Stolen Hearts (Hearts 1)

It hurt, and I stood there. Taking it.

Why was I doing this? Why was he? It felt like a warning and a lesson, and it felt real. Like the grass under my feet. Like the booze in my belly. Not at all like the threats inside that house, whispered and insinuated. The pain, the taste of blood and salt from his finger. The look in his eye willing me to stillness.

So. Real.

“Don’t let them hurt you,” he said.

His words broke the spell and heart pounding, I stepped back, but I didn’t leave. Like a fool, I stayed.

He didn’t have to be a Morelli to be trouble. Or to get me in trouble.

This man was lethal. And so attractive it hurt. It actually hurt.

“Who are you?” I asked, licking the blood off my lip. Hoping for a lingering taste of him.

He shook his head. “I am no one.”

Someone came to stand in the doorway, breaking up the light, casting a shadow across the stranger’s beautiful face. Both of us turned to look.

“Jesus, Princess,” my Irishman whispered when he saw who was standing there and he must have realized who I was.

“Poppy?” It was the senator, and I went cold. Tried so hard not to, but head to toe the chill settled over me. “Everything all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said and smiled to prove it. He always believed my smiles. Everyone did. They were very good smiles. Or maybe he just didn’t care.

“We’re about to make the announcement,” the senator said, and he summoned me with his fingers. A kind of snapping thing like you’d do with a dog, and I told myself, like I had for a while now, that it wasn’t personal. It was actually the opposite of personal. He treated everyone like that. That that made me feel better wasn’t something I was actually proud of. But I was seeking comfort from any corner.

“I’ll be in in a second,” I said. I wanted to say goodbye to this stranger. To these quiet moments of rest.

Or maybe I just wanted to pull my leash as taut as possible, to see how far it would stretch.

“Poppy?” The senator smiled when he said my name, but the steel was there. That terrifying sharpness. Turns out my leash didn’t stretch far at all.

“You heard her,” the Irishman said from the shadows. “She needs a second.”

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Jim stepped into the light; he was smiling but it was the razor’s edge. Jim was blonde and blue eyed. He wore glasses that made him look smart. He worked out just enough that the suits he wore looked good.

Everything about him inspired comfort and confidence.

Voters loved him.

I’d never been so scared of someone in my life.

“I’m coming,” I said, and I stepped into the light with Jim Maywell, the junior senator of New York who was 28 years older than me, and at midnight, we were announcing that I would be his wife.

Jim grabbed my hand too hard. But I expected it, and made my hand as small as I could in his. There was a trick to funneling my fingers, so he couldn’t grind the bones together. I’d learned that fast. I wondered if that would be interesting on my application to the catering company.

Experience: eating canapes off trays and mitigating the pain my fiancé wanted to inflict on my body.

We stepped off the small patio into the doorway with the sound of the party filtering through the walls.

Don’t do it, I told myself. Don’t look. He’s not for you. Not ever.

But of course, I couldn’t stop myself, and I looked back over my shoulder, but the Irishman was gone.

Nothing was left of him but the taste of blood in my mouth.

3

Two years later

The phone rang once, or barely, maybe. It barely rang, and I grabbed it.

“Zilla?” I tried to keep my voice calm. That’s what Dr. Anderson said I should do. Dr. Anderson actually said that it was the most important thing. Staying calm. Being calm. Sounding calm.

“You have a collect call from Belhaven Institution. Do you accept these charges?”

Oh god. Good. Belhaven. My hands shook.

“I do,” I said. “Of course.”

“I’m fine.” My sister’s voice, exhausted and thin, was the best thing I’d heard in the seven long days since I’d spoken with her.

I pulled the phone from my ear and covered my mouth, trying to get myself under control.

“Poppy?” My sister pulled me back. “I know you’re crying. You can cry.”

That was not what Dr. Anderson said, but I collapsed backwards in the very uncomfortable armchair in the front sitting room. “Are you okay?” I asked her.

“I said I was fine.”

“You were gone. You weren’t—”

“I checked myself back into Belhaven.”

I folded over my legs, a pain in my stomach that was spreading to my chest. I heard from her a week ago and then silence. No answering her cell phone. Emails. Texts. I went by her apartment, and it was empty. Like . . . empty empty. And I’d spent the last week sure she’d . . . done something horrible.