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CHAPTER ONE
SHEWASNOTjustbroke.She was ina mountain of debt. And now that she was finally ready to admit her blunders and bawl her eyes out and beg him for help, the one man who’d loved her was gone.
Yana Reddy walked through the quiet, dark halls of her grandparents’ house like a night wraith wandering through the dark woods from one of her favorite fantasy stories.
While her younger half sister, Nush, had always proclaimed her love of fairy tales, it was the much darker fantasy tales populated with demons and ghouls and djinns that drew Yana’s interest. Especially one particular author she’d fallen in love with at a young age. Even then, her tastes had been drawn to the forbidden.
Now her grandfather leaving notes for his three granddaughters from beyond the grave appealed to her. She pulled the crisp folded letter out of its envelope and pushed it back in again without reading it, like she’d done a hundred times that day—the day they’d officially said goodbye to him.
Unlike both her half sisters, Mira and Nush, who’d burst into happy tears at one last note from their beloved Thaata, she knew the moment she’d seen her name written in that beautiful cursive script, that she wasn’t going to read it.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
That would be her punishment. Plus, the possibility of a forever unclaimed present appealed to the contrarian in her. One last ploy to annoy Thaata.
A few hours ago the house had been full of extended family, friends and people who’d loved and respected her grandfather, who’d started a software company called OneTech, which his protege Caio Oliveira had turned into a billion-dollar venture.
Thaata had believed in second chances. Only Yana had never been able to use one to prove herself worthy like her sisters had done. To make him look at her with respect and love. Not frustrated resignation and the pain that he couldn’t reach her.
Their alcoholic father had clearly preferred variety in his sexual partners for none of the sisters shared a mother, so Yana’s grandparents had been the only responsible adults in their lives, and had essentially raised the three girls.
But all through her childhood and adolescence, Yana had resented them for it. Had chosen, in her early teens, to go and live with her flighty, unreliable, beautiful mother, Diana, instead of what she’d considered to be the much stricter regime of her grandparents.
By the time she’d realized the irreparable damage Diana had done to her, it had been too late. She’d trusted a woman who had, in return, emptied out all of Yana’s bank accounts to pay for a cleverly disguised gambling habit.
Worse, in the last few months, Diana had ruined Yana’s credit by borrowing off her credit cards when she’d refused to carry on funding her extravagant spending.
Closing the door to her grandparents’ bedroom behind her, Yana fought the grief that had kept bubbling up like lava. If she let it out, it would burn her through, leaving nothing but ashes. She walked around, trailing her fingers over Thaata’s things—a worn-out leather diary on his nightstand, a biography title on his desk and a picture of her, Mira and Nush with him.
It had been taken during one glorious summer where Yana hadn’t fought with him or her grandmother, when Diana had gone to live with her brand-new second husband.
How could you have made such a wrong choice?she wanted to scream at her teenage self. How could she have chosen to live with her mother, who’d shown her nothing but neglect and abuse, over the grandparents who’d only wanted the best for her?
A woman who’d eagerly asked Yana about theassetsthat Thaata might have left her only a day after his death. Yana didn’t have to wait for the reading of the will to tell Diana that whatever assets Thaata might have left her would be all tied up so that she couldn’t touch them for a very long time. A witness to Yana and her grandfather’s arguments more than once, Diana had believed it.
She’d left instantly, leaving Yana with a crippling debt. Just...breezed out of her life with barely a goodbye.
Almost nearing thirty now, Yana’s modeling contracts were coming few and far between. As she didn’t want to be a model for the rest of her life, she’d already given up on most of the networking necessary to stay current. She thought again about the new career—a work in progress for some years—she’d hoped would take shape before her life had fractured into tiny fragments.
For a second she considered asking Mira or Nush to help her sort out the mess her life had become. But she couldn’t. And not just because they were finally moving forward in their own lives with men they loved.
Hitting rock bottom had cleared up one thing for Yana—she’d fix her life by herself. It was the only way to restore her own faith in herself.
Grabbing the keys of Thaata’s vintage car and one of his cigars from a secret compartment in his dresser, she tiptoed back to her room.
Rummaging through her closet, she grabbed a black leather corset top and skinny jeans and got dressed. Pushing her feet into stilettos, she tied her hair into a high ponytail, slapped on mascara and lip gloss without looking at the mirror and rushed to the garage.
The crisp night made goose bumps rise up on her skin as she drove with the windows rolled down. With the engine humming sweetly and the scent of the cigar smoke filling her nostrils, she felt a measure of peace, for the first time in weeks.
Running away again, a voice very much like Thaata’s taunted, but Yana refused to listen to it now just as she’d done when he’d been alive.
Yana knew who the man was the moment the double doors of the secluded VIP lounge of the night club opened. He stood framed by the archway bathed in beams of purple lighting.
She knew even though it was dark and quiet.
She knew before that distinctive gait brought him to the chaise longue over which she’d draped herself, having fought off three different men who’d wanted to take her home.
