Page 11 of Beautiful Vengeance

His mother set her spoon down to study him. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Then where is she?”

I don’t know.And it ate him alive every single day. “She left the country,” he said in a flat voice that warned her to drop the subject.

“So you let her go.” She shook her head, sighed in disappointment and picked up her spoon.

His fingers clenched around his spoon, the spike in his temper getting harder and harder to control.Just get through the meal, then you can leave.

There was no point in continuing this conversation. He would just sound defensive and confirm what she already thought of him—that he was weak. He wouldn’t see her at all anymore except that she was his mother, and his last surviving relative. And there was a tiny part of him that kept hoping one day he would gain her approval.

“Why did you let her go?” his mother pressed, the pitch of her voice raking down his spine like the edge of chalk down a blackboard.

I wouldneverhave let her go, his mind hissed.

Kiyomi had changed his entire world. From the moment she walked into the hotel lobby that day wearing a red satin dress that hugged her sleek curves, she’d captivated him.

His mother laughed. A nasty laugh that made him want to slap her across the face. “She left you because you couldn’t keep her.” She laughed again, shaking her head. “All that money and power you love, and you couldn’t keep her.”

Fayez shoved to his feet. Nailing his mother with a long, fulminating glare, he threw his linen napkin on the table and stalked from the room. He didn’t stop in the next one.

He kept going to the foyer, where his bodyguards were waiting. “We’re leaving,” he said curtly.

They escorted him outside and to his car. He hoped his mother fucking choked on the dinner he’d paid for.

Alone in the back of the vehicle, his bitter thoughts turned back to Kiyomi. He’d never met a woman like her. Confident. Incredibly intelligent. Quiet. Calm. The sexiest thing he’d ever laid eyes on.

And when she’d looked at him, she’d seen him. The real him, hidden beneath the money and the power and empire he’d built.

He’d fallen fast and hard. So hard, he was willing to give her anything. Including his heart.

But then he’d found out everything between them was a lie. That she was a lie, just like every other woman who’d ever been in his life. Worse, she’dusedhim, was actually some American government assassin.

The betrayal had sliced deep, opening wounds he’d carried with him from childhood. She’d fooled him. Made a fooloutof him.

Then he’d found out what the brand on her left hip had meant. Before that he hadn’t even known the Valkyries existed.

Once he’d learned the truth he’d had no choice but to punish her. No one betrayed him and lived, and he couldn’t risk appearing weak. But he couldn’t kill her, because an interested buyer had come along at the right moment, offering a fitting punishment for her.

Her mark was how he’d been introduced to the Architect. The Architect had been hunting Valkyries and was willing to pay three million to have Kiyomi, and in addition promised to deliver her a lifetime of servitude and suffering. Kiyomi would have lived the rest of her days praying for death while remembering that he was the reason she had been captured in the first place.

And then…she’d disappeared. Someone had broken her out of her cell one night and he hadn’t been able to find a single trace of her since. Only rumors. Never a concrete lead. It tore him up inside.

She was still out there, and he couldn’t bear or allow that. He would never stop searching for her, no matter how long it took or how much it cost. He would use every last resource at his disposal to make sure he brought her back to pay for her betrayal.

No matter what he had to do, what he had to pay and who he had to kill, Kiyomi would be his again one day. And this time, he would succeed in breaking her before he sold her to the Architect.

Chapter Four

Marcus was out checking the perimeter fence lines early the next morning in the steady drizzle when Megan called him on his mobile. It was just past oh-six-hundred, and she didn’t usually call this early unless she wanted to go riding. “Morning.”

“Hey. The police are at the gate wanting to talk to you.”

Ah, shite. He’d been hoping they would just call him rather than show up. “I filed a complaint about Karas last night,” he said, walking back to his ATV. He’d gone back and forth about it for several hours, then decided he couldn’t let it go. Filing a complaint should have no consequences whatsoever on the situation with his houseguests.

“Well, that’s part of what they want to see you about.”

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