SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE LEFT. Walked out. Left them to rid her of the criminal in their midst. Here she’d been expecting news of his disposal to the authorities, or his being shoved onto a plane to Timbuktu, and instead she was standing in the security room faced with three decidedly sheepish guards and a fifty-two-inch plasma screen filled with the image of a prominent, high-profile billionaire tied up in her cellar!
‘I don’t believe this,’ Pia breathed.
Exquisitely tall.
Beautifully dark.
Devastatingly handsome.
And infamous for satisfying his limitless wants and desires. Not—as far as she was aware, and she generally knew more than most—renowned for being a felon.
‘Nicandro Carvalho. I almost shot Nicandro Carvalho!’
Pia’s insides shook like a shaken soda can ready to spray. He’d been in her bedroom. Maybe watched her sleep. She’d been half naked when he’d swaggered into her rooms and for a split second she’d thought her past was catching up with her.
But what really ratcheted up her ‘creeped-out’ meter was the fact she’d shot her favourite painting. Of a werewolf. Lobisomem. How freaky was that? Considering she’d code-named him herself.
‘It would have been his own fault! What was he doing, snooping around in there?’
All three testosterone-dripping men in the room flinched at Jovan’s holler but Pia was used to his bark—especially where she was concerned. Protectiveness didn’t come close to the way he went on. Ridiculous. You would think she was eight, not twenty-eight.
‘More to the point, how did he even get in here?’ she said, glaring at her supposed security staff, who flushed beneath her scrutiny. ‘Find the breach and deal with it. Someone betrayed me today and I want them found.’
Skin visibly paled at her tone. ‘Yes, madame.’
Purposefully avoiding the image on screen—because every time she looked at Carvalho the lamb she’d eaten for dinner threatened to reappear—she speared Jovan with her displeasure. ‘Did you realise who he was before you roughed him up? Tell me you went easy on him.’
‘Easy?’ Jovan said, with a hefty amount of incredulity, and she only had to glance across the room to see why.
One of his men sported a black eye and a broken nose, the other winced with every turn and the third had a pronounced limp.
‘The guy should be a cage fighter! I recognised that pretty-boy face within minutes and I still wanted to pulverise him, regardless. He could have hurt you, Pia! So what if the man has money? Only last year they discovered that billionaire who had buried thirty-two bodies in his back yard!’
Heaven help her.
‘All right—calm down.’ If he worked himself up any more he’d either have a seizure or charge back in there to finish Carvalho off. Which would now be a manageable feat, considering he’d tied the stunner to a chair so tightly the ropes were likely cutting off his circulation. ‘Like every member, he’s been checked out thoroughly.’
Born in Brazil to a lower class family, he’d sailed to New York to make his fortune. The fact he’d come from nothing, was a self-made man, had gained her deepest respect from the start. Pia had first-hand experience of being hungry, feeling worthless, powerless, and she never wanted to revisit that hellhole ever again. The amount of determination it would have taken Carvalho to rise from the ashes with no help had fascinated and charmed her in equal measure.
‘If there was something amiss about him I would know.’ Yet suddenly she wasn’t so sure. Her instincts screamed that this man was far more than he’d initially appeared.
‘People don’t tend to put “serial killer” and “rapist” on their résumé, Pia.’
Valid point.
She tapped at the pounding spot between her brows, feeling as if she’d been given a complex puzzle with half the pieces left out.
‘I’m missing something vital. I must be. First he breaks in, then he has a snoop at the files on my desk. Eros longer than most—I’d know that red file anywhere—and then...’ She ran her tongue over her top front teeth. ‘Now, isn’t that a coincidence? That Eros International should catch his eye.’
The company had taken a suspiciously abrupt beating on the stockmarket of late. Though in all honesty Eros’s share decline had been the least of her concerns. Ugly rumours were abounding, hitting her where it hurt. Her reputation.
Could he be the thorn in her side? The man who’d been making discreet enquiries about Zeus, about the club, about her businesses—the very man who’d been spreading filth and lies?
Maybe. After all, in her world anything was possible. But why?
Stuff it. She had no intention of waiting around while some property magnate ruined her life. If he was to blame.
‘Turn off the screens. I’m going in there.’
She wanted answers and there was only one way to get them. She just hoped she was wrong and there was some perfectly good explanation for his breaking and entering. Yeah, right. Call her foolish, but she didn’t want Nicandro Carvalho to be at the centre of her current storm.
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
While Jovan dismissed his men with a quiet word her gaze sought out Nicandro Carvalho once again. Obscenely grateful that her dinner stayed put and she remained apathetic and unflappable. As if the sight of a six-foot-plus Brazilian hunk with a bloodied lip was an everyday occurrence. She was good at that. Projecting absolute calm composure while her stomach revolted at the sight of her Lobisomem in a snare.
She rubbed her own upper arms, sore with the faint echoes of pain. She wanted to scream and rail at Jovan for trussing him so tightly. Perhaps she’d tie him up until control was lost, handed to another. See how he liked it.
‘Did you have to cut off his blood supply?’ she asked, cringeing inwardly at her snippy tone. Not for Jovan’s sake. He was more like the bothersome older brother she’d never had, so she didn’t bother to pull her punches with him. But the last thing she needed was to come over unhinged to her staff. ‘Women are emotional liabilities,’ her father would say. Not her. Not since he’d made her into a living, breathing machine.
‘Who cares if I did?’ Jovan asked.
Pia cared—for some bizarre reason. But she wasn’t about to tell him that. Just as she wasn’t about to admit that at times she’d secretly watched Nicandro Carvalho over the past year. There was something darkly arresting about him. One look at his brooding beauty, at that dark skin that looked as if exotic blood ran through his veins, and she felt giddy with it all.
Pia was tall for a woman, and yet his towering height, wide shoulders and the thick biceps bulging from where his arms strained made her feel like a porcelain doll. Though he was snared, anyone could see his bearing was straight, confident, almost regal—like titan warriors and powerful gods. Not an image she would expect from a boy born in the Rio slums. The fact that he took pride in that fact, felt no shame for his poor origins and preferred to acknowledge the truth and stand tall with dignity, had lent him a kind of reverence in her eyes. She’d never been able to shake the stigma of it all.
Hung loosely about his face, his hair was the deepest shade of brown. She suspected it would curl when wet, drying into untamed flicks that twisted to his shoulders and fell wantonly about his face. Sharp brooding eyes almost black in their depths were framed lavishly with thick dark lashes: luscious, evocative