Secret Heirs of Powerful Men by Maisey Yates

Author:Maisey Yates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

ALIK HAD FACED DOWN terrorists hell-bent on blowing him into pieces and scattering his remains in the ocean. He’d dogged his way across enemy lines, into an enemy camp, to save the life of a friend. He’d spent hours calculating tactical strategies for nations at war, finding the smart way to get in and win the battle.

None of it had shaken him. A welcome burst of adrenaline, the rush of having survived, he got all of that from it. But never fear.

He felt it now. Staring down into the dewy eyes of his child. Her little face crumpled and she let out a wail that filled the inside of the limo.

“Don’t go yet,” he said to his driver. “Don’t go.”

Leena cried, louder and louder, and Alik had no idea what he was expected to do. He looked out the window, and he didn’t see Jada. She was gone. Somewhere into the shopping center they were near, he imagined, but he didn’t know where.

Unless she’d hailed a cab and simply left them both. It didn’t seem like something she would do, but he admitted, willingly, he knew nothing about emotion. About mothers who stayed with their children.

Jada wasn’t even Leena’s mother. But he was her father.

He didn’t know how to comfort a child. He didn’t have a clue as to how to go about it. No one had held him. No one had sung him songs or rocked him until he stopped crying. It was very possible he had never cried.

Leena on the other hand, did. Quite well.

He had always intended to hire a nanny, and when he’d gone out into the hall he’d felt, for the first time in his memory, like he was in a situation he could not control. And when he had seen Jada slumped against the wall, crying into her hands, he knew he’d found the solution.

But then she’d left. She wanted more, and he had no idea what more it was she wanted.

Alik had given up on emotion long ago. His body had put all of that into a deep freeze, protecting him from the worst of his experiences while growing up. And by the time he hadn’t needed the protection anymore, it was far too late for anything to thaw.

He experienced things through the physical. Sex and alcohol, and, in his youth, various other stimulants, had done a good job of providing him with sensation where the frozen organ in his chest simply did not.

It was how things were for him. It was convenient too, because when he had to carry out a mission that was less than savory, whether on the battlefield, as he’d once done, or in the boardroom, as he did now, he simply went to his mind. Logic always won.

And after that, there was always a party to go to. He’d learned how to manufacture happiness from his surroundings. To pull it into the darkness that seemed to dominate his insides and light the way with it, temporarily. A night of dancing, drinking and sex.

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