Heartless (Alpha Bodyguard #9) - Sybil Bartel

Ten years ago.

My front door wide open, a tumbler in my hand, I watched the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles on the street cut across the darkened yard.

Bringing my glass to my lips, intent on pouring more alcohol down my throat, I opened my mouth.

Goddamn glass was empty again.

The EMTs lifted a stretcher with the bloodied asshole that was still alive and put him in the ambulance as the ME drove off with the unlucky asshole that didn’t make it. The cops, a couple detectives and a dick in a suit hovered nearby. One EMT got in the back of the ambulance while the other shut the door and got behind the wheel.

The cops scanned the crowd as the ambulance left, but the suit turned and looked toward the house, making eye contact with me.

I smirked.

Fucker took it as an invitation. Pushing through the crowd that’d been in the house only moments before the sirens sounded, keeping his beady-as-fuck eyes on me, he came straight up the walk. Striding through the front door like he owned the place, he aimed right for me.

Reeking of money in his custom suit, the slick asshole held his hand out. “Leo Amherst.”

I knew who the hell he was. Everyone who was anyone knew who he was, but I didn’t shake his hand or play into his power-trip bullshit. Giving up on the glass, I picked up the bottle of Jack and threw back. My throat numb, the bottle already half gone, I wanted to forget about this whole fucked-up night. None of this would’ve happened if I’d kept my goddamn hands to myself.

Resigned, I spared Amherst a glance before looking back at the cops. “What do you want?”

The prick cut right to the chase. “Where’s Sanaa?”

I snorted. “You’re late to the party.” I’d handed her a wad of cash a half hour ago and told her to get lost until I could clean this fucking mess up. “You already missed her.” The beautiful, innocent Sanaa, too goddamn innocent and the one woman I never should’ve touched. She didn’t want me. She thought I was him, and I didn’t fucking stop her.

The asshole Amherst didn’t leave. “Where’d she go? She’s not at home.”

“Fuck if I know.” Attempting to dull the memory of what I’d done, I took another swig.

Amherst pulled a chair out from the kitchen table, kicked the leg aside of some prick passed out on the floor, and sat right in front of me. Leaning his elbows on his knees, he steepled his fingers and leveled me with a look. “Do you know who I am?”

“Do I look like I care?” Anything this asshole could do to me would pale in comparison to what my bosses were capable of. Besides, running guns for the past year for people I wasn’t stupid enough to speak of out loud made me about as untouchable as this asshole’s bank account made him. If he was smart, he’d realize there was a reason I wasn’t talking to the cops from the back seat of a cruiser with my hands cuffed.

“You should,” Amherst warned.

Squinting to focus, I pretended to look at him. “Why’s that?” I didn’t give a single fuck about this conversation or where it was going. I’d already paid the cops off.

“For one, I make more money in an hour than you make in a year.” He tipped his chin toward the front door. “But more importantly, the guy going to the morgue and the guy being taken away in the ambulance, both of whom were beaten outside your house party tonight, they work for me.”

Wasn’t my party. At least, it wasn’t being thrown in my honor. There wasn’t a damn thing honorable about me. Technically, the house wasn’t mine either. I just lived here, courtesy of the people I worked for.

“Sounds like a bad night for both of them.” I drank again, but I couldn’t taste shit anymore. “Or maybe their bad night started long before this. Maybe they made a shit decision when they decided to work for you.” When the hell did Jack Daniel’s start tasting like water?

Unimpressed with my reasoning, Amherst kept talking. “Do you know what my manager said right before his injuries rendered him unconscious?”

I took a calculated guess. “That your dick’s small and you pay shit?”

“That you’re the one who beat him up and killed his assistant, right after he informed you that he’d signed Sanaa and he was her new manager. He said you had a problem with

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