Sinful Hearts: Chapter 13

This is embarrassing. I mean embarrassed enough for myself as it is. But if someone else were to walk in here and see the homage to Hades Drakos covering my twin desktop computer screens, it would be fall-through-the-floor mortifying.

.

Research. Yeah, that’s what it is. Reconnaissance on the man who was supposed to be my dirty little sinful secret, who now seems to be bulldozering his way into every facet of my life.

And my thoughts.

Not to mention my goddamn dreams—vividly and nightly, ever since he kissed me on the balcony the other night like a king staking his claim to his rightful territory. And the worst part is, even though I know I should be incensed that he just “decided” to kiss me like that—brutally, savagely, and completely unapologetically…

I’m not. In fact, the more times I replay it, the more turned on I get. The faster my pulse beats. The more erotically detailed my nightly, dreaming fantasies of him become.

I shiver as I return my focus to the screens in front of me. On them, there’s a whole litany of articles and online gossip about Hades pulled up. There was a piece in the recently on the launch of Thermopylae Acquisitions—with zero mention of the business interests of the Drakos family. Which I’m betting means they’re either friends with the guy who wrote the piece, or they made him the proverbial offer he couldn’t refuse.

My eyes skim over it. A little ways past the part where it gushes about the “strategic financial wisdom” of Ares Drakos, I find the bit about Hades. The author, one Mark Duccet, goes on to paint Hades in an extraordinarily favorable light as the resilient middle brother, learning to flex his wings beyond his older brother’s shadow.

I roll my eyes at phrases like “confident and grounded”, or “the poised voice of reason and the steady hand at the helm that helps guide King Ares’ ship.”

.

I minimize the article before I vomit. Then, I’m suddenly blushing as images of Hades fill the screen—other windows I’ve had open behind the article.

Images of Hades in an impeccably tailored suit, at a policeman’s fundraiser. Or jogging across the pitch of the football—sorry, —club the Drakos family once owned, and presumably laundered money through, back in England.

And then, there are other pictures: candid, paparazzi shots of Hades, shirtless, lounging on the bow of a yacht somewhere. Hades poolside at a luxury resort—also shirtless. Hades crossing the finish line of the London Marathon.

Shirtless, again, because why the fuck not.

There are more. Pictures of Hades outside the premiere of some dumb B-list movie, arm-in-arm with the vapid-looking starlet-of-the-month whom he was apparently “seeing” at the time.

I scowl, closing particular window immediately.

I sigh, leaning back in my chair as my eyes scan the no less than pictures of Hades up on my screens.

Yeah, research. Sure.

It’s not that I’m losing myself and getting all tangled up in the man that I slept with and keep fantasizing about now.

It’s .

That said, I’m in the middle of googling “Hades Drakos beach swimsuit” when there’s a knock at my door, and it swings open before I can even respond. Lunging forward while just about having a heart attack, I slam my screens off before raising my eyes past them to the doorway.

Instantly, my face hollows, my skin turns clammy, and my stomach knots with dread at the sneering, leering man standing in my office doorway.

“Knock knock,” Pascha grins lecherously as he saunters in.

“I’m in the middle of—”

He shuts the door behind him with a resounding click before he turns back to me, a creepy smile on his pock-marked face.

“As I said, I’m in the middle of something,” I hiss evenly. “Leave.”

Pascha ignores me, turning to stroll casually across my office, meandering his way past shelves of legal texts toward the little couch area I’ve got set up in the corner.

“Your father would like an update.”

I stand, walking around to the front of my desk and leaning against it with my arms folded.

“You can tell Leo I’m working on it,” I mutter.

“Yes, well, I’m not in the habit of lying to my boss.”

“It’s not a lie. I’m working on it.”

He swivels to leer at me, his eyes brazenly and nauseatingly sliding over my body in that way he does, making me cringe.

“Yes. Well. Work harder.”

He turns back, strolling casually over to the couches and bending over the one faced away from us. He chuckles to himself and starts to poke around at something, I can’t see what.

“Excuse me, what the fuck are you—”

Horribly, it dawns on me that it’s the gym bag I dropped there on my way in today—just as Pascha stands upright and turns toward me.

Grinning lecherously.

Holding one of my fucking in his hand.

“Put that down, you fucking cree—”

He lifts it to his face and sniffs deeply, making my skin crawl as the bile rises in my throat.

“Mmm…delicious.”

“Put that !”

I bolt toward him, yanking the sock from his hand, grabbing my gym bag, and then storming back across the room to throw them both under my desk. When I whirl back to him I gasp. He’s standing right behind me.

Looming over me. Sneering at me. Undressing me with his eyes.

“

,” I hiss quietly.

Pascha’s grin just widens.

“Don’t play innocent and bashful with me, little girl,” he chuckles darkly. “We both know you’re neither of those things when it comes to men now.”

My stomach heaves. I that this man knows about, and probably , my sex life.

Fucking .

“Get. Out,” I spit at him.

His smile threatens to split his face. “I’m curious…”

“I don’t give a shit—”

“Which position were you in when you first got fucked like a ten-dollar whore by a stranger?”

Nausea and anger explode through my system.

“Why do you want to know, Pascha?” I sneer at him. “Jealous?”

I regret saying it the second it leaves my lips. Because the way his jaw clenches tells me I’m righter than I ever wanted to be about that.

And it terrifies me.

terrifies me. And the fact that I’m alone with him right now sends my anxiety skyrocketing.

“

…” he leers. “Perhaps it never happened? Perhaps you about whoring yourself out to another man in order to get out of the arrangement your father made with you?”

“Oh, believe me,” I snap. “That was no lie.”

“I’m not so sure. Why don’t we check?”

Pascha grabs me and shoves me back hard against the side of my desk. Terror and fear explode through me as his hand jams down between us and shoves under the hem of my skirt.

“Get the off of me!!”

I hit him, hard—once, twice…

And then I go still and cold as the naked edge of his knife presses to my throat. Panic and terror claw their way through me as I stand there, horrified, pinned to the desk with his hand resting on my thigh and his weapon against my jugular.

“You would do very well indeed to be nicer to me, bitch,” Pascha snarls into my ear.

I swallow with difficulty, the sound of my pulse roaring in my ears as I force myself to glare right into his face.

“You can’t touch me.”

“

.”

“My father—”

“I am like a to your father,” Pascha snaps. “You, on the other hand, are nothing more than a whore.”

His hand grabs my thigh, reaching higher as bile and vomit churn together in my stomach.

“I can do whatever the I want—”

The door to my office swings open. Instantly, Pascha’s hand yanks back out from under my skirt as he jumps back from me. Still frozen, all I can do is swivel my eyes to the door, just in time to see Leo walk through, distracted by the phone to his ear.

I shudder as Pascha moves closer to me again, his sour breath on my neck.

“Not a fucking I hate how right Pascha is. He really is like Leo’s son, from everything I’ve seen. If I told Leo what Pascha just did to me, he’d probably tell him to go ahead and do it some more.

My pulse is still racing and my skin is still crawling from being touched by that fucking creep when the door opens again.

Doesn’t fucking knock anymore?

This time, it’s Nora who walks in. My face drains of color.

“What are you doing here?!” I blurt.

My sister’s brows fly up as she tears her eyes from her phone. “We…have a lunch date?”

I wince.

“Right, sorry. Of course.”

Suddenly, Leo’s done with his call and slipping his phone into his jacket pocket. He turns to smile icily at me.

“Aha. Just the lawyer I was looking for.”

My heart is racing, fear surging through my veins. Only now, it’s not because I’m scared of what Pascha or Leo might do to me.

It’s because Nora just unwittingly walked into the middle of all this.

I force a smile to my lips as I turn my attention to her.

“Nora, can I get a minute with”…I clear my throat, turning to level my gaze at my father…“Mr. Stavrin?”

Nora’s brow furrows. But then she grins. “Oh, you mean Leo?”

My face turns even whiter.

Leo chuckles. “We rode up in the elevator together. I was telling Nora here what a great lawyer her big sister is!”

I go numb as he lays a hand on her shoulder, smiling fixedly at me.

“And she was telling me all about school. And her , actually!”

“Nora…” I choke, hardly able to form words as I stare, terrified, at where Leo’s hand is resting on her shoulder.

“You know, Nora,” Leo sighs, “my wife was a dancer, too. She passed, sadly.”

I want to throw up. Or scream. Or stab him in the face with whatever even remotely sharp object I can get my hands on. Or all three of those things together.

Instead, I can only watch in horror as Nora’s face fills with sympathy as she eats up his bullshit.

“Oh, Leo, I’m so sorry—”

“Nora.” I bark her name way more harshly than I intended to. But it does snap her attention to me. “Sorry, but I do need a quick minute alone with Mr. Stavrin.”

Her brow knits, but she nods. Generally speaking, for all her teenage angst and occasional sass, she’s pretty great about respecting my work.

“Yeah, no problem. I’ll be outside—”

“Why don’t you stay here with my business associate?” Leo grins. “Your sister and I can talk business out on the balcony.”

Before I can say a thing, he surges toward me, wraps a hand tightly around my forearm, and starts to pull me after him toward the sliding door that leads out to the balcony off my office.

“Nora—”

“She’ll be just fine with Pascha,” Leo chuckles with an affable laugh as he slides open the balcony door. He tugs me through it and then slams it shut, leaving us alone.

I yank my arm violently out of his grip, snarling. “You stay the away from her!”

Leo laughs, grinning. “Oh, but there’s much to tell her, Elsa.”

“What, like that she’s your goddamn daughter?”

His smile drops. “She’s not my daughter.”

I could cheerfully murder him. It’s the same shit he used to say to my mother when I was eleven and Nora had just been born. That since my mother hadn’t been “putting out enough” for him, Nora was obviously some other man’s child.

The accusation was absurd. My mother was stuck on Leo. Sick with him, like a disease, despite all of his cruelty, violence, and womanizing.

But the one silver lining to Leo’s suspicions and accusations about Nora’s parentage was that it was the straw that broke his back. My sister wasn’t even one yet when Leo finally up and left for good.

It’s the nicest thing he ever did for us.

“I’m not doing this with you again, asshole,” I hiss at him.

“She , Elsa,” Leo snaps back. “I’m sorry if the truth hurts, but she—”

“Oh my God, you just don’t ever stop—”

“Your mother was a whore!”

“

.”

“I mean that literally!”

“She was a .”

“Who sucked cock for money.”

I know I could run a paternity test on Nora. In fact, I’ve almost done so, perhaps two dozen times. But I never go through with it. Sometimes, I wonder if it’s the fear of him being right, and what it would do to Nora’s and my relationship if it turned out that way.

But that’s ridiculous. Because even if Leo was right, or even if my mother straight up on the streets, Nora would still be, and would always be, my sister.

I turn, flinching when I see her talking to Pascha back inside my office, unaware that she’s talking to a predator.

“What the hell do you want, Leo?” I snap coldly.

“I want to know where things are sitting with you getting us what we want.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Work harder.”

I glare at him. “I’m their attorney, not their confidante, Leo. And I’m not personally involved in whatever you think they’re involved with concerning Serj Mirzoyan.”

“Don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m ,” I hiss. “At the last meeting I was at with them, they asked me and the other attorney present to leave the room when it was about to come up . I am involved. I know none of the details.”

“Then change that.”

I roll my eyes in exasperation. “That isn’t how it works. I’m a , Leo,” I snap. “Not a mafia henchman.”

“Get close to them,” he growls. “Learn about their plans. I don’t know, one of them if you have to. I hear that’s your thing now.”

I stare at him, wide-eyed.

“You do this, Elsa. It’s not a negotiation.”

“Get the hell out of my office—”

“You’ll get me what I fucking want, or we’ll move on to Nora and see what she can offer.”

Leo smiles coldly at me.

“Being that she’s…

, unlike you.”

Sick surges in my stomach and threatens to rise up my throat.

“You won’t go fucking her.”

“Won’t I?”

He turns his head. Shuddering, I follow his gaze inside the office. Instantly, I go cold. Inside, Pascha is showing Nora something on his phone. They laugh together at whatever they’re watching, and then he lays the phone down on my desk.

In horror, I watch Nora bend over, her elbows on the desk to get a better look as she laughs at the video. Pasha, meanwhile, stays standing. He slowly turns, letting his creepy gaze stab into mine through the glass between us. Then he turns back, his eyes dropping lasciviously to Nora’s ass.

I make for the door, a roar in my throat. But I’m stopped and the sound is abruptly cut off as Leo grabs me by the throat and shoves me back against the balcony railing.

“Get the fuck off—!”

“

.”

I jolt, stiffening as he pulls back his jacket to flash the butt of the gun in the holster under his arm.

“Shut up, and just watch.”

“

…”

Inside, Pascha grins at me, chuckling as Nora laughs at whatever she’s watching on his phone. He turns his gaze thoughtfully to her ass again, still grinning as he runs his hand sickeningly close to her—not touching, but only two inches away. He turns back to me again, his smile lecherous and hungry before he throws me a kissy face that makes me want to throw up.

“

,” I choke. “Gavan said—”

“Gavan is young and trying to find balance,” Leo hisses. “But his priority is always and will always be the business. He cares about the results, not my methods. Trust me on that.”

He nods inside to Pascha, who grins at me as he makes a big show of slowly licking his lips and glancing back at my sister.

“

.”

“Then get me what I want, you little cunt,” Leo snarls.

He releases my arm. Instantly, I bolt inside, storm over to the desk, and yank Pascha’s phone away from Nora.

“Hey, I was watching that—”

“Mr. Stavrin and his friend need to leave.”

I say it pointedly, glaring death at Leo as he steps back inside, and then leveling pure hatred at Pascha. He plucks his phone from my outstretched hand, smirking at me in that creepy way of his before he heads to the door.

When Leo does the same, I follow him, ready to slam and lock the door behind him. But he stops suddenly in the doorway, turning to lower his mouth to my ear.

“I have no problems doing the worst you can imagine to the offspring of the woman you called mother and whatever five-dollar-fuck brought that brat into the world. Get me what I want, Elsa. Or you’ll regret it. And I can promise you, Nora certainly will too.”