Stolen Lust (Beauty in the Stolen 1)

I face my brother. “Then it all worked out.”

Leon scrubs a hand over his face. “You got shot.” He pins me with a stare. “You call that working out?”

Raising my palms, I keep the calm my brother can’t. “I’m alive.”

“Because you got lucky,” he grits out. “If Ruben hadn’t tackled the guard who took a shot at you—”

There is, however, a limit to my patience. “Is there a point to regurgitating yesterday’s events?”

He looks at me like he can’t believe I said that. “A good one.”

“Which is?” I taunt, pushing him because he needs a vent to blow off steam.

“It can’t happen again.”

It won’t. Beautiful, doll-pretty Cassandra Joubert is a one-off woman. There’s no two of her in the world. A woman like her only crosses a man’s path once in his life—if he’s lucky.

Yeah. Contrary to what my little brother believes, I got extremely lucky. So much, I must be the luckiest bastard alive.

“Mistakes make the difference between life and death,” Leon continues. “You may not be so lucky next time.”

“There won’t be a next time,” I say again.

Cas was a one-off experience, but even as I have that thought, it doesn’t sit right with me.

Leon pinches his thumb and forefinger together. “We were this close,” he snarls. “All you had to do, was wait another ten minutes for the guards to change their shift.”

In ten minutes, she could’ve been gone. I’d barely caught up with them on the road. It was pure luck I’d turned for Rustenburg. They could just as easily have headed toward Pilansberg. The possibility of never having met her, smelled her skin, touched all that velvet softness, and sunk deep inside her leaves me with a bottomless unease. That unease has been a persistent gnawing in my gut since the minute I dropped her off in front of her apartment building.

“Let me see,” Leon says, motioning at my shoulder.

My voice is gruff. “I’m fine.”

His lips thin with annoyance. “It needs stitches.”

I shoot him a look that says to drop it. “Done.”

He frowns. A moment later, his forehead smooths out with comprehension. “You made her stitch you up.”

The statement goes without saying. I don’t waste my breath on redundant words.

He swallows. The air grows thicker. “Did you kill her?”

I go still. The words vibrate in my skull. I want to knock his head against the wall for nothing other than uttering it.

Ruben rubs the back of his neck and averts his eyes. He makes to move, but I speak before he does. They both need to hear this.

“No.” We steal. We don’t kill. It’s a rule cast in stone, but I’ve upset the applecart, and it leaves them uncertain as to where we stand on matters. “Anyone touches her, that motherfucker is dead.” There’s no mistaking the sincerity of my threat. “I don’t care who he is.”

Both of them stare at me. Silence stretches as they consider this new dynamic. I’ve just put a spoke in the wheel. Our pact is above everyone and everything, because it ensures our safety. I’ve never put anyone above my own brother. Money is our goal. I’ve never made something else more important.

Disbelief is an ongoing battle that wages in his eyes. “Where is she?”

The word falls hard from my mouth, making it clear I won’t be challenged on this. “Home.”

“Home.” He no longer looks at me in disbelief, but like I’m certifiably nuts. He laughs. “Now you’re probably going to tell me you made sure she got inside safely.”

My eyes tighten with an involuntary tick. “Yes.”

“Fuck, Ian.” He spears his fingers through his hair, pulling at the ends. “What if she talks?”

“She won’t. I made sure of it.”

He drops his hands and nods like a dashboard figurine. “You made sure of it.”

“That’s what I said.”

Ruben shuffles to the door. “I’m packing up. It’s all over the news. We need to move.”

“Start with the bedroom,” I say, not moving my eyes from my brother’s face.

When Ruben goes down the hallway, Leon says in a lowered voice, “They’ve got your DNA now. It’s only a matter of time.”

Meaning the blood I’ve shed on the casino carpet. Up to now, we’ve managed to keep our identities unknown.

“I hope she was worth it,” he says, bitterness lacing his tone.

Grabbing the beer, the very bottle she’d pressed to her pretty, plump lips, I tip it back and down half of the flat alcohol.

“What about the Porsche?” Ruben asks, sticking his head back around the frame with his arms full of blankets.

“Burn it.”

He nods and goes out the backdoor.

Leon still contemplates me as if I’ve ruined his life, which I suppose I have, and not only yesterday. I set that wheel in motion twenty years ago when I let him run away from home with me.

“We need to hang out at the chalet for a while,” I say, “until the dust settles.”