“I’m sorry, Summer, but we need to leave,” he says, speaking in a low voice that makes his deep French accent sound thicker. “It was a big risk coming here, and it’s not wise for you to stay out in the open like this where someone could see you.”

He snuck me in through the back under the guise of a black hooded sweatshirt and my long brown hair tucked away. He’s right, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to leave Scarlett here.

“I can’t leave her, Marquees,” I choke out.

“You have to. I know it’s hard seeing her like this, but you have to get out of Monte Carlo.”

When I first came here, I wanted to escape the darkness of my past. I never knew that darkness would follow me. I just wanted to go somewhere where no one knew me. That was a bad idea. It led me here.

“What’s going to happen now?” I ask.

“The captain is satisfied it was a suicide, so the case will be treated as such. There’s nothing to say otherwise. The surveillance in your apartment either doesn’t work or didn’t pick up what happened. That means I can’t do anything that won’t compromise your safety.” He gives me a worried stare. “Summer, most of the cops here are on Micah Santa Maria’s payroll. You know what that means. You also know my hands are tied, and there’s very little I can do.”

I do know. Micah Santa Maria is the prick Jake works for. He’s part of the Italian Mafia. I’ve seen people come to the club to meet with him, and days later, they’re reported missing, or they turn up dead. If you work for him, he owns you.

It was bad enough Jake saw me when he killed that man, but Micah was there as well. I as good as signed my own death certificate when his gaze landed on me.

“Summer, if I even breathe a word of the truth, you’re dead.” He keeps his gaze trained on me. “Everyone thinks she’s you. I hate to say this, but you’re safe for as long as Jake thinks he killed you.”

I know that too, and it makes me feel even more guilty than I already do.

I place my hand to my heart as my pulse leaps. “What about her? What will happen to her?”

“Your father will be notified of her death, and they’ll make arrangements to release her body to him. Of course, they’ll tell him you died.”

“Oh, God.” My whole being trembles.

Dad…

This will break him because he’ll be the first to figure out that Scarlett is the one who died, not me. The moment he sees her tattoo, he’ll know. He might not even need to see it to know. He was the only person who was never fooled when we used to swap places in our younger years.

When he figures it out, I don’t know what will happen. The moment he does, he won’t believe the suicide story either. Not because he doesn’t think I have reasons to do it, but because that will make everything else suspicious as fuck.

With the bad relationship I have with my father, the last thing I want to do is add more to his list of reasons to hate me. He blamed me for Mom’s death.

Back then, he was wrong. This time will be different.

“You need to leave tonight, Mon Cherie,” he points out. “These are mafia men who are way above me. I have no doubt they will figure out what really happened at some point. When they do, you don’t want to be around.”

I believe him. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I can have everything ready for you to head back to the States. You need to get as far away from here as possible.”

“When I get there, I have to hide. It’s going to be risky for me there too.” This isn’t the case of me and Scarlett swapping places. Besides, I would never dream of doing something like that. “Marquees, I can’t just go back and pretend to be her. Doing so could put people in danger if Jake and Micah come after me.”

He nods. “I know.”

“So, if I’m hiding, what happens when people realize Scarlett is missing?”

I know she has five weeks off before she has to go back to work. Normally we speak a few times a week, but she’s been working so hard the most we could manage for the last few months is a message here and there. It’s been like that for the last five months because she wanted the lead role.

Nick was adamant about not giving a definite to any of the three women he’d placed on trial until the close of rehearsals. There’s a week’s refresher before the play begins. When Scarlett doesn’t turn up, that’s when people will start wondering where she is.

“We can’t worry about that,” Marquees replies with an exasperated sigh. “The worst thing that could happen now is Jake or Micah figuring out that you’re still alive and still here.”

“I’m scared,” I mutter.

Marquees sets his hands on my shoulders, and I gaze into his kind gray eyes, searching the hard lines of his face.

“I know. But we need to act fast. This is hard for me as a cop. I have to wait it out until I can do something. But you can do something now by getting yourself to safety. Don’t let your sister die in vain, Summer.”

His words bore into me.

I look back to her, stare for a few moments to commit this last image of her to my mind, then return my gaze to Marquees.

I nod and accept this grief and doom, which will follow me for the rest of my life.

Nowhere is safe. It never has been for me, and never will be.

Eric.

6 Years ago.

The darkness engulfing my mind recedes.

It fades away as a sense of awareness comes to me.

I’m between sleep and awake, but I can’t remember falling asleep, and I have that mind-fucked sensation of not knowing where the hell I am. The last time I got like this was at a frat party in college. While I’m a few years away from college, I’m still the reckless asshole I used to be.

I just can’t remember what’s going on.

I make the mistake of trying to move, and I’m met with a sharp, mind-numbing pain that stabs through my head and shoots down my body.

Fuck.

What the hell happened to me?

The agony is so intense it churns my stomach and scrambles my brain.

The pain pulsing from the back of my head feels like someone hit me with a gasoline truck.

Hit me…

Wait… that is what happened.

Someone hit me.

I remember the blow.

Someone sucker punched me.

I was in my apartment. I just stepped inside and closed the door, then it happened.

Against the pounding pain, the realization forces my eyes open, and I find myself staring at a murky gray stone wall.

When I try to move again, chains clink. The rattling makes my blood run cold and I snap my head around, looking left then right, instantly seeing I’m shirtless and bound by chains to metal poles on either side of me.

My fucking legs are bound too.

Helplessness overpowers the pain in my body, and I thrash against the chains, trying to break free. It’s no fucking use, though. I can’t do anything but hang here and be at the fucking mercy of whoever did this to me.

Who did this?

Fuck. I need to figure this out.

Panic assails me, and I look around the dark, dank room.

There’s a dim light hanging over my head, and I can hear water dripping onto the ground behind me. To my right is a set of stone steps leading up to a door.

From what I can see, I think I might be in a dungeon. The damp, moldy smell filling my nose tells me I might be right.

Closing my eyes, I will myself to concentrate and push past the fog surrounding my brain. That’s when I remember what happened before the darkness took me.

I remember hearing his voice—Robert.

My best friend.

I heard his voice after I got hit and fell to the ground. The hard thud of heavy boots against my wooden floor filled my ears as I lay there, slipping into unconsciousness, but I couldn’t see anybody. Then I heard his voice. I’m sure it was him.

He was talking to someone. It must have been on the phone because I can’t remember hearing anyone else in the room.

“I got him.” That’s what he’d said. I’m sure that’s what I heard him say.

So he hit me?

Robert?

That makes no sense. He’s my best friend.

But it was him in the room. I know it was.

So, he hit me?

I open my eyes again as I try to process what happened. Memories begin to flow of the fucking trouble I was in before this.

I was going to run. Run to keep the knowledge I have out of the wrong hands and protect my family.

I sent Robert an email asking him to look after my mother and sister.

I emailed with an encrypted code because it was safer. Or so I thought.

The creak of a door opening cuts into my thoughts, and I look up the steps just in time to see my best friend stepping into the room.

I stare at him as he takes one step at a time, and I try to process what’s going on.

I know there’s only one thing his presence here could mean. It’s just that my mind can’t accept it.

I’ve known this guy all my life. We met when we were five and went to school together.

He’s like a brother to me.

So, I can’t accept he sold me out to my enemies and delivered Judas’s kiss of betrayal.

When he gets to the bottom of the steps, the light shines down on his jet-black hair and illuminates his dark brown eyes.

His eyes always reminded me of coal. As I stare at them, the darkness I see is pure evil, and it’s the first time I see who he truly is.

“You, you did this to me?” I ask, cutting straight to the shit.

“I did.”

“You fucking asshole. You fucking dog. How could you—”

My voice cuts when a bolt of electricity pierces through me. It wracks my body from head to toe, and a roar of anguish rips from my throat. The sound is so animalistic it takes me a moment to realize it’s coming from me.

The intense pain makes me shake as every volt ripples through my body, piercing straight through to my soul. Even when the blast stops, I shudder. My brain is so rattled, I barely register the remote Robert is holding. It’s not until he lifts it and runs his finger over the button, I see it properly.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t piss me off,” he smirks. “It’s not me who’s the fucking dog today. It’s you. You’re the one who’s going to do as he’s told.”

Jesus, I feel like I’m going to die. My head is spinning and my stomach churning.

I stare at Robert and try to steady my thoughts. This is what he had to do to beat me, but why?

I need to know why he did this to me and where he’s taken me.

“Where the hell am I, Robert?” I grate out.

“Brazil.”

My eyes widen, and my jaw slackens more than it already is.

Brazil? What the fuck am I doing in Brazil?

We were in San Francisco.

“What the hell am I doing chained up in Brazil?” I spit, seething. I want to unleash, but I can’t.

I can’t unleash myself for my own sanity. Besides, it’s not like I can do shit while being chained to these poles.

“You’re going to do whatever Jude wants you to do.”

The moment I hear that name, it tells me everything I need to know.

Jude Kuzmin is the guy my grandfather appointed C.E.O of our family company, Markov Tech. My grandfather wanted that role separate from the ownership because of the varied responsibilities. So while I’m the heir to the company and the ownership passed to me after my grandfather’s death, Jude still had a good amount of power and control. He, however, wanted everything. He wanted the entire legacy and me out of the picture, but not before making use of me. It was too late when I realized what he was up to or that he had an ace up his sleeve in the form of my best friend.

I don’t know when or how Jude got to Robert, but he fucking did, and that means this is the beginning of the end for me.

“What did you do, Robert?”

“Something for me, for once in my life.” His answer holds no emotion and is as cold as his eyes. “Something that will benefit me for once.”

“What did he promise you?”

Everyone has a price, and Jude knew what Robert’s was.

“Everything.”

“It’s a lie. He won’t give it to you,” I growl.

“Oh, but he already has, Eric.”

That shuts me down, and the smile that inches across his face seals my doom.

It tells me I’ve lost, and there’s nothing I can do.

The fucked-up thing about it is, this is my fault.

I started to rebel long before my grandfather died. I didn’t understand why he would turn his back on the Bratva and want to keep me out of that world.

Then, to add salt to my open wounds, my father was the same. For whatever part he played as my father, he wanted me out too. Out of the Bratva, and the Italian mafia to which he belonged.

But you can’t tame a wild bird and make it something it’s not. So, when Jude took an interest in my talents, I was enticed. I never knew he was using me to get to my grandfather’s weapon designs. Not just any weapon, either. It was the weapon of all weapons, and he wanted to sell it to the Order. A group of fucking terrorists who work for crooked politicians. I got myself mixed up with them through him.

That was what I was trying to escape. With the plan I had, the only way they could have gotten to me was by doing this.

Getting my friend to betray me.

I look at him now, and everything else makes sense. He must have been playing me long before now. I can’t believe I never saw this coming. I’ve always known what kind of bastard he was. I just never thought he’d be that way with me.

“How could you do this to me! I trusted you. We’re supposed to be friends.”

He laughs, and the hollow sound bounces off the walls. “Yes, I think we were at one point. Maybe in our younger years. But then things changed when you thought it was okay to make decisions for the both of us.”

“Jude is fucking evil!” I shout.

“You’re so full of yourself you can’t see straight. You act like you didn’t know what he was when he offered you power.”

“That was different.” It wasn’t, but I hate that he’s right about that part. I always knew Jude was a fucking bastard, and I questioned my grandfather’s judgment when he made him C.E.O. What I didn’t know was what Jude had up his sleeves. “I didn’t know he was after the weapon.”

“Well, I did, and it was the one thing that made me useful to him. I delivered you to him, and now you’ll finish the design your grandfather started.”

“You fucking asshole, what makes you think I’m going to do shit?”

“You sent me an email yesterday. You wanted me to look after your mother and sister.” His smile widens, and immediately I know the direction he’s going with whatever threat he’s got ready for me.

“Leave them alone!” My mother and sister know nothing of my life, and they’d be ashamed to know who I’ve allied myself with.

“Eric Markov, you aren’t in a position to give orders. You’re about to get a very rude awakening. If you don’t do what you’re told, they’re dead.”

While I’m going crazy, he’s talking to me in that calm as fuck voice I’ve always hated.

“You’re not going to get away with this! I will kill you!”

Another blast of electricity pulses through me, and this time, the surge of power makes my body feel like it might combust.

My head slumps down, and I crumple, weak against the restraints holding me up.

Robert comes closer, moving right up to me.

I manage to lift my head when he rests a heavy hand on my shoulder.

“You will not kill me, friend. I’m afraid this is the end of the road for you and me. We won’t cross paths ever again. You will die here, but I will leave and be a very rich man.”

“I will kill you,” I repeat the words, even though I know I can’t do anything.

“No, you won’t because you’re already dead. By this time next week, the world will think you died in a car crash. They’ll think we both did.”

I glare at him. That doesn’t make sense. “You? Why you?”

“It’s a small price I had to pay. Dead men tell no tales. However, like the phoenix, I’ll rise from the ashes and be whoever I want to be. The most important thing is your mother and sister will think we died—that you died. Then Jude will do whatever the fuck he wants to do to your family and take Markov Tech. That’s what’s going to happen.”

“You fucking bastard,” I choke out.

“Yes, I am.”

“I will end you for betraying me like this.”

He responds by pressing the button again, and this time, the electricity surges straight through to my soul.

Madness takes me at the same time as the shock’s intensity increases.

All I see is Robert’s smiling face as I’m engulfed by pain.

But the promise of revenge echoes in my heart, mind, and soul.

If I ever get out of here, I will end him by whatever means necessary.