Page 39 of Sinful Desires
“Dead body found in Superstar Scarlett Harper’s hotel room.”
I had seen the pictures—the bodies laid out like dominoes, melted desks, someone’s heel still stuck to the carpet.
And it wasn’t the first time someone else’s blood had stained the floor because of a Harper.
His father, Harold, once cracked two of Lucius’ ribs and sent him into a coma when he was fourteen.
Yet the bastard had turned out just like him. Drunk at eighteen, billionaire by twenty, powerful enough to bury the mess by thirty.
The elevator doors groaned open, and Scarlett stepped out, her breath quick,tooquick. I trailed behind her as she moved down the hall, but then she stopped short, glancing at me.
“Wait out here,” she said, her voice tight.
I leaned against the doorframe and peered through the crack after she knocked. The old man was sitting behind an ivory desk, glasses perched on his nose, reading a newspaper.
“I’ll be here if you need anything.”
She nodded, not meeting my eyes, and then walked in.
I didn’t want to admit that maybe I’d pegged her all wrong. And that fucking pissed me off.
For three years, I’d followed her. Always kept my distance, but never too far. Close enough to watch, to make sure no one else touched her. Had gotten her home more times than I could count when she ended up drunk, passed out in clubs, curled up in VIP booths at fashion shows, or half conscious in private suites at galas.
I kept my clients in New York for a reason—so I could always be close.
So I never missed a fucking thing.
I’d lasted a week after the night we met. A single week before her name had started rotting through my head like acid. Her voice kept me up.
I told myself I just needed to see her one more time, then I’d let it go. That was the lie I fed myself.
So, I’d taken a day off. Crashed the gala her family had hosted for orphans across the world. Slipped in wearing a security badge. No one had asked questions. No one ever did.
She sang three songs in a white dress, her red hair sleek and eyes glassy. She looked like a fucking angel.
A ruined one.
I should’ve turned around right then, but I couldn’t. I walked out the back door, choking on whatever the hell was clawing up my throat. That’s when I saw her lying on a bench outside, a cigarette still lit on the ground beside her, a red satin scarf tied around her neck.
I touched her cheek, which felt cold enough to burn. Her skin was freezing, but that wasn’t what stopped me. It was her face. The way her lashes rested against her cheeks. The soft part of her lips, open just enough for shallow, fragile breaths.
She didn’t look asleep. She didn’t even look alive. She looked empty. Hollow in a way that didn’t happen overnight. And that was what wrecked me.
Because I had seen that fucking look before.
Not on the streets. Not in hospital beds or the faces of people I was paid to protect or bury.
I had seen it staring back at me. In quiet rooms. In cracked mirrors. In every place where silence lingered too long.
Thatlook. The look of someone who had already let go long before their body had caught up. And it called to something inside me that I had spent years trying to kill.
That was why I couldn’t fucking walk away. That was why I had carried her home, so carefully my hands shook from it. Because I knew exactly what she was.
A soul inches from death, the kind delivered by its own hands.
A ghost wearing a heartbeat.
And somewhere deep in the wreckage of me, I had already decided she fucking belonged to me, even if the world didn’t want her.
