Heartless Lover (Dark Syndicate 5)

“Yes. The contract is worth five million, and they didn’t want him to find out the tech wasn’t working. When Donny said it was deteriorating and he couldn’t fix it, that’s when Robert shot him, and he saw me. He and Micah both saw me and came after me. I didn’t even know what I’d walked in on.” I pause for a moment to catch my breath. “When Robert saw me, he seemed more concerned about what I heard over what I’d seen him do,” I point out.

“He would have been.” A look of deep contemplation comes into his eyes.

“Where did this happen?”

“It um…” My voice trails off when I remember I’m a whore.

I was going to tell Jake—Robert, I couldn’t work that night because I had a headache. So, in other words, I wouldn’t be available to fuck him or whoever he wanted me to fuck that night.

If I wasn’t a whore, I wouldn’t have gone to Robert to tell him anything.

That is the new level of low I’ve reached in my life. I became the whore everyone thought I was. The whore accused of pushing her mother to kill herself because apparently, I was fucking my stepdad.

Just because I became the whore on my own terms didn’t change what I always was in everyone’s eyes—nothing.

“Work,” I foolishly decide to say.

“Where did you work, Summer?” he prods, and my nerves spike.

I hold my breath and glance down at my hands in my lap. My eyes flick back up to meet his, and I swallow pride as I say, “It’s called Club Montage.”

His expression doesn’t change, and I don’t know whether that’s because he hasn’t heard of the club, or he has and doesn’t care one way or the other what I must have been if I worked there.

“What kind of job did Robert do there?”

“He was the co-owner with another guy called Cassius Dent.”

“How long did you know Robert?” he asks.

“Six months. That’s how long I worked at the club.” Just saying that makes it sound so bad. Six months of being in that place makes me look even worse like a whore.

“Do you have an address for Robert and Micah?”

“No, I always saw them at the club.”

“What about a number.”

“Yes. I have a number for both Robert and Cassius.”

“Give them to me.”

I tell him, and he writes it down.

“Robert had two phones, though. That number is probably the contact he gave people who worked at the club. It wasn’t the phone he took business calls on.” I remember thinking that much when I saw him taking his calls on the other phone.

“How did you manage to escape after they saw you?”

“I hit Robert with the fire extinguisher when his phone rang. Then I ran. It’s a club that’s packed every night from the time the doors open, so it was easy to disappear in the crowd. I hid after. I never knew my sister was going to visit me. It was a surprise.”

I wipe more tears away with the heel of my hand.

“Is there anything else you know?”

I shake my head. “No. I don’t think so. What did Robert do to you?” Curiosity makes me want to know more about the monster I’m running from and the one in front of me.

“Enough to make me want to kill him.” A flash of indignation darkens his eyes, stopping me from asking any more questions about his connection with Robert.

Since I want him dead too, I can’t complain, but there’s more to factor in here than what I want. Like, what’s going to happen to me.