Ficorpio
Chapter 1
The woman in the red dress crossed the marble floor, each click of her heels landing like a blow to Noah Mercer’s heart. The dress showed off her figure; everything about her was polished and deliberate.
Noah sat halfway up the stairs, his long legs bent, one arm resting on his knee. A cigarette hung from his lips, its smoke hiding whatever was in his eyes.
Guards stood throughout the house, their faces blank and their bodies alert. The woman showed no sign of unease. She passed through the foyer and went straight to Noah.
She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and leaned toward him. Her waist-length hair spilled forward, carrying the scent of rose oil—soft, lingering, intimate. Men always liked the smell of roses.
For an instant, Noah’s gaze faltered. Then it was gone. Behind the smoke, no one saw it.
“Seventh Brother,” she said, her voice gentle, the last syllable lifting slightly. “Mr. Sterling asked me to come up.”
Noah didn’t move.
He raised his eyes to her. Years of fighting had left something savage in that dark stare. Meeting it felt like drawing the attention of a predator. Those who knew him well could sometimes catch, in his eyes, a faint resemblance to someone else.
A cut ran along Noah’s forearm. Blood tracked down his skin and dripped onto the marble, spreading into a small red stain. No one tended to it.
He kept watching the woman until her composure began to fail. Her eyes flickered away, and she straightened awkwardly.
Everyone else in the foyer stood exactly where they belonged. Noah was the only person in the Sterling house who could sit in the middle of a staircase and make everyone else wait. She knew who he was. She also knew this was the only way to the second floor, and he was blocking it.
The silence was so complete that a dropped pin would have been heard.
None of the guards so much as glanced her way, but heat rose in her face. She parted her lips more than once. She could not bring herself to ask him to move. Her place beside Adrian Sterling gave her no authority over Noah Mercer. And beneath that calculation lay a simpler truth: she was afraid of him.
They remained there long enough for the blood on Noah’s arm to stop flowing. It dried against his skin like a jagged scar.
His phone rang.
“Let her come up.”
Adrian’s cool, steady voice carried through the silent foyer.
Noah’s expression did not change. He murmured an acknowledgment and hung up. Another dozen seconds passed before he shifted slowly from the center of the stairs to the railing.
Chapter 2
Ash littered the steps. Noah took out another cigarette and lit it, then crushed the still-glowing butt of the first between his fingers.
The woman had permission now, but she looked anything but pleased. She glanced at Noah. He had turned his gaze toward the far side of the staircase and was no longer looking at her. Then she looked down.
His blood had spread across the step. To avoid it, she would have to stride over the stain, and she could not make herself do that. At last, she rose onto the balls of her feet and picked her way through it in her heels, passing slowly beside him.
Once she rounded the corner, her steps grew even more cautious. Behind her, a few faint, bloody footprints marked the stairs.
The click of high heels faded completely at the end of the staircase.
Noah remained where he was, the cigarette between his lips burning down to ash on its own. His head rested against the banister, and the movement stirred loose ash onto the floor.
A faint ache radiated from his wound, but Noah ignored it. It was only a minor injury.
She was Adrian Sterling’s second woman this month—and the only one he had called back twice in a row. The women around Adrian never stayed long. This one was an exception.
Everyone in their world knew Adrian liked women with hair long enough to reach their waists. Plenty of women had gone to great lengths with their hair to catch his eye, but until last month, none of them had succeeded.
This woman had.
Was it because she smelled like roses?
Noah lowered his head and absently pressed a finger against the wound on his arm. It had stopped bleeding, but the pressure forced it open again. A drop of blood fell straight down, splashing across the floor in a shape almost like a flower.
It looked rather like a rose.
Noah lifted his arm beneath his nose and sniffed. The heavy, metallic scent of blood filled his nostrils. He frowned in disgust.
The man who had been standing silently nearby finally walked over. He was on the slender side, with thick glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Bending slightly, he spoke to Noah in a low voice.
“You should have that arm treated.”
Noah did not move.
He lowered his head and took a drag. The cigarette was already burned to the filter, and the sudden pull seared his fingers. Noah acted as if he felt nothing. Julian noticed and quickly knocked the cigarette from his hand.
Noah got to his feet and walked away. He had no intention of doing anything about the bloodstained arm.
Chapter 3
When there were too many places that hurt, it became impossible to tell which one hurt most.
His expression never changed. Only when he reached the front door did he lose control long enough to glance back.
Martha was already beside the spot where he had been sitting, scrubbing the floor with a mop. Adrian liked everything clean. Noah knew that.
He ran a hand over his head. The short stubble still prickled beneath his palm. A few days earlier, someone had smashed his head with a chunk of stone. They had been forced to shave his hair in order to bandage the wound. Fortunately, it had not left a scar. Otherwise, he would have looked even worse.
Still rubbing his rough scalp, Noah left the house. Just before he reached the gate, an absurd thought crossed his mind.
If he grew his hair long, would Adrian like him too?
The idea was ridiculous and completely impractical, yet Noah was still thinking about it when he stepped outside. It was only as he passed the black Mercedes parked nearby that he finally let it go.
His reflection shone back from the polished paint: a tall, lean man with a strong build, handsome features, and hard, sharply defined lines. There was nothing delicate about him. With his hair shaved down to a close crop, Noah even looked a little fierce.
There was no trace of anything feminine in his appearance.
Noah lowered his eyes slightly, hiding whatever emotion lingered there.
Noah was ten when he began following Adrian Sterling. Adrian was seventeen that year.
Now Noah was twenty-four, and Adrian was thirty-one.
Before he met Adrian, Noah had not even had a name. He lived naked in a cramped room, most often curled up in the narrow space beneath the stairs with his arms over his head while he slept. Whenever Thomas Mercer drank too much, he would smash a plastic stool against Noah’s skull.
The beatings had made Noah afraid, but he had never dared to run. Even if he did, he had nowhere to go.
He remembered having a mother, but he could no longer recall anything about her—not her face, not her personality, not even the smallest fragment of memory. Sometimes he wondered whether he had imagined her entirely. If he really had a mother, how could she have left him without even a name?
As far back as Noah could remember, Thomas had never called him by one. When he was in a good mood, he called out a careless “Hey.” When he was angry, all Noah heard was a vicious curse.
Then, when Noah was ten, the door was kicked open.
A group of men stormed inside and seized Thomas by the head, smashing it against the wall. From that moment on, Noah’s life changed forever.
Thomas kept insisting that he had no money to repay his debts. He had only one son. They could take him instead.