I’d loved him.
My first love.
And, what I decided would be my only love.
He was intoxicating. Older. Classically handsome and rugged in a way not many Hollywood men were. He was a method actor, which meant when he got a role about a man who got lost in the woods and lived off the land for years, he’d trained to be authentic. Not for years, of course. But two months. No cameras. No handlers. When he was cast in an overdone Shakespearean epic, he would only speak in Elizabethan English for the entire period of filming. Which would’ve had his female counterpart labeled as a deranged bitch, but he’d been considered a genius.
So yeah, he’d impressed me. He gave me a kind of attention I’d never known. And that was saying something considering I’d just become accustomed to having the entire world paying attention to me. Of course, as a foster child starved of love, I’d sucked it all up. Sucked him up. The man who was so sure of himself. So distinguished. So talented. He was a presence. One of the true movie stars—which were rare in Hollywood, no matter what it seemed.
I should’ve known better. Life had jaded me, so I didn’t have naiveté as an excuse. Worse than that, I let myself love. Trust. And then my heart was split open for the entire world to see.
The email he’d used to break up with me leaked. Yeah, he broke off an engagement in an email. And I suspected he was the one who’d leaked the email. Not because I’d cheated on him or betrayed him in any way. Because that’s what Kieran did. He liked to play with people. Liked to see how they would react to tragedy. Heartbreak. Life was a movie to him. He was the director.
I wasn’t about to let that happen again. Hence me choosing men who were rich—so they weren’t after my money. Who weren’t in the business—for obvious reasons. And who were as cold-hearted as I was.
Salvador was cold-hearted. Figuratively.
Now literally.
Well, he’d only just been shot in the last few minutes, so I was guessing his heart was still warm.
I’d let myself in with the key he’d given me for nothing other than convenience. I made sure that he never came to my place, never entered my space. And I arrived late at night, whenever I felt like I needed to be fucked. Salvador lived in a gated community in Calabasas, one of the most expensive and security-heavy communities around LA.
I should’ve known something was up when his gate guard wasn’t there, and the golden gates opened on their own. Then there were the two security guards that were usually strolling somewhere around the plush grass of his estate. Armed. Heavily.
I’d known from the start he was sketchy. Not many people who were as rich as he was were squeaky clean. If you wanted to be rich, you had to be prepared to stain your soul. I’d also suspected he had ties to some kind of crime syndicate, which hadn’t really bothered me either. I wasn’t the police, moral or otherwise.
But even knowing those things about him, I hadn’t trusted my gut feeling that something wasn’t right with the absence of guards. Didn’t look to the worst-case scenario. I’d been too pissed off for such things, too stuck inside my own head. But I’d known something was wrong the second I walked from the large foyer into the formal living room.
Raised voices. Not something that would usually cause alarm, as Salvador was Italian, after all. But something had crawled up my spine so I’d stopped just short of walking into the living room.
“I did what you asked,” Salvador hissed.
“I know,” a flat, calm voice replied. “Which is why I’m here. You’re no longer of use to me.”
I peered around the bookshelf right around the time a muted gunshot rippled through the air. Salvador’s body hit the marble floor with a thump and blood immediately spilled out from the hole in his forehead.
I’d thrown my hand over my mouth to stop my gasp and immediately hit the floor. If the shooter had looked up, he would’ve seen me. I was crouched behind a bookshelf, watching the murderer scroll through his phone with one hand and casually hold a gun in the other hand. I was watching him and thinking about my ex fiancé… I need to get out of here.
That was not practical, thinking about anything but the man with the gun. I should’ve been taking note of details. If I survived this, I needed to be able to describe him to police.
He was wearing a bespoke suit. Had a three-hundred-dollar haircut. A fucking fake tan. He looked like he should be managing a hedge fund and not splattering brains all over a floor.