Bleeding Heart (Scions of Sin Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Epilogue Madison

  Epilogue Alexander

  Thanks for downloading ‘Bleeding Heart’

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  Alexander

  Madison

  Thanks for reading ‘Bleeding Heart’

  Bleeding Heart

  Scions of Sin - Book One

  Taylor Holloway

  Copyright © 2018 by Taylor Holloway

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Thanks for downloading ‘Bleeding Heart’

  Get a FREE copy of ‘Elegant Fixation’!

  1. Alexander

  2. Madison

  3. Alexander

  4. Madison

  5. Alexander

  6. Madison

  7. Alexander

  8. Madison

  9. Alexander

  10. Madison

  11. Alexander

  12. Madison

  13. Alexander

  14. Madison

  15. Alexander

  16. Madison

  17. Alexander

  18. Madison

  19. Alexander

  20. Madison

  21. Alexander

  22. Madison

  23. Alexander

  24. Madison

  25. Alexander

  26. Madison

  27. Alexander

  28. Madison

  29. Alexander

  30. Madison

  31. Alexander

  32. Madison

  33. Alexander

  34. Madison

  35. Alexander

  36. Madison

  37. Alexander

  38. Madison

  39. Alexander

  40. Madison

  41. Alexander

  42. Madison

  43. Alexander

  44. Madison

  45. Alexander

  46. Epilogue Madison

  47. Epilogue Alexander

  Get a FREE copy of ‘Elegant Fixation’!

  Thanks for reading ‘Bleeding Heart’

  Thanks for downloading ‘Bleeding Heart’

  I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it! I specialize in creating rich, fascinating escapes, where the heroes and heroines bring out the very best and worst in each other, and where the endings are always satisfying. HEA all the way.

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  1

  Alexander

  I loved Dubai. The city rose out of the monotonous desert and stabbed violently at the heavens with endless, arrogant towers of steel and glass. It was everything a place ought to be in the twenty-first century— shiny, new, modern, and beautiful. A playground for the young, rich, and ambitious. I was amazed it had taken me so long to find it, and sad to see it disappearing out of the wide windows of the Gulfstream G650.

  I was headed home. Back to Pennsylvania, the home of the Liberty Bell, a shit-ton of backward Amish people, and my dysfunctional extended family. On the upside, at least it wouldn’t be a hundred and six degrees in Pennsylvania over the upcoming Easter weekend.

  Sinking back from the window into my soft leather seat, I ordered a gin and tonic from a smiling brunette and reminded myself that it was a good idea to leave the Middle East during this critical phase of my most ambitious project to date. The project had occupied almost one hundred percent of my time and effort for three years, but I promised myself that it was going to be worth it.

  The worst part of the timing of this trip was that I was going to miss the goddamn symbolic ground-breaking ceremony. I secretly loved those. I would have denied it to anyone who dared to ask, but I had a closet entirely full of those goofy, gold-painted shovels and hardhats they always give you. They’re my trophies. Still, this trip had potential beyond adding another shovel to my collection.

  In return for a large amount of cash funded by my business, and an even larger amount of cash funded by family’s chemical empire, the Colombian petrochemicals conglomerate Propetrolas was going to give me the right to develop several square miles of prime Bogota real estate where their old industrial hub once sat. I would then develop the hideous eyesore into a world-class resort, thanks to a number of generous financial incentives and tax breaks. Durant Industries, my extended clan’s chemical dynasty, would receive the right to build and reap the financial rewards of operating the new, state-of-the-art facility located elsewhere. And Propetrolas could brag to the world that they had revolutionized their dirty, unsafe petrochemicals industry overnight. Everybody wins.

  It was an elegant deal, simply conceived but brilliantly engineered so that everyone got exactly what they wanted and gave up no more than necessary. Out of failure, decay, and environmental degradation, our American, capitalist assault would forge something different in Colombia. Something new and wonderful would rise from the ashes of the old.

  Even Durant Industries’ small cadre of vassals in the governments of both countries would get something out of it. They got to take credit for the humanitarian and environmental aspects of American investment in South America, courtesy of a handful of NGO’s that had lobbied them tirelessly to support it.

  Soulless, scumbag politicians. They were already taking credit for something they had nothing to do with. I mean, I may be scum too, but at least I build things. All politicians do is talk. Talk and lie. They’re necessary parasites, however, and the Durant-Breyer clan has always kept them well-fed.

  The woman who was actually behind this deal, Madison Clark, would never see a proportional return for her investment of time and effort. That’s the penalty that the world always extracts on altruists, but only because they let it. As far as I’m concerned, they deserve what they get. You must reach out your hand and take what you want in this world. Otherwise, you’ll starve.

  “Would you like something to eat, Mr. Durant?” The smiling brunette asked me, returning from the plane’s galley.

  She handed me the leather wrapped menu, but her pale blue eyes offered up an entirely different kind of delicacy. Her small, warm hand lingered on mine, making her implication crystal clear. The nametag on her modest chest said ‘Vicki’.

  This was my family’s plane, sent to collect me when I insinuated last week that I might not come in person for the closing. I could have taken my own, obviously, but why not trick them into spending their own money? I wondered if my uncle had fucked this Vicki girl, or the blonde that was with her as part of the crew. Probably not. He was archaically devoted to my aunt.

  If one of my cousins—either Nathan or David—had been with Vicki, she would have already quit. They were both terrible people who played mercilessly off the weaknesses of others to get what they want. It’s a family trait.

  “Have a seat, Vicki,” I told her, and she perched delicately in the seat across from mine obediently, smiling shyly, “I’m not hungry right now, but I could do with some company. It’s a long flight with no one to talk to.”

  “Sure,” she replied in a soft, breathy voice, “I’d like that. What would you like to talk about?”

  “Tell me about yourself,” I ordered
her.

  “Well, I’m from Oklahoma and I moved out west to California about four years ago…” she began prattling on about her education and interests. ‘Blah blah college blah blah tennis blah blah flight attendant training’. Whatever. Tuning her out immediately, I used the next five minutes to examine her.

  I didn’t bother to smile and nod along like I was listening. I just stared. If Vicki was like most women, she told herself that my focused attention was flattering. That I was so interested in her that I was practically transfixed. She would be wrong, of course. I wasn’t listening; I was doing a cost-benefit analysis.

  Vicki’s maybe twenty-four or twenty-five—a good eight years younger than me, but old enough to know she definitely shouldn’t have hit on me. But she was doing it anyway, placing that same soft hand on my knee as she talked. She was tall, thin, and tan—the sort of woman who’s a generous six-plus on the coasts and a solid nine in a flyover state like Oklahoma.

  I suspected that she found it shocking to learn she wasn’t as stunning as she thought she was the first time she left her farm in Bumfuck, Oklahoma. Vicki was probably hot shit in her hometown. I imagine that she’s been fighting that insecurity ever since. She’d mostly gotten rid of her southern accent, but it still snuck through sometimes on single syllable words with long ‘a’ sounds (she said ‘air’ like ‘ay-er’).

  Fucking me would prove to her, and (probably even more importantly) prove to the younger, prettier blonde in the next cabin, that she’s the alpha bitch on this plane. I’d seen the two women glaring daggers at each other earlier and heard them arguing softly over who would interact with me. Fuck the alpha male and you become the alpha bitch, right? People are just wolves with manners and thumbs.

  I’d be a story she could tell her impressed friends later over cocktails. She had sex with Alexander Durant on an international flight. No, not the ninety-year old French guy, she’d have to explain to them, his grandson. The real estate developer who was always in the tabloids with models and starlets.

  Vicki was not up to my usual standards, but her high cheekbones and long dark hair appealed to me. Her features at least sort-of reminded me of Madison, my side objective for this trip. Still, I wished she weren’t so tall, and I wished I she weren’t so tan. I wished her stick straight hair was softer, longer, and thicker. But most of all, I wished she would shut the hell up.

  That was easily accomplished.

  “Come here.” I told her, yanking her hands to pull her out of her chair and into a kneeling position on the ground in front of me. She clearly didn’t mind me ordering her around. My hands tangled in her hair at the back of her neck as she angled up her face to kiss me. This was going to be easy.

  Her mouth was hot and soft. She yielded instantly to me and I casually flicked my tongue into hers. She let me steal her breath and unbutton her blouse, running my hands along her narrow ribcage and lifting her bra. I could see the goosebumps on her chest.

  She was extraordinarily boring, but she was very willing and clearly ready. This flight was going to be long, so I might as well make the most of my opportunities. Vicki panted up at me when I broke off the kiss, her blue eyes wide and dilated with desire. Eager seeking hands slid up my thighs to stroke me through the thick fabric of my suit pants before unbuckling my belt. In response, I leaned back in my chair and placed a heavy hand on the back of her head.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the blonde crewmember peeking her head out from behind the galley area’s door. I raised an eyebrow at the blonde in invitation as Vicki went down on me. The blonde’s jaw dropped open and she gawked, staring openly at our display. I stared right back at her, causing her to flush crimson, then purple. She flashed a final, hateful, and envious look at Vicki before ducking back out of sight.

  Pity. It would have been a lot more fun with both of them—especially if they hated each other. Hate makes people interesting. I considered seducing the blonde later just to see what might happen.

  2

  Madison

  Selena Gomez’s breathy, ethereal soprano cut off mid-high-note as I smacked the radio off. The way her airy voice lapsed into silence made it sound like she was climaxing. I smirked, thinking that it was probably engineered to sound that way by some pervy record executive, but my smile faded as I turned out of my parent’s neighborhood.

  The manicured lawns of Waterloo, Pennsylvania lured my gaze to the half-hidden McMansions beyond. Peeking out from behind leafy green trees and tall, wrought iron gates, each stately, brick edifice was as elegant as the last—and just as bland.

  Selena’s girlish voice wasn’t the right soundtrack for this place at all. Waterloo, an affluent suburb on the edge Philadelphia, should be accompanied by something properly stuffy. Something classical and self-important. What composer was appropriately pompous and full of himself… Handel maybe? Or better yet, Wagner. Perfect. Wagner: the Nickelback of classical music.

  I maneuvered my rented Range Rover down the wide, empty streets. After spending three months in Port-au-Prince, everything here radiated an overly clean and ordered artificiality. The US in general may have looked naïve and well-fed by Haitian standards, but Waterloo’s privilege was now jarring to me.

  Glancing at Kevin in the back seat, I successfully managed to banish my feelings of American guilt, replacing them with relationship anxieties. My fiancé Kevin was deeply engrossed in his phone, as usual. He’d been staring at that thing almost every second since my return from Haiti, except when he took occasional breaks to talk about how much he wanted to move to California to work for his friend’s tech startup. He was tapping away on it constantly, barely acknowledging my presence long enough to be disinterested in it. The light from it reflected on the surface of his glasses, obscuring his eyes as thoroughly as the thoughts and feelings he’d been hiding from me.

  “I really like your dress, Maddie,” my best friend Clara said from the passenger seat, filling the awkward silence in the car, “that’s the Betsey Johnson you found in that Queens thrift shop right?”

  I hadn’t physically seen my best friend Clara in almost two years, although we talked three times a day on Snapchat and had group chats with our extended friend group that were almost a decade old. Our schedules just never lined up. It was a rare treat to see her tonight.

  “Yes!” I replied, proud of my find, “I just wish it fit a bit better. I lost some weight in Haiti. Their portion sizes are a lot smaller.”

  My dress was a teal-colored silk chiffon with a deep V-neck and a knee-length scalloped skirt. It was vintage Betsey Johnson. This was the only truly nice dress I owned besides the sedate evening gown I wore for work sometimes, and this was the perfect opportunity to wear it. I had piled my heavy, dark cloud of curly brown hair into a messy bun that showed the vivid purple streak normally hidden at my day job, and added some dangly, colorful earrings. My dainty unicorn tattoo stood out on my left ankle. This was the most dressed up I’d been in ages, but Kevin hadn’t noticed.

  Clara smirked. "You could probably go naked. With that rack, no one would care. Except my bitch of a sister. She’d get you tossed out for violating the dress code.”

  “Angelica’s coming?” I gasped in horror.

  “It wasn’t my idea!” Clara squealed, her voice equally defensive and contrite.

  Clara’s gorgeous, sociopathic older sister was not a welcome addition. Angelica married super rich and nasty old a few months ago. When her crypt-keeper husband died, she would become a thirty-year-old billionaire widow with Kardashian aspirations. I’d always despised her, although she mostly acted like I didn’t exist. When I was invited to her wedding, she had me down as ‘Morgan Clark’. I’d been her sister’s best friend since second grade.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Clara said a moment later as we parked, chewing her bottom lip in apparent discomfort, “I’m pretty sure she’s just here for Alexander. Like I said, he got back a day earlier, so he’s coming tonight as well. Angie invited herself as soon as she h
eard. As if he’d every be interested in her.”

  Mention of his name made a chill run through me, but I kept my gaze on the road ahead of me. I refused to be rattled.

  The Waterloo Country Club, known to locals as merely ‘The Club’, was busy that night when we made our way inside a few minutes later. We grabbed ourselves a set of lent-forbidden cocktails from the bar and waited for the rest of our party to arrive. I settled into my club chair uncomfortably, not touching my drink as the minutes ticked by.

  Of course, they’re late. Of course, he’s late. Alexander fucking Durant.

  I couldn’t concentrate. I needed to be thinking about the deal, not a man I hadn’t seen for ten years. But my stubborn brain would not cooperate. I made myself concentrate fully on the Deal. The big, huge, career-changing Deal. The one and only reason I just hauled my butt back a week early from the most important work in the world.

  My father’s law firm, Clark and Jefferies, was representing two massive clients, Durant Chemicals International and Durant Properties, in the joint transaction. The project was directing investment to overhaul the chemical manufacturing infrastructure of the entire developing country of Columbia.