Page 296 of Wild Mustang Security Firm

He’d shot someone. Right in front of her. He’d shot someone. He’d never done that before.

Everything Robinson had told her, everything she had come to suspect over the years—it was all true. Her brother wasn’t just horrible, not just a monster—he was evil.

And he’d touched her. Why had he touched her like that? God, she could still feel the press of his stomach to hers, his thighs to hers, his pelvis… Her stomach rebelled. Scrambling up off the floor, she ran for the bathroom, barely reaching the toilet in time. She heaved, but there was nothing inside her to throw up.

The spasms waned, leaving her with her head on her arms, spitting because her mouth kept watering, even though nothing was coming up. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t feel. She was completely empty.

She sniffled.

Crawling to her feet, not wanting to catch even the most accidental glimpse of herself in the mirror, she cleaned up and made herself into a proper lady again.

“Tea?” Fariq asked, inviting Christian into his office.

A bear in a lion’s den, he came, but only because there was no way to refuse. He was supposed to be Fariq’s second-in-command, his loyal man. He was absolutely supposed to be satisfied with the execution of Lamar and the excuse he’d been given on the deck. What he was not supposed to be was pissed, wary, and frankly, disgusted by the oddly sexual way which the notorious finance villain had manhandled his baby sister.

There was no mistaking that Aliya had been terrified, but there had been so much going on at the time, there was no telling what she’d been scared of. The only thing he did know was not once had she tried to extricate herself from her brother’s all-too-familiar grasp.

Because she was used to it? He tried not to think about it.

“Thank you, I’m fine.” He would have been just as fine standing as close to the door as he could get, just in case, but he still had a role to play. He came to the desk as if he and Fariq were nothing more than the dearest of friends, sitting down opposite the man.

He looked at the gun in the holster around Fariq’s chest and tried not to let his hands get too itchy about his own.

“There has been a very unfortunate misunderstanding.” Groaning, Fariq rubbed his face with both hands before pouring two cups of tea, disregarding Christian’s refusal. “I should have been more specific in my commands. The fault is mine, of course.”

“What command?” Christian asked, accepting the cup Fariq passed him.

“Not two minutes after you left the yacht, we received news that NATO had an operative in the area, supposedly to meet with someone from this ship. I gave what I thought to be very clear instructions. Set up cameras and record the area, so we could review the tapes and discover who the traitor was. At no point,” Fariq dryly emphasized, “did I say shoot up the market. I havealways enjoyed friendly terms with the Moroccan police… until now. Something will have to be done to smooth this over.”

“I’ll add something extra to their payment this month,” Christian said dryly. That was fairly routine whenever things went cock-up in an ally’s territory.

“Perhaps for yourself, too,” Fariq suggested, opening up his laptop. “A bonus, so to speak, for all the extra effort you’ve gone through today.”

Why did that set off warning bells? Christian grit his jaw, forcing his body to stay relaxed.

“Nothing I’ve done today was anything more than my job.”

“Getting fired on by your own crew is definitely not part of your job.”

“Getting fired on is, by who doesn’t matter.” Christian thought about it. “Until they’re staring right at you and reloading after a missed headshot. It kind of matters then.”

Fariq chuckled, his normally cold features melting into a rare smile that actually seemed sincere.

“For me, too. Although I confess, I was curious about some of the video they brought back. Granted, even having viewed the film, I would not have ordered a bombing or my men to fire into a crowd of shoppers, particularly knowing Aliya was among them. Oh, and you, of course.”

Yeah, fuck you, too.

Mouth shut, Christian let that pass.

“But this struck me as interesting.” Turning his laptop around, he showed Christian a grainy clip of a video. The sound was soft enough that it took him a minute to recognize the cacophony of many men and women screaming as they ran. Now and then, blurry parts of them running along the bottom of the video could be seen, but the focus wasn’t on them. It was on him, shoving Aliya up against the wall and sheltering her with his own body right before the headshot took a chip out of the wallbehind them. Lamar must have been standing right next to the cameraman, considering the angle of Christian’s returning glare seemed meant for the camera. For the life of him, however, he remembered only Lamar. He’d been so focused on the moment, he hadn’t even noticed he was being filmed.

“I owe you for that,” Fariq said softly. “He could have shot her.”

“He was aiming for me,” Christian heard himself reply, his tone much calmer than he felt. “I don’t think she was ever at risk.”

“No?” Arching both eyebrows, Fariq turned the laptop back to him, hit a few keys, then spun it back toward Christian. “How about now? What kind of peril is she in now?”

Christian’s gut went right through his seat and hit the floor. There on the screen was him, wrestling Aliya down over his knee in the open air of the café, yanking her skirt up and her shorts and panties down while he blistered her naked backside. Smack after smack, he turned her ass a brilliant shade of red while she bucked, twisted, and thrust back her hand in a vain attempt to stop what he had no intention of halting until he was sure his point had been thoroughly made. The camera didn’t miss a single impact.

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