Ripped: A Blood Money Novel Read online

  Ripped: A Blood Money Novel

  By Edie Harris

  Attorney and political heavyweight Tobias Faraday is the Ice King, a man alone in the eye of a deadly storm. And in the wake of his sister’s torture, he’s out for blood.

  The key to Tobias’s revenge is the disavowed British spy he’s kept imprisoned for weeks. Chandler McCallister can get him behind enemy lines in Russia, but the clever double-agent has a demand of her own before she puts her life on the line in the name of redemption.

  Posing as Chandler’s boyfriend at an aristocratic wedding in the English countryside won’t kill Tobias. Not in theory.

  As the threat of Moscow looms larger and the enemy reveals himself to be crueler than any human can imagine, Tobias reluctantly partners with his prisoner to derail the immediate threat—to their families, to Faraday Industries, and to their lives. What he finds in the process is a feverish, relentless need already melting the ice from his veins.

  Book two of the Blood Money series

  88,850 words

  Dear Reader,

  I’d rather be reading. How many times do you say that during your day? I know I say it probably a dozen times through my day. I love to read, and I’d pretty much always rather be reading, so I’m always stockpiling books to ensure I never run out for the times when I can read. I’m thrilled Carina Press is able to give you month after month of books to add to your TBR pile, and May is no exception!

  In Lynda Aicher’s erotic contemporary romance Back in Play, fun, flirty and sexy-as-hell Rachel Fielding is the perfect distraction Scott Walters needs when the Glaciers refused to renew his contract. But he hadn’t counted on falling for her or purging his deepest secrets to her, either. Can their fledgling relationship survive the trials he has ahead?

  Edie Harris’s first romantic suspense, Blamed, was a reader favorite and she’s back with book two, Ripped: A Blood Money Novel, in which a sexy, hot-blooded spy coerces an ice-cold attorney to partner with him to wreak vengeance on the villain who threatens them both.

  Joely Sue Burkhart is burning up the pages and testing our boundaries with her latest erotic romance, One Cut Deeper. Her needs are dark. His are dangerous. For Charlie and Ranay, pain is their shared pleasure...until Charlie disappears, and the hunger Ranay loved in him may be even darker than she suspected.

  Alyssa Cole rocked our world with her first postapocalyptic romance, Radio Silence, and she’s back with sexy male/male romance Signal Boost, set in the same technologically devastated world. Months have passed since electricity, and society, stopped working; John is wondering if a life without internet is worth living when he stumbles across a hot astrophysicist who might change his life—and the world.

  Also in the male/male category and taking us to whole new worlds is Lonely Shore, book two in the stunning science-fiction romance series from Jenn Burke and Kelly Jensen. Zander and Felix are trying to make their relationship work, but two things stand in the way: a criminal cartel out for blood and the rapid deterioration of Zander’s mental health. It’s a game of duck and cover as they search for answers, and when they find one, the cost might be too high.

  2014 RITA® Award-nominated author Kat Latham’s Taming the Legend rounds out our romance offerings in May. In this passionate story of lovers reunited, legendary rugby player Ash Trenton fights to help Camila Morales—his first and only love—save her indebted sports camp...while also fighting to keep from losing his heart to her all over again.

  For mystery fans who like their mystery with a side of fun, you have to check out Ricardo Sanchez. You first met Floyd, the PI living his life as Elvis would have wanted, in Elvis Sightings. Now he’s back in Bigfoot Blues, and his newest case leads him to man-eating mountain lions, chupacabras and plain-old murderers.

  Coming in June 2015: Lisa Marie Rice delivers another awesome alpha hero, Julie Moffett’s Lexi Carmichael returns with further adventures and Julie Rowe launches a new romantic suspense military series.

  Here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.

  Happy reading!

  Angela James

  Editorial Director, Carina Press

  Dedication

  For my brother.

  Acknowledgments

  This book required slightly more emotional support from those around me than preceding novels, and I doubt I would have been able to finish Ripped close to sane without the endless encouragement of family and friends: my parents, Nancy and Steve; my brother, Sam; my adoptive family here in Chicago, Jessica, Donna and Rick; my colleagues on the “SLED Team” and the best tour guide ever, Mel; my BFF, Bee; my Iowa people, Shanti and Jess and Max, Renee and Deb, Susan and Kevin and John; and my author pals—you know who you are.

  A huge “thank you” to those who read—and loved—Blamed, and a shout-out to all y’all for demanding Tobias’s book now. Like, now-now. ...Okay, how about now? Here he is.

  Ripped would not exist without the friendship, patience, support and talent of my Harlequin Carina Press editor, Kerri Buckley. I got hella lucky when it came to the editor lottery. Thank you, Kerri, for being my port in the storm for all things publishing, Patinkin-ing, and Baby Jonas.

  Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.

  —attributed to Martin Luther

  Also available from Edie Harris and Carina Press

  Blamed: A Blood Money Novel

  And watch for Crazed, the next book in the Blood Money series, coming soon!

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Life in Death: The Faraday Story

  Excerpt from Blamed: A Blood Money Novel by Edie Harris

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  They no longer held him with clammy palms and meaty fingers, but instead bound his wrists with worn leather cuffs. The men on either side gripped the chains linked to the cuffs, forcing his arms to spread wide and leaving Tobias struggling for balance where he knelt on the dirty, cracked cement of the warehouse floor.

  They’d removed his shirt, belt, shoes and socks, but even with only his trousers to protect against the early morning chill lingering in the stale air, sweat sheened the exposed skin of his torso. His gut ached with the bruising blows delivered by one of Kedrov’s henchmen, and the muscles in his shoulders and back trembled faintly, tautly stretched by the chain-wielding goons next to him.

  He didn’t attempt to engage them in conversation; that time had long since passed, and besides, he wasn’t willing to barter for his release alone. If he left this Russian hellhole, he was
doing so with his partner, or he wouldn’t leave at all.

  Footsteps echoed in the hallway behind him—multiple pairs, three heavy, one light. It was the lighter he strained to hear, listening for a shuffle, a limp, anything to indicate that the owner of that gait had been harmed in any manner. But her tread was steady, her stride already familiar to him without sight. The woman walking toward him now carried confidence in every footfall, and the tight ball of anxiety lodged in his chest relaxed somewhat.

  The muscle-bound men at his sides shifted, chains clinking as their fists tensed. Their attention fixed on the entrance to this warehouse chamber, Tobias subtly tested the give of the cuffs at his wrists. No chance at freedom, not even if he dislocated both thumbs. The goon on his left permitted more of a tug than the right-side goon, that one shooting him a pointed glare as he tightened his grip on the chain linked to the right-hand restraint. A reminder that, yes, Tobias was well and truly trapped and, no, his situation wasn’t about to change anytime soon.

  Four people breached the cavernous room in silence. Keeping his chin high, Tobias adjusted his limited stance, pressing his bare toes to the ground and relocating the pressure from his knees farther back. If need be, he could push to his feet, catching at least the left-side guard by surprise, if not the right. Were luck on his side, the sudden movement might buy him one second, perhaps two, and that would be enough to shove Lefty in the path of a stray bullet or six. He possessed no compunction about using a villain as a human shield, not at this late hour in the game.

  But jump he didn’t, wanting—needing—to see her first. To make contact with those brandy-brown irises he knew melted like chocolate when he kissed her, stroked her. He refused to make a single damn move without her, the understanding deep inside him now, clear as day that it would always be like this. Always her for him, until he no longer drew breath.

  Which was what made the following few minutes so unbearable.

  Words in Russian that his brain struggled to translate, his attention focused entirely on the petite woman who’d rounded Thing One and Thing Two to stand in front of him. Her gaze scanned him quickly, coldly, the calculation in her assessing eyes an element he hadn’t seen from her in weeks. She stared at him, bare-chested and kneeling before her, bruises mottling his ribs and face, and he felt exposed.

  Though not uncomfortable with her perusal. She’d given Tobias that sensation of overexposure before, and he had survived it—triumphed over it, in fact—embracing the animal dwelling within him he’d always sought to quell.

  There was pleasure to be found in losing control. That was the lesson Chandler McCallister had taught him. Such pleasure Tobias could never come back from it and hope to survive.

  He looked her over, fearing his inspection revealed far more of his feelings than hers had, and noted the dark smudges beneath her eyes. The tense set of her full lips. The clenching of her sharp jaw. But no blood, no bruises, and her black jacket remained zipped to the base of her throat. Still... “Are you all right?”

  Her mouth compressed into a thin, bloodless line. “Ask me tomorrow, Toby.”

  His heart sped at her words.

  A prematurely gnarled hand twisted by burn scars gripped her upper arm, strong enough to make Chandler flinch. Unthinking, Tobias tugged his restraints, lunging forward as Karlin Kedrov moved into the pool of light provided by the single bulb swaying overhead.

  “Ah-ah, Faraday. Do not be rude.” The man’s grating English was shaped by his heavy accent. “My pet is not for you to touch.”

  “This woman is not your pet.” She belonged to no man, not even Tobias, and he liked her that way.

  Kedrov grinned, or maybe grimaced—his features too twisted to be certain. “No?” The hand on Chandler’s arm slid upward to her shoulder, squeezed. “Well, then, koshka.” Kedrov’s fingers threaded through the loosened strands of honey blond spilling around her shoulders, head tilted to study her blank expression, voice patronizingly affectionate. The raging beast inside Tobias snarled at the scarred man’s possessive touch. “You know what you must do, yes? To prove the American wrong?”

  She nodded, and a belt, his belt, appeared in her hand, the black leather wide in her small palm. Stepping forward as Kedrov shifted back into the shadows, she again met Tobias’s gaze. No emotion lurked in her brown eyes now, no tell to alert him she was playing a role, another role, always a different role.

  Tension gathered once more beneath his sternum, hands fisting as the chains dictated his position. He bent at the waist in a forced bow, acquiescing to the pressure on his arms as he gritted his teeth and stared at the floor, the planes of his bared shoulders offered up to her. To the belt.

  Words stoppered his throat, a bottlenecked torrent of feelings he refused to release in front of their audience. He could do this for her. He would do this for her, damn it, even without knowing all the variables at hand. He had to trust in her, trust in them, and withstand what was to come.

  The belt cracked as she whipped it at her side, a preparatory gesture. A warning.

  He lifted his gaze from between his knees to drink in the sight of her once more, and a chill entered his veins at what he saw in her face. Determination, yes, but also a glow of...of sadistic glee. Pretending...or not.

  She shook her head, almost sadly, as she studied his expression. “What did I tell you about me, Toby? From the very beginning, what did I make clear?”

  Swallowing against the inner cold threatening to freeze his heart, he growled, “That you’re a self-serving bitch.” His lips didn’t want to form the curse, didn’t want to hurt her with her own words, and what a fool that made him.

  “Excellent memory.” Her throat moved, but no sound emerged. No sound except—”Toby?” The glow in her eyes dimmed, and again he lunged, unable to stop himself from trying to protect her even as the goons at his arms slammed him to the floor, his body folded at the waist and his forehead nearly touching the cold cement. His lungs heaved like bellows as he strained futilely against their hold.

  A pistol cocked behind Chandler. “You have five seconds, koshka.”

  His eyes slid shut as he braced his body. “Do it,” he demanded. “Do it, and be done.”

  Chapter One

  Ten days earlier

  Tobias Faraday first realized he wasn’t like his siblings when he was seven years old.

  Already light-years ahead of where other kids his age were academically, his parents had opted to bring private tutors into the Faraday family compound, situated on several acres of wooded land outside of Boston. The purpose of the tutors was twofold: not only would they challenge Tobias’s mind in ways traditional classrooms could not, but there would be no risk of him accidentally telling another child what, precisely, his father did for a living.

  The thing was, Tobias had never been tempted to share. Even at seven, he’d known that Frank Faraday’s life’s work wasn’t something one boasted about on the playground. His older brother, Casey, at the advanced age of nine-almost-ten, had loved talking to his classmates about their dad, the soldier. Their dad, the inventor. Their dad, the businessman.

  But that’s not who the Faraday patriarch was, and Tobias knew it. He never spoke to anyone about Frank. In fact, he never spoke to anyone, period, for those first seven years—not unless that person’s last name matched his own. When he’d been placed in the neighborhood preschool, his muteness was something his parents assumed he would grow out of; he was excellent with his letters and numbers, and by the time kindergarten rolled around, Tobias was reading like a champ. It’s just that the public school teachers weren’t seeing much evidence of said champ-like behavior. Frank and Sofia knew their second child carried the seeds of genius, which is why they eventually took him out of the classroom, hoping that private tutors would not only nurture his intelligence, but cure his silence. Eventually, those tutors had succeeded, but it h
ad taken time. Significant, painstaking time.

  His first-grade teacher had been so relieved to see him shifted permanently into home schooling. More than once, he had overheard Mrs. Randall murmuring to her cohort that tiny Tobias Faraday, well...he might not be all there.

  The adult version of the silent little boy sometimes wondered if perhaps Mrs. Randall—and the child psychologists and speech pathologists his parents had also consulted in those early years—had been correct. If there was, indeed, something wrong with him, a wrongness that differentiated him today from Casey, Gillian, Beth and Adam. It was a niggling worry inside him, staring across the abyss of his soul into the darkened pit below, where a fierce predator lurked and paced and waited for the signal to attack. To defend. He—

  “Earth to Faraday.”

  His cousin’s voice broke him out of his musings. “Present and accounted for,” he enunciated carefully, raising a brow at the young woman walking next to him down the hallway that had, at one point, been part of London’s sprawling Underground. Tobias had won the secret property years ago in a poker game and spent significant family resources turning this closed-off section of the city’s mass transit system into a hidden bunker with all the twenty-first century luxuries and technologies a Faraday could ask for. “Something wrong, Freya?”

  Freya Quinn, an intelligence analyst for Britain’s MI6, made a face and reached up to tighten her auburn ponytail. “Not wrong. Just wondering when you’re going to read me into your plan.”

  “What plan?” Tobias kept his tone mild, his expression bland.

  “The plan for her.”

  Of course. Her. For weeks, too many of his thoughts had revolved around her. She remained a difficult person to ignore, but whether she intended to be a pain in his ass or not, he couldn’t rid his ears of her ringing echo, and that included the days in which they didn’t interact. “I’ll read you in when all the details are official.”