Heartless Lover (Dark Syndicate 5)

Prologue

Summer

One week ago

My heart tumbles into a dark abyss as I stare at the lifeless body of my sister.

That’s really her lying dead on the morgue slab before me.

It’s true. Scarlett is dead.

My sister… my twin sister.

Dead.

Dead because she was wearing my face.

Jake, that fucking bastard, killed her because he thought she was me.

This is all my fault. And I can’t fix it.

Tears pour from my eyes, coming from deep within my weeping soul as the truth sinks in.

I rivet my gaze to her face, unable to look away. Every aspect of her face looks exactly like mine.

Except for the bullet wound in the center of her forehead.

That bullet was meant for me.

As the pain of losing her burrows into my heart, I cover my mouth to keep the anguish from pouring out.

I’m the one who insisted on seeing her like this because I needed to see the ugly truth. With the trouble I’m in, this might be the last time I see her, so I can’t fall apart.

I can’t believe this nightmare is real. Scarlett was never supposed to be anywhere near Monaco.

I had no idea she was here until earlier today when Marquees told me the horrific news.

Marquees is a cop. The kind who takes care of his informants. That’s how we began six years ago.

He’s the only person here I trust with the dark secrets of my past and the knowledge that I have a twin. He’s the only person I trusted enough to run to after I witnessed and heard something I shouldn’t have last week.

I had the worst instance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time when I saw Jake Wainwright, co-owner of Club Montage, kill a man in cold blood in his office. As my bad luck would have it, he saw me, too.

I should be the one dead now, but I made a lucky escape and went straight to Marquees, who’s been hiding me since.

He knew straightaway that the woman who was brought into the morgue this morning after being found dead in her apartment on Monaco Cliff wasn’t me. He knew it was Scarlett and what must have happened to her.

He also knew the fucking suicide note next to her body couldn’t have been written by me either.

It was Jake. He wrote the note. That bastard made it look like I killed myself.

Since a bullet to the head was the way Mom died, and the note she left behind blamed me, hearing that felt like a double-edged blade in my heart.

It was only when Marquees managed to get my bag from the club that I was able to look at my phone and listen to the messages Scarlett sent me two days ago. She wouldn’t have known not to come because I was being hunted. And there was no way I could have warned her.

We were supposed to see each other in a few months for our birthday, and it was my turn to see her. Not the other way around.

She’d flown over from L.A. for a surprise visit to celebrate getting the lead part in the play. It was her biggest life accomplishment, and she wanted to celebrate with her sister—me.