The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) (3 page)

There weren’t many who would agree with her. Most would argue the law and who had the power to take another man’s life, but Ava wasn’t so sure the law was as black and white as that. Powerful men dodged justice every day. Bad men. The cancers of the world. So what if someone made them pay for their crimes when the courts turned a blind eye? Sometimes, it was necessary.

But maybe a lot of that mindset came from the fact that the man Ava loved more than anything was a member of that shadowy world. Not many knew, not even her mother, but Ava wasn’t so lost in her own needs not to recognize her stepfather for what he truly was. So, by condemning the city’s organized crime, it always felt like she was condemning him and that was inconceivable.

“I should actually go.” She began to dodge around the pair still bickering about the rights and wrongs of the world. “But it was lovely to see you both.”

She made her escape before either of them had a chance to react. She hurried through the room and back out into the hallway, gaze scanning every face for some signs of Patrick.

She was just beginning to think maybe he’d gone home when she spotted him. He stood in the midst of a group of men well into their fifties, chatting on as though they’d been friends for ages. Ava recognized most of them as judges and a couple of lawyers. She knew them by face, but their names completely escaped her. She opted to leave him there.

“Ava.” Her mother appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Ava felt the woman’s claws sink into her arm before she was there, propelling Ava from the room. “What are you doing?”

Dislodging her limb from the death grip, Ava faced Charlotte. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re just standing there, lost to the world … slouching!” Charlotte sucked in a quick, calming breath. “That is an original
Valentino
gown, Ava. You do not slouch in an original
Valentino
gown! What are you thinking?”

“I wasn’t slouching.” She totally was. She knew she was. But she’d never mastered the ability to shove a stick that far up her own ass to keep it from happening. “I’ll stop.”

“Do!” Charlotte’s nostrils flared. “And mingle, for Christ sakes. This is your party.”

Ava’s posture was the bane of her mother’s existence, along with a lengthy list of other imperfections, but her inability to remain straight-backed all night was the current topic of mortification for Charlotte Morel.

It never made sense to Ava why John Paul married the woman. There really wasn’t a more selfish person on the face of the planet, yet he’d put up with her for an astonishing fifteen years and he’d done it without losing his mind. That alone earned him Ava’s respect. He was clearly far stronger than she ever was. Her goal the first eighteen years of her life had been to get as far away from her mother as possible. She had saved every penny she came across, building a large enough nest to take her somewhere her mother wouldn’t be. It had all been meticulously planned until it wasn’t.

On her eighteenth birthday, she had lapsed into a false sense of unrealistic expectations that had cost her more than her plans. She had foolishly allowed herself a reason to stay, had embraced it for all it was worth, had cherished it and urged it to grow as high as any girl could allow those feelings to grow. But it failed her as those things usually did. She had, in those moments, actually believed she was worthy of another person’s affections and wound up waking up to an empty bed and no explanation. But it was that push that sent her packing that very day and leaving for Paris for a year. Then Australia, and finally returning two and a half years later a different person. Ava regretted nothing, except that she’d allowed her plans to be detoured in the first place.

She never would have returned. The occasional holiday visit was enough for her. Plus, John Paul flew out every month for a week or a weekend. It had all been fine, until the accident.

The memory still sent a cold chill through her. It was the singular most traumatic moment of her life. She would never forget picking up her mother’s call and hearing the hysterical woman tell her John Paul had been in an accident and was in the hospital. Ava couldn’t even recall the rest of the conversation. She might have dropped the phone or hung up. It was all a blur as she had left work without notice and caught the first flight back home, not even bothering to stop at her apartment for clothes.

It had taken twenty-five hours to get to him. Twenty-five hours of fretting and praying and crying. She had been as hysterical as her mother by the time she’d crashed through the hospital doors. But it was those hours that convinced her she was too far. Those were hours that she could have lost him. It didn’t even matter that her mother had over exaggerated the diagnoses, that the car had barely tapped the back of John Paul’s. It was the fact that he could have died while she was waiting for the stupid plane to fly faster.

She’d packed up her apartment in Sydney a month later and moved back. She got a job at Chaud, a fashion and health magazine as an editor, an apartment a block from John Paul’s estate, and started her life in the city she’d grown up in. She didn’t regret that either.

“So, I didn’t find your boy toy.” Robby was back, a fresh plate of canapé’s in hand. “But they have these new crab things that I swear melt—”

Ava gawked, astounded. “Did you seriously go to get more food?”

Robby paused in the midst of stuffing another
hors d’œuvre
into his mouth. “This isn’t food. This is like … okay, don’t judge. I’m starving.” He shoved the cracker into his mouth and chewed. “So, what are we doing?”

Ava shrugged. “Just standing here, trying not to slouch.”

“Huh.” He swallowed. “Your mom was by, eh?” He offered her his plate. “I have crabs.”

Ava burst out laughing. It was a loud, horrible sound that rang over the chatter, the music, and the low snickers from Robby. Heads turned. Conversations stopped. Ava only laughed harder. It was mortifying, because unlike normal girls with their adorable giggles, Ava had a laugh too big for her size. It drew attention no matter where she was and she fought like hell to contain it, but Robby always thought it was hilarious and did his best to poke one out of her every chance he got.

“I hate you!” she wheezed, struggling to contain herself.

Robby merely smirked and shoved another canapé into his mouth.

John Paul appeared at Robby’s elbow, slightly more rumpled than normal. He glanced sideways at Robby’s chipmunk cheeks, raised an eyebrow, then must have decided it wasn’t worth asking, because he turned straight back to Ava.

“She’s very handsy for someone so short.” He rolled his shoulders as though to shake off the phantom touches of Mrs. Pearson’s hands. “Kept insisting it was because she couldn’t reach higher.”

“I’m sorry.” Ava struggled to contain her giggles. “But it was for a good cause.”

John Paul sniffed, the closest he’d ever gotten to a snort. “Debatable.”

“What’s happened?” Robby glanced from one to the other. “What did I miss?”

She was about to tell him. Her mouth opened and words collected when the entire room inexplicably went silent. The air thickened in an odd sort of hum that resonated through the crowd of onlookers. A faint rustle collected as bodies turned, heads swiveled, and attentions were pivoted away from conversations to The Devil in the doorway.

He bathed in shadows. Every strip of it seemed to wind around his powerful frame, bending to him like a lover’s embrace. They parted like drapes on a stage to expose the beauty of the man they concealed with deft precision. His allure was both dark and devastating. His aura a steady pulse of unwavering power and strength.

He had his father’s eyes. They were the eyes of a jungle predator, a deep gold that cut across the room of curious onlookers and found Ava’s with a single minded determination only he seemed to possess, as though nothing in the entire room mattered, except finding her. In them, they held the power to bring time, sound, and space to a crashing standstill. The very world around them vanished with that single merger of gazes and Ava tumbled. Her mind was scrubbed clean of all wants and needs, except the ones he evoked. His seemingly limitless hold on her had not swayed in the years they’d been apart, and nothing had terrified her more.

He was the embodiment of his name.

“Dimitri.” His name breathed from her lips.

The Devil stepped over the threshold, fifteen feet from Ava, but still so close she could smell the decedent lace of sandalwood and amber of his favorite cologne. It was a scent she knew better than her own. She used to wake with it clinging to her skin and sheets, along with the primal aftermath of a night spent in a tangle of hot, writhing limbs and greedy desperation. Just the fragrance alone was enough to bring back a flood of memories she wasn’t equipped to handle in a room full of watchful eyes. She fumbled for composure and could feel her resolve breaking, her nerves jittering. Christ, she was falling apart.

Her knuckles bleached white at her sides. Her heart drummed with a ferocity that reverberated throughout her entire being. It was beyond her how he could still wield that level of power over her, but he did.

“Dimitri?” John Paul took a step forward.

Dimitri released Ava from his scrutinizing stare and focused on the older man. “I was in the neighborhood.”

The words rolled through the room in a beautiful rumble of rolling r’s and a masculine growl. His faint accent only made it harder to ignore the fact that he was every bit as gruff and wild. His voice had deepened since they were kids. It had thickened so it seemed to vibrate from deep within his chest cavity. Ava hadn’t heard it in years, but the memory of his husky demands in her ear at night, the vibration of his chest against hers, the warm whisper of his breath against her skin were all vivid in her mind. Too vivid.

He shifted his weight, a subtle movement that, to anyone else, would have been nothing more than an adjustment of his shoulders, but Ava saw it. Her heart slammed into her stomach.

“He’s hurt.” She said it low, just loud enough for John Paul to hear her.

He shot a glance at her, a brief flick of his gaze before he was facing the man across the room once more. “Let’s head into my office.”

Dimitri didn’t protest the request. He waited with the same stoic expression as John Paul crossed the room and joined him in the corridor. Together, they disappeared from sight.

Robby broke the silence that followed. “What just happened?”

The buzz had regained through the room. Curiosity punctuated with questions and glances at Ava that she ignored.

“I need to go,” she whispered to no one in particular.

But she grabbed Robby’s hand and dragged him along with her through the maze of rooms, down the seemingly endless corridors. Her heels clacked in sync with the tempo of her pounding heart. It was his turn to run to keep up.

“Ava, what—?”

“Don’t ask questions,” she warned him. “Promise me.”

Robby frowned. “But what—?”

She skidded to a halt and faced him, her chest rising and falling rapidly against the front of her dress. “I’m about to trust you with the most important thing in my life, the biggest secret I have ever kept, and I am trusting you because you are my best friend and I need your help.”

The crease between his brows deepened. More lines appeared at the corners of his mouth. His gaze shot past her to the hallway leading to John Paul’s office, then back down to her.

“Tell me who that was first.”

His hand slipped from her grasp. She took a step back and his eyes narrowed.

“I can’t. I can’t tell you anything.”

“But you want me to trust you.” It wasn’t a question.

Ava nodded. “Yes.”

Robby searched her face, longer and more scrutinizing than ever before. Finally, he gave a nod, a silent confirmation. Ava exhaled the breath she’d been holding. She took his hand once more and led him the rest of the way.

She’d been right. The stench of copper greeted them the moment the office doors were opened. It was thick and powerful, and tinged with a potency that made her stomach churn. Her fingers slipped from Robby’s a second time and she ran to the man slumped on the sofa, eyes closed, naked chest a smear of crimson dripping from the hole in his shoulder.

“Dimitri.”

Heavy lashes lifted and she was caught in the gold pools resting against a face set in a grim determination. His features had changed in their time apart. They’d filled to become the face of a man, the face that had seen things no one should ever see. There were scars that hadn’t been there before, thin, white slivers over his left brow, nicking the top right corner of his mouth, digging deep into the hollow of his right cheek. But he had never been more beautiful. His imperfections gave the Devil an almost angelic beauty that made her chest hurt.

“Leave.”

The single command gouged into her gut with talons tipped in serrated metal and tore out her insides. But she steeled herself, berated herself.

She ignored him and turned to John Paul. “Let Robby look at him.”

John Paul, a bottle of vodka in one hand, a first aid kit in the other, paused to eye the man hovering by the open door.

Robby stood motionless, away from the group. His expression a tense line mirroring his shoulders. He switched his attention from Ava to John Paul, and settled on Dimitri with a dour suspicion.

“I’m not doing anything until someone explains what’s going on.”

Ava stiffened. “You promised.”

There was none of Robby’s usual gentleness now. This was a side of him Ava had never seen before.

“That was before I was being asked to patch up a bullet hole, which is illegal to do without reporting it to the police. So, before I jeopardize my residency for a complete stranger, I want to know who he is and why he has a hole in his shoulder.”

Ava looked to John Paul for answers. This situation lay beyond her area of expertise. She had never had to explain Dimitri before. He had been her and John Paul’s secret for the last fifteen years. In all truths, he wasn’t even really her secret. Not anymore.

“Dimitri’s my son.”

Three little words and it was out there. There was now a forth in their lie. Granted, of the bigger picture, Dimitri’s origins were probably the least troublesome.

“Son?” Disbelief dripped from the single question. It was followed by a raised eyebrow. “Since when do you have a son? I’ve known Ava for five years.”

“It’s complicated to explain,” John Paul elucidated.

Robby looked to Ava. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to,” she insisted, guilt knotting her insides. “I really did, but I—”

“Could we not let the man on the sofa bleed to death?” Dimitri growled through clenched teeth.

Ava turned back to Robby. “Please, Robby. I will explain the best I can, but…”

Robby peered down at Dimitri, expression wary, but annoyed. “I want the whole truth, understand?”

Ava hesitated.

“Yes,” said John Paul. “You have my word.”

Robby bobbed a nod. He reached for the first aid kit and the bottle of alcohol. He passed the latter to Dimitri.

“You’re going to need this.”

They never showed on TV just how gruesome, how exhausting tending a bullet wound really was. They didn’t show how messy and, even though it was only his shoulder, how terrifying. Ava, who had never done more than slap on a Band-Aid, found herself elected as Robby’s nurse. It became her job to hold the towel over the hole and not squirm when hot blood soaked through. It was her job to thread the curved, fish hook needle and not throw up when it was pierced through Dimitri’s flesh.

But she didn’t barf. Instead she was blinking back the dull fingers of darkness threatening to take her under.

“Scissors … Ava!”

It took her several woozy moments to think past the fog and focus on Robby’s voice. Apparently, he’d made the same request six times before shouting at her.

“Sorry.”

She found the small, hooked tool and stuffed them into Robby’s palm.

The bloody bit of threads was snipped. The end still poking out of Dimitri was twisted into a loose knot. The area was cleaned with a wet nap. A gauze was slapped down over the neat row of stitching and it was over.

Ava exhaled, sweaty and shaky. “God, how do you do that every day?”

Robby rose from his crouch next to the sofa, stretched, and turned to her. “Don’t get comfortable. We need to do the other side.”

The bullet had gone through—a clean exit, Robby had called it. It hadn’t occurred to Ava that meant two wounds. That knowledge filled her with the urge to burst into tears.

Nevertheless, she bit the tears back and set to work handing and dabbing and threading. It wasn’t as hard as the first time. Once she let her mind go to another place, it was fairly easy.

What amazed her afterwards was how still and silent Dimitri had been through the whole ordeal. Maybe he’d been meditating or maybe he’d fallen asleep, but he blinked his eyes open when it was over as if nothing had happened.

John Paul took that moment to return from entertaining the party guests. It was the only way to ensure Charlotte wouldn’t come searching if they were all missing. He glanced from Robby to Dimitri, who looked only mildly ashen.

“Finished?” he asked Robby, who was in the process of snapping off the bloody, rubber gloves.

“Yup.”

Dimitri rose. He peered down at the square bit of cotton contrasting harshly with the smooth, taut skin of his tanned torso. Then twisted his chin to squint at the one on the back of his shoulder.

Ava took that moment to study him as well, to take in the work of art he kept hidden beneath dark t-shirts and loose cargo bottoms. His body hadn’t changed much from what she remembered of it. It was fuller, maybe. The width of his shoulders seemed broader, the muscles on his arms thicker. There were more tattoos cut into him than before. The three he’d had eight years ago had become a dizzying aura of colors, shapes, patterns, words, and images. They all ran together in a story she had a feeling could fill a book about the man standing before her. Part of her wondered if she was on there somewhere. If she’d made it onto his skin. If their year together had meant enough to him to want to remember it forever. It was foolish and she immediately scolded herself for going there. It had taken her years to move past what he’d done. This moment, him being there, it meant nothing. She couldn’t allow it to.

Satisfied by the job, Dimitri reached into his back pocket and unearthed a wad of fifties. He stuffed them into Robby’s hand.

“For your troubles,” he said, reaching for his ruined top.

The material was dragged down over his head with an efficiency that was horrifying considering what they’d just finished patching him up. The waistband of his pants were darker, still slightly damp from the blood he’d lost. But that didn’t seem to bother him as he tugged the hem of his top over it.

“Where are you going?” Ava demanded, tossing her own bloody gloves into the trash can. “You can’t leave.”

“It’s not safe for me to stay.” He looked to John Paul. “I appreciate it.”

He slung his coat on. The soft leather gave a faint rustle as it settled around him. He kept his head lowered. Aside from that moment when she’d first arrived in the room, he hadn’t given her a single glance. She told herself it didn’t matter, but it did. His refusal to even acknowledge something that small, hurt. He hadn’t even thanked her. She wasn’t expecting money or eternal gratitude, but a simple thank you couldn’t kill him.