Just a Bit Ruthless (Straight Guys 6)

No, the problem was more complicated than Luke’s sex. The boy had been hurt in the past. He was too damn vulnerable. Luke wanted the type of commitment that would send most men running in the opposite direction. The boy also had an unsettling knack for making him want to be a better man than he was and to protect him from every hurt and harm. A prime example of it was when Luke had asked him whether Roman was the one to kill his father and Roman answered no. While technically he hadn’t lied, it wasn’t the full truth: he’d certainly played a part in Whitford’s death, however indirect. But he had omitted it, knowing the silly boy would be crippled with guilt, regardless of the fact that his father wasn’t worth it.

All in all, Luke Whitford would needlessly complicate his life. Getting involved with him would be irrational, impractical, and dangerous. Roman would have to make compromises and sacrifices he wouldn’t make otherwise.

Sighing, Roman pinched the bridge of his nose.

He had to make the decision.

Chapter 27

Anna wasn’t amused. Granted, she wasn’t easily amused, but the way her boss had been behaving for the past two months made her decidedly unamused. For the past two months? Perhaps it would be more correct to say the past half a year, ever since Roman kidnapped Whitford’s son and made him his pet—at least that was how Vlad had reported it to her while she was busy sealing a multi-million deal on Roman’s behalf in France. At the time, Anna had been skeptical and didn’t take Vlad’s words seriously: Roman had never shown any interest in men, so she was convinced it was part of some elaborate scheme to make Richard Whitford pay. By the time she had returned from France, Anna found the boy already gone, Vlad given the boot, and Roman restless in a way she’d never seen before.

There had been a certain tension about Roman, something tightly coiled around his shoulders in the following weeks. The most obvious reason she could think of at the time was that Roman had stopped sleeping around, and for Roman, it was nearly unheard of. Even Whitford’s death hadn’t seemed to appease him. If anything, Roman looked more on edge after that.

Anna started suspecting the real reason for Roman’s strange mood when he had asked her to find out everything about Dominic Bommer. With Whitford dead, there could have been only one reason for Roman’s interest: the beautiful young man in Dominic’s half-embrace. She could almost see the appeal: the boy had very fine facial features and a mouth to die for. Except Anna would have never thought that was Roman’s type—or anything with a penis, for that matter. But even then, she hadn’t suspected the extent to which Luke Whitford affected her normally unflappable, cool-headed boss.

Roman’s impulsive, unscheduled trip to London had been the first clue. When he disappeared into the night after dismissing his bodyguards, Anna hadn’t been amused in the least—with Vlad fired, security had been added to the long list of her responsibilities, and Anna didn’t appreciate it when Roman didn’t let her do her fucking job. Thankfully, Roman had returned to his hotel room a few hours later, safe and sound. But when she let herself into Roman’s room to let him know how displeased she was, she found him on the floor, gripping a bottle of vodka in his hand and staring at it hungrily.

The sight gave her pause. Roman didn’t drink. Not anymore.

It was common knowledge that Roman’s father had died from overdosing when Roman was seventeen, but few people knew he had actually been poisoned with drugs. Danil Demidov had been a harsh, unsympathetic businessman but an excellent husband and father. He and Roman had been very close, and Danil’s death had hit Roman hard. Anna knew Roman had killed the man responsible for his father’s death himself. It went only downhill from there. Roman had started drinking. It went on for months until eventually he was hospitalized with severe alcohol poisoning. When Anna arrived at the hospital, she found Roman’s mother clinging to him, crying and begging him not to do it to her and to the girls.

Who’s going to protect us if you’re gone, too, Roma? she had said at last when her son had remained deaf to her pleas.

To Anna’s knowledge, Roman had never touched alcohol again. But he did keep it at hand. When Anna had asked him a few years ago why he kept alcohol if he never drank it, Roman told her he liked to test himself.

That was why when Anna had seen Roman staring at the bottle of vodka with a scary sort of intensity, his jaw clenched tight, an alarm rang in her mind. When a few days later he canceled his flight to Italy and dismissed his bodyguards once again, Anna was more than a little annoyed. However, when Roman called her the next day, she noticed the change in him immediately: he sounded more relaxed, the tight snappishness in his voice gone. When he informed her of his whereabouts so she could send his bodyguards, she almost wasn’t surprised to learn that he was at Luke Whitford’s penthouse. Almost.