Twisted Lies (Twisted, #4)

by Ana Huang

Romanticizing love was easy. Falling in love was harder,

“Is sex part of the deal? If it’s not, it should be. Christian looks like he would be a beast in bed.”

“Did you hear that?” Jules placed a hand over her chest and looked at Ava. “She loves us. She really loves us!”

“Don’t mind me. I’m just over here in Eldorra, not jealous at all,” Bridget said.

Maybe I’d signed a deal with the devil when I agreed to my arrangement with Christian… But that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth it.

Some photos were worth a thousand words. This photo said only one. Mine.

yet here I was, scrolling through fucking social media on my burner account. No profile photo, no bio, no followers. One following.

Rhys Larsen used to be my top bodyguard until he fell prey to the disease people called love.

The library at Valhalla Club was where deals were made and alliances were forged. Every power player in DC knew that.

Alex and I had standing chess matches at the Valhalla Club every month for the past five years. Our games were always hard fought and harder won.

I’d never heard him say so many words in such a short time. My amusement deepened.

Love made the world go round, all right. In endless, tedious cycles that produced horrid songs, even more horrid movies, and annual abominations like Valentine’s Day. I rarely found it anything other than poisonous.

“Don’t tell me you’ve evolved into an actual human being.

She thought her rent at the Mirage was low? That was nothing compared to how she lived rent-free in my fucking head.

Stella’s sass came and went like flashes of lightning. Every time it appeared, it electrified me, because that was when I glimpsed the real her. The one lying semidormant beneath her carefully cultivated calm and desperate desire to please. Somewhere within that cocoon of mild manners was a brilliant butterfly yearning to break free.

she glowed so brightly it reached the darkest corners of my soul.

“You should leave,” I said softly, the words rough with restraint. She didn’t move. “Unless…” I raised my hand and skimmed it down the side of her neck until I reached the frantic flutter of her pulse. “You want to stay.”

Distraction. Obsession. Confoundment. She was all those things and more.

I didn’t even like the damn plants. I only kept them because my interior designer insisted they “pulled the aesthetic together,” and I refused to admit failure by letting them die.

When the curiosity over how that firm, sensual mouth would taste pulsed in rhythm to the ache between my thighs.

Would my family care if I died? They might be sad at first, but eventually, they’d be relieved that the family’s biggest disappointment was gone.

I heard a low curse before strong arms engulfed me, and my face pressed against something hard and solid. Immovable, like a mountain in a storm.

His calm, almost pleasant tone contrasted with the danger flickering in the air.

“I don’t give a fuck if you’re dining with the pope or having sex with Margot fucking Robbie. I want you on the tenth floor of the Mirage in twenty minutes.”

“Don’t worry, darlin’.” His soft Southern accent eased the knots in my shoulders like magic. Next to him, Christian’s jaw flexed, but it happened so quickly I might’ve imagined it. “I’ll be right here the whole night. No one’s gettin’ past me. They didn’t call me the Mountain in the military for nothin’.”

I was going to find the fucker who wrote her that note. And I was going to make them pay. Not with a bullet—that was too good for them. They deserved something more painful. More prolonged.

However, I’d come down to…not apologize, necessarily, since I didn’t do apologies, but to set things right between us.

“Touch her for any reason other than to save her life, and you die.”

When he’d called her darlin’ and she’d smiled at him, I’d come close to losing my best employee at my own hands.

The more time I spent with Stella, the more I wanted to be around her. To let her into places I’d never shown anyone. It was unacceptable.

If I acted like everything was okay, it’d be okay.

I was becoming alarmingly good at lying.

Too bad I gave zero fucks about the law.

Legality did not mean right, and illegality did not mean wrong. One only had to look at the fucked-up justice system to realize the law was nothing more than a house of cards, created to give its citizens a false sense of security and weakened by doorways open only to a select few.

Stella’s ability to release a grudge as quickly as she picked it up was as baffling as it was impressive. I never forgot a slight. Ever.

You have the right to live your life how you want without worrying about creeps who can’t curb their worst impulses.”

The sooner we find him, the sooner we can put the bastard behind bars.” Or six feet in the ground.

“I won’t let anything happen to you.” Not even if I had to take a bullet myself.

Our moral compasses pointed in different directions, but we both wore masks to shield our true natures from the world. The only difference was our motives behind the deception and the lies we told ourselves.

a world without Stella in it was one that didn’t deserve to exist.

There was just the weight of her on my lap, the scent of her in my lungs, and the warmth of her in my soul.

Her teeth dug into her lush lower lip, and the desire to pull her hair back and plunder the softness of her mouth consumed me. Just one taste.

I stared at her, sure I was hearing wrong and that she didn’t have the fucking audacity to pit me against a raggedy stuffed animal with a crooked eye in some absurd social media poll. I was also sure I couldn’t be losing to said stuffed animal.

“You need followers with better taste if they’re choosing a unicorn over me. I’m wearing Brioni, for fuck’s sake.”

Despite what happened last night, her light still shone through, and she was more resilient than a lot of people, including me, gave her credit for. That’s my girl.

That was the thing about humans. We were hard-wired for survival, and we took every opportunity to convince ourselves that our problems weren’t as bad as we thought they were.

Trying to stay away from her was like the ocean trying to stay away from the shore. Impossible.

Until I found out exactly what happened, I needed to keep a level head and not kill anyone—specifically Brock, who was supposed to be looking after Stella.

My hand flexed again. I wanted to wrap it around the throat of the perpetrator and squeeze the life out of them while they begged for mercy. I wanted to watch the light drain from their eyes at the realization of how badly they’d fucked up.

Sometimes, I truly despised people. And objects. I glared at the raggedy stuffed animal polluting my living room.