Page 1 of Ruthless Touch

CHAPTER ONE

Gideon

I take a drink of scotch and let it sit in my mouth for a few moments, warming the inside of my cheek before I let the liquid slowly slide down my throat. I’ve been avoiding the inevitable with Aria, hoping she’d be settled by the time I got back to the penthouse, but if security is telling Sasha there’s a problem, it seems my time ignoring the issue is over.

For some reason, I feel the need to clear up my assistant’s misunderstanding regarding Aria, so I swallow another mouthful of scotch and say, “There’s nothing crazy about what’s going on upstairs.”

Sasha looks back at me and shrugs. “Okay. It just seems distinctly odd for you to keep a woman prisoner in your penthouse. That’s all I meant.”

She can be so melodramatic sometimes. Rolling my eyes, I say, “She isn’t a prisoner. Think of her as more like an investment.”

I get no response to that, which is fine with me. I have little interest in explaining that I paid two hundred thousand euros for Aria. That’s between me and the man she used to call her boyfriend, a lovely soul who sold her to save his own skin.

On her way out of my office, Sasha says, “Well, your investment is threatening her security guard. Not that she could actually do much to him, but they thought you should know.”

She leaves before I can thank her, no doubt in a hurry to get to her time off. I take another gulp of scotch and a deep breath in before heading upstairs to deal with the problem.

I arrive at my penthouse door to see Raphael standing guard as he’s supposed to. Solemn looking with a giant head that fits with his giant body, he stares straight ahead as I approach him.

“Good evening, Raphael. Everything okay in there?” I ask with a smile.

I don’t necessarily think Aria is lying in wait to attack me when I walk inside my home, but the thought has occurred to me since she’s been threatening a man who towers over her by more than a foot. My prisoner, as Sasha likes to call her, isn’t violent.

At least not so far. Then again, it’s only been one day since she’s been here.

Raphael turns to look at me, breaking his somber appearance with a look of worry. “Your guest seems unhappy, sir. I told her she had to stay inside, and she threatened to jump off the balcony. So I had Luca lock those doors from the outside.”

I smile, imagining the two security guards worried what their boss’s guest leaping to her death would do to their jobs. “Thank you, Raphael. I appreciate your quick thinking. We wouldn’t want her to jump, now would we.”

He doesn’t respond, returning to his stoic self and staring straight ahead. If Aria has given him that much trouble, he very well might want her to take a leap off my balcony.

As soon as I open the door, she rushes toward me, green eyes full of blazing fury and her long, dark hair flying behind her. I must be out of my mind thinking I should keep this woman.

“I want you to release me! You have no right to keep me here like some prisoner.”

That’s the second time tonight some woman has termed this my keeping her prisoner. I push past her as she stands at the door with her hands on her hips.

“Nobody is a prisoner here. You’re my guest, so why don’t you try acting like it?” I say as I shrug out of my suit jacket and drape it over the back of the black leather couch.

“Let me free. You do nothing with me, and I’m stuck here all day alone with that behemoth you have watching over me,” Aria complains.

I close my eyes and hope to God my head doesn’t start pounding. Maybe if I have another drink. As I make my way to the bar in the corner of the room, I look over at her to see a scowl marring that beautiful face of hers.

“Freedom is an illusion. There are just varying gradations of imprisonment for all of us, not only you,” I say as I pour myself another drink.

“That sounds terribly interesting, but I want to be free, no matter what definition you go with, Gideon Rule.”

I take a sip of scotch and let it slowly roll down my throat before turning to look at her. She really is beautiful, even as she stands there with her arms folded across her chest and pouting because I won’t let her leave. Long, brown hair hangs down to just above her breasts. Her oval face with perfect cheekbones is made all the more gorgeous with deep green eyes that stun even when she flashes nothing but hatred at me.

“What’s wrong? Is lounging around my penthouse difficult? Is it some kind of chore for you? My chef makes you food people pay dearly for.” I look around my home and add, “And on top of that, I’m willing to bet you’ve never spent a day in a place as luxurious as this.”

My questions are met with a scowl, and she marches over to stand in front of me. Just a few inches shorter than my six-foot four height, she levels her gaze on my face with such disgust that I feel like I should turn away.

“You paid all that money for me, but you barely talk to me, much less do anything else. Why don’t you just let me go?”

I lift my glass to my lips and take another sip of twelve-year-old scotch. “Because I didn’t pay for you.”

Aria has no idea what I’m talking about, and at this moment, I have no interest in explaining myself. We stand there facing off, two people staring at one another until one of us breaks.

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