Modern Romance September 2017 Books 1 - 4. Кэрол Мортимер
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told Lia her father had been the one to withdraw from the negotiations with De la Cruz Industries, even though the sale of the company would have saved her father and the people who worked for him.
Because he had hoped to resolve the situation of David’s embezzlement from the company without anyone being any the wiser. Certainly without Lia knowing what David had done.
My father confronted David alone that evening for the same reason—because he wanted to avoid hurting me.
And David—thief, liar and manipulator that he undoubtedly was—had no doubt used her in the same way to try and blackmail her father into silence. The strain had finally proved too much for her father and he’d had a heart attack.
Lia hadn’t been in her father’s study that evening, nor had she heard any of the conversation between the two men, but she knew with certainty that that was exactly what had happened.
‘Get out,’ she told David coldly.
His brows rose. ‘We haven’t finished talking yet.’
‘Oh, we’ve finished,’ Lia assured him evenly. ‘We’re way beyond finished,’ she added vehemently. ‘My father acted the way he did out of love for me, and now I’m going to do exactly the same out of my love for him. I am going to ruin you, David, as you ruined and eventually killed my father. I’ll expose you for the cheat and a liar you really are—Take your hand off me!’ she protested as David stood and moved across the room so quickly she was unable to avoid his painful grasp about her wrist.
Instead of releasing her David twisted her arm and held it at a painful level against her back, stepping behind her and bringing himself nauseatingly close to her.
‘I don’t think so,’ he murmured viciously as he bent his head close to her ear. ‘Why don’t you just agree to be a good girl, hmm? Otherwise...’
‘Otherwise?’ she echoed sharply.
He shrugged. ‘Well, you’re grieving for your father... Not adapting well to your change of circumstances. People would understand if you were to take a bottle of pills and just fall asleep...’
‘You’re insane!’ Lia truly believed it at that moment: no man in his right mind would threaten to kill her so cold-bloodedly.
‘Desperate,’ David corrected grimly. ‘And you should know better than to threaten a desperate man, Lia.’
Gregorio had tried to warn her. Had warned her. Lia just hadn’t listened.
Gregorio...
‘You would never get away with killing me,’ she warned him as she struggled and failed to release herself from David’s painful grip. ‘Gregorio would know I hadn’t killed myself, and he would hound you until he caught you.’
‘Wouldn’t change the fact you were dead,’ David reasoned.
There was no arguing with that logic.
Lia let out a scream as David suddenly twisted her arm so viciously she thought she was going to pass out from the pain.
‘Stop fighting me and I’ll stop hurting you,’ he ground out harshly.
Lia ceased her struggles. She slumped weakly forward the moment David reduced that painful pressure.
* * *
Gregorio tensed in the hallway when he heard Lia scream inside the apartment, not hesitating for so much as a second before he raised his booted foot and kicked the apartment door open.
He stepped through the flying wood splinters from where the lock had been detached from the doorframe and carried on down the hallway, his eyes narrowing as he took in the scene in front of him.
David Richardson stood behind Lia, one of his arms about her waist as he held her against him, his face buried in her hair, his lips against her throat.
Had Gregorio imagined that scream?
Or perhaps the reason for it...?
He knew from personal experience that Lia was a passionate lover. She was also a noisy one. She had screamed several times when they were in bed together yesterday afternoon. Usually when she had an orgasm...
Richardson and Lia were both still fully dressed. But, again, that was no guarantee that Lia’s scream hadn’t been a pleasurable one: she’d still been wearing all her clothes the first time she’d had an orgasm in his arms. Had he interrupted Richardson while he was pleasuring Lia?
Gregorio returned his narrowed gaze to Lia’s face. The wide and startled eyes. The pale cheeks. The trembling lips.
The pale cheeks...
Lia’s face was always flushed with pleasure when she orgasmed with him. Her eyes would glow. Her lips would be a deep rose colour.
He took in her body language, noting her tension and the fact that one of her arms was behind her back. Held there by Richardson.
Gregorio’s jaw tensed. ‘Let her go, Richardson.’
The other man’s gaze was insolent as he looked at Gregorio over Lia’s shoulder. ‘She likes it here. Don’t you?’ he prompted Lia confidently as his arm tightened about her waist.
‘I—’ Lia broke off with an indrawn hiss as David gave her arm another painful twist.
She had been completely shocked when the door to her apartment had been kicked or shouldered open—so savagely the lock had come out of the doorframe, wood splintering everywhere, the door itself crashing into the wall behind.
And she had never been more pleased to see Gregorio as he stepped through that ruined doorway, looking for all the world like a dark avenging angel in a black T-shirt, black jeans and heavy black boots, the darkness of hair tousled into disarray.
She had no idea what he was doing here after the way they had parted yesterday—she was just grateful that he was there.
At least she would be if David hadn’t given her arm that warning and very painful twist.
It was a threat that he intended to hurt her more than he already was if she attempted to alert Gregorio to the fact she was being held against her will.
To hell with that!
‘He has my arm twisted behind my back—’
Lia broke off with an agonised yelp of pain as David jerked her arm up even further, the movement accompanied by a snapping sound.
Pain such as Lia had never known before radiated from her arm to the rest of her body. Black spots danced on the edge of her vision as she was thrust forward towards Gregorio, and then the blackness became all-consuming...
* * *
‘Gently,’ Gregorio warned softly as Raphael lifted a still unconscious Lia into his waiting arms where he sat in the back of the SUV.
The other man closed the door and got in behind the wheel to drive them to the hospital.
It was probably as well Lia was still unconscious, because Gregorio had no doubt that her arm was broken. He had heard the distinctive sound of bone cracking as Richardson had pushed her towards him.
Gregorio’s arms had moved up and caught her instinctively. All of his attention had been centred on Lia as she’d fainted in his arms—probably from the added pain he had caused by catching her as she fell.
By the time Gregorio had lifted and cradled Lia carefully in his arms, and then looked around, Richardson had gone.
Gregorio had wasted precious more seconds placing Lia gently down on the sofa, before taking out his cell phone and calling down to Raphael. The bodyguard had reported that Richardson had left the building and already driven away. Not Raphael’s fault: he couldn’t possibly have known that Richardson was fleeing the building rather than just leaving because Gregorio had arrived.
It didn’t matter. Gregorio would find Richardson—wherever