Risk the Night Read Free Page B

it served him well.   As the elegantly handsome Euro-trash, D’Angelo ,
he went to the best parties, drank and gambled with the best people, and Tessa
was the perfect foil.   In her case
heroin-chic was accurate.   She
injected it under her tongue, between her toes, anywhere on her rail-thin,
perfect body that wouldn’t show, and she moved through her round of parties and
photo-shoots in a compliant daze.
    She was dazzlingly beautiful.   He had no idea if she had a brain in her head beneath the steady supply
of drugs, and he didn’t care.   She
was a means to an end.   All he had
to do was lead her around, point her in the right direction, and she was so
pretty that conversation wasn’t required of her.   She would listen and smile and nod her head and everyone
would be mesmerized, and he would move through the rarified world at her side,
seemingly just as vacuous, as he waited for his next job.
    She required nothing from him but company.   She had no interest in sex, which was just as well.   He could fuck on demand, but her
bone-thin, ravaged body reminded him too much of famine victims, and he could
control his sexual appetites.   She
spent her days, when she wasn’t working, being maintained like a thoroughbred
horse.   Groomed and exercised,
every square inch of her body, every inch that could be seen, was perfect, and
it cost a great deal of time and effort to keep her that way.   She had no time to consider her high
profile boyfriend or where he had first appeared.   She probably didn’t even remember the meeting he had
arranged.
    Tessa stumbled slightly as they walked into the party, blinded by the
flashing lights, and his arm tightened.   She smelled like chemicals, he thought, leaning down to nuzzle her ear
as the cameras flashed.   She’d   shot up before they left, and the
initial buzz was just beginning to wear off.   She had no idea her elegant, lazy boyfriend knew what she
was doing in the loo right before they left her hotel
suite, no idea that he’d gone to her supplier not long after he’d chosen her as
his mark and made it very clear that Tessa was only to have the safest, most
consistent supply of heroin available.   She was never going to be able to buy too much and make a fatal mistake,
she was never going to get a dangerously strong batch.   She would have the best, a safe,
careful source.   He hadn’t even had
to touch the hardened drug lord behind the dealer Tessa usually used.   Even Rabard knew a worthy opponent when he saw him.
    Not that he particularly cared if she died, he told himself.   But he’d chosen her for a reason,
because she could be easily controlled and used.   A drug overdose would be unpleasant.   With her political connections her
death would be scrutinized, as would her playboy lover.   And the last thing he wanted was to
answer questions.
    Besides, she was pretty, sweet and harmless.   Either her addiction would overcome her and she’d die, or
she’d eventually get clean.   There
was no way he could influence the outcome – he’d be someone else by then.
    But for tonight she looked up at him like a lover, even though they’d
actually only fucked a handful of times.   He had the feeling he was about to add to that handful.   Maybe even double it.   This was his second job since he’d
become D’Angelo , and Tessa’s lover, but for some
reason his blood was running hot.
    Not for some reason, he reminded himself, guiding Tessa in the
direction of the ambassador, her second cousin twice-removed.   It was that fucking reporter.   It was the voice on the other side of
the glass.   He tried to tell
himself she was a middle-aged troll.   She was certainly no match for Tessa – few people were.   If she were anywhere close to the kind
of female beauty D’Angelo had associated with she
wouldn’t be working for a newspaper.
    It didn’t matter.   He
heard her voice in his head, the horror he’d done his best to ingrain in her,
her