Page 8 of Deceitful Vows

As I watch the blonde hustle to a rusted car parked at the back of the lot, I feel Dr. Hemway’s eyes on me. He’s probably wondering why I’ve brought the murkiness of my industry into his sterilely clean world instead of waiting for him to come to me as agreed.

I’ve asked myself the same numerous times in the past hour.

No reasonable explanation appeared other than impatience.

I’m now skeptical that is the sole cause of the changeup.

People fall to their knees when they see me coming. They don’t return my watch like the blonde did. They’re usually too fearful of the repercussions their unwanted gawk would demand to unearth if my look is in covetousness or disgust.

They cower away. Wither like a picked flower left in the midday sun.

The blonde did no such thing.

She made me look like a?????who’s never sampled a cunt, much less an untouched one.

Her laugh when I ran into the pamphlet table like a soft cock…fuck.

It made me the hardest I’ve ever been.

She doesn’t fear me—not one bit—and the knowledge has me torn on how to respond. I want to bend her will, but is that solely so she will be in a better position to take my dick between her pouty lips?

Ten minutes ago, I would have said my interest in her had nothing to do with the way her nipples budded against her shirt when I couldn’t conceal my wish to kill anyone who had ever placed her in the position displayed on page seventeen. Now I’m struggling to conceal the interest in my voice when I finally answer one of Dr. Hemway’s numerous silent requests as to why I have arrived at his office.

I spin to face him like our meeting was scheduled for 6 p.m. this evening instead of 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. “Is she?—”

“No.” His clipped tone already has my mood skating from the playful, harmless bachelor I wanted to fool the blonde with to the calculated, menacing business mogul everyone in my realm encounters daily, much less what he says next. “She isn’t a good candidate.”

“Why?” My curt reply announces I hate urging responses. If you can’t be upfront, move aside and let someone else do what you can’t. Don’t make me pry answers out of you unless you want to leave our exchange with fewer fingers.

I work my jaw side to side when Dr. Hemway reminds me why I selected him for this assignment. “It’s confidential.”

I need discretion. His inability to break doctor–patient confidentiality is the sole purpose I scoured his personal life for something I could use to blackmail him. But I’m two seconds from breaking the fingers that had me so incensed with jealousy I entered a sterile room to see if the blonde’s presence altered its scent as well as she did my personality with something as simple as a sideways glance.

The equipment at the side of the bed appears untouched.

The good doctor should consider himself lucky.

I’m not sure what my response would have been if I had discovered the sordid thoughts in my head had been accurate.

With Dr. Hemway unwilling to give me answers, I seek my own. It is how I have operated over the past thirty years.

The chunky patient medical file on the desk could be for anyone, but the way Dr. Hemway shoots up from his chair when my eyes stray to it announces it belongs to the blonde.

Acting like a maniac instead of a future contender for the presidency, I force Dr. Hemway back into his seat when he attempts to rip Zoya Galdean’s file out of my hand. After I pin him to the backless chair, red-faced and angry, I flick through the extensively documented record with my spare hand. It reveals that Zoya is twenty-seven and a multifaceted foreigner, as indicated by both her accent and unique facial structure.

Although my focus should be on Dr. Hemway’s disclosure that Zoya isn’t a good candidate for my current political campaign, I center my focus on the personal side of her medical record.

My grip on Dr. Hemway’s throat loosens enough for him to breathe without a wheeze when the name cited in the next-of-kin section is also foreign and female.

No spousal details are supplied.

I’ll still check, though. Spousal indiscretions aren’t my forte. I’d rather take out Zoya’s significant other before fucking her.

After will make it seem as if my interest is based on more than lust.

“Is she married?”

My back molars grind as deafeningly as the pompous antique clock in the reception area when silence is the only answer I am given.

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