Stolen Hearts (Hearts 1)

“And why would he come here?” I was thinking out loud. That night I met him. He’d been beaten up and slightly baffled. He didn’t know why he was there. At that party. In the States.

I haven’t been invited in yet.

“Money talks,” Eden said. “And some guys like having a reason to be . . . unleashed. The Constantines and Morellis don’t have much in common, but they can offer a certain kind of person a . . . certain kind of pleasure.”

That whole sentence made my skin crawl. But part of it rang me like a bell. The truth could be so undeniable.

“How do you know Zilla?” I asked. Behind Eden, Jacob’s head snapped our way, and something awful curled in my stomach. Oh, Zilla. What have you been up to?

My sister wanted to be unleashed. That was what her manic side craved. A lawless state where she was judge, jury, and executioner. And something sparked in Jacob’s dead eyes at the mention of my sister’s name.

“Zilla and I go way back,” Eden said. She drained the last of the vodka and stood up, the fur coat slipping off her shoulder. And that was suddenly the end of the conversation. “I’m sorry that’s all I know. Ronan Byrne is a bit of a ghost.” And if she was drunk from the half a bottle Grey Goose she’d just shot down, she didn’t show it. “So? About my payment?”

“How much?” I asked, reaching for my bag. Zilla had not mentioned payment, but nothing was free. I knew that better than most.

“Oh honey. Money is so Constantine. The Morellis deal in something else entirely.”

She stepped forward, far too close. We’d shifted while talking, and I’d turned towards her. Suddenly, she was between my thighs. Her bare skin pressed up against my jeans. I could smell the vodka. The Jardin d’Amalfi she wore. A cigarette she might have smoked before coming in. Her eyes were dilated, and I wondered what else was in her system outside the vodka.

“What do you want?” I asked. “If not money.”

“Lots of things,” she said, and her finger lightly touched the side of my face. I could not mistake her intent.

“I won’t . . . have sex with you.”

“Well, that’s too bad. You were growing on me.” She stepped back, tugged her fur coat up around her body. “We’ll do this the old-fashioned way, I guess. You owe me one.”

“One what?”

“Favor.” She picked her purse up from the bar. “Relax. I’m not going to ask you to kill anyone. Probably.” She winked and turned for the door. “But if you want my advice, stay away from Ronan Byrne. The ones who have spent their life fighting don’t know when to stop.”

A favor? I thought in the car on the way back from Red Hook to Bishop’s Landing. What in the world could I offer a person like Eden Morelli? I didn’t know anything. I had no political secrets. And I didn’t know anything about the Constantines that she didn’t know. What if she wanted me to spy?

Well, she would be disappointed, in the end.

Theo pulled up to the front of the house, and I opened the door before he got there to open it for me. Stepping out of the car, I caught his rather stunned expression.

“I think I’d like to learn how to drive,” I said. For the brief period of time between my father’s death and the evaporation of all our money and resources and my marriage to the senator, I rode a bike around campus or took Ubers.

Not being able to drive had kept me captive, in a way. Relying on Theo, when if I’d been able to drive, maybe I would have made a break for it on my own.

No. I wouldn’t have.

But driving would be part of my new independence.

“Ma’am?” Theo said.

“Will you teach me?” I asked, and the poor guy blanched, looking around like he had to check with someone before saying anything. And maybe it was the vodka, or maybe it was brushing up against Eden Morelli who so clearly lived her life on her own terms, but I was done living my life like the senator was still alive.

I wasn’t a paper doll. Not anymore.

“The senator is dead. He doesn’t decide what happens in this house anymore.”

Theo blinked like I’d said something he wasn’t expecting. Well, he’d better get used to it. I was just starting to be unexpected.

“I can teach you,” Theo said.

“Good.” I walked past him into my dark house.

I opened the front door and punched in the code to the alarm to make it stop beeping. In the dark, I walked down the hallway past the rooms I never used and was never going to, the sitting room and the study with the fireplace that had not seen a fire once in the two years I lived here. In the kitchen, I got a glass of water and drank it down.