Bought For Her Innocence

I need help, Dmitri. Call Noah and find out. Do this for Andrew.

A cold nail raking over his spine, Dmitri stared at the message.

Images and sensations—his father’s drunken rages, his mother’s tired face, his own powerlessness, stinking alleys filled with Dumpsters, fistfights and broken noses, sobbing when Andrew held him hard, and a girl with huge, dark eyes in her oval face...

Jasmine...

Christos, the message is from Jasmine.

His gut clenched so hard that he pushed at the table and stood with a growl, a violence of emotion he hadn’t known in years holding him in its feral grip.

Noah... Noah King... The man who ruled over the lowlifes of London like a king ran his empire... Lending and extortion, bars and nightclubs, pimps and prostitution, there was no pie that Noah didn’t have a finger in.

And Jasmine was caught in it.

A soft hand on his arm brought him back from the pounding fury... He turned to see Leah staring at him with such shock that his breath burst into him in a wild rush.

On his other side stood Stavros, his gaze filled with concern. “Dmitri, who was that text from?”

“Jasmine.” Even saying her name sent a pulse of something through Dmitri. As if he was opening a door he had closed on the worst night of his life. As if he was suddenly a spiraling vortex of emotion instead of empty inside.

“Jasmine, as in Andrew’s sister?” Stavros’s understanding was instant.

“Yes, she is in trouble,” he replied, running his hand through his hair.

His muscles pumped with the need for action; he wanted to smash something, he...

“Dmitri, let’s discuss what needs to be done,” Stavros interjected calmly, as if aware of how raw he felt. Of course, his friend knew.

He opened the message and read it again. He had thought Jasmine better off without his interest and instead, she had been right there in that veritable hell all these years.

How? How was Jasmine in trouble with Noah King? What had Andrew done?

Instructing Stavros to wait, he made a series of calls, pulling every contact he had made during his life on the streets of London.

In twenty minutes, he had the gist of the situation, and it sent his sanity reeling.

Noah King had set Jasmine’s virginity up for an auction and she was texting for help.

If he hadn’t spent the first fifteen years of his life in that pit, he wouldn’t have believed it. The thing that burned him, though, was that she didn’t ask for help. Not even now.

Instead, she’d reminded him that he owed Andrew for the countless times he had saved Dmitri from his alcoholic father’s rages and then from any number of fistfights that could have killed him.

Did she think he wouldn’t come unless it was to pay off a debt?

Shoving away the infernal questions, he turned to Stavros. “I...need as much cash as we can drum up instantly, upward of a hundred thousand pounds at least.”

Stavros didn’t even hesitate before he called their accountant. “Anything else?” he asked after he had finished.

“You’re the only one I trust. If this goes sideways, I want you to...take care of Jasmine.”

Stavros didn’t even try to stop him, only nodded. He had taught Dmitri what it meant to do his duty.

Maybe this was his chance to start afresh. Maybe he would have his own freedom from the guilt and emptiness that had plagued him for more than a decade once he’d set Jasmine free.

* * *

Jasmine was startled awake from a fitful sleep by the soft creaking of the door. Adrenaline deluged her and she choked down on the scream building in her chest. Slowly, she reached for the knife and sat up toward the edge of the bed. She wasn’t going to leave her safety to chance.

Thankfully, the bed was in the darkest part of the room.

Noah, for all the ruthless chill in his eyes, wouldn’t lay a finger on her. But John, his younger brother... She had seen that lust in his eyes every time she had run into him at the club.

She would have only one chance at striking out and she intended to take it without fail. She didn’t wonder if there was a chance to escape or if Noah would rip into her for attacking his brother.

All she cared in that moment was that no one pinned her on that bed, that no one touched her.

Footsteps that were as light as her own treaded the cheap linoleum floor and she waited, crouching.

The moment the faint shadow moved, she attacked soundlessly. Her knife sliced through the air and scratched at something before she was plucked off the bed as if she was a feather.

She lashed out with her fists and legs, her screams choked by a rough hand that found her mouth effortlessly.

Her struggle lasted all of two seconds. She was grabbed and hauled against a hard body, knocking the breath out of her while a viselike arm clamped around her middle.

“Stop struggling or I will walk out and not look back.”

Mindless with fear, Jasmine dug her teeth into the hard palm, squeezing and pushing against the steel cage that clamped her.

The hold against her waist tightened, long fingers pressing into her belly and almost grazing the underside of her breasts.

But John’s body wasn’t honed to steel like the one holding her was, the thought pulsed through the fear. John was fleshy, round. John was... The body that held her tight was all hard muscles and sharp angles, the scent that filled her nostrils not of sweat and other body fluids but clean with a touch of water to it.

Like the ocean breeze. And only one man she knew had that intoxicating scent that had muddled her senses the last time, too.

She had been drowning in grief at Andrew’s funeral, and the sight of him, all stunning and sophisticated and so different, that crisp scent of him as he had neared her had sent her on a tailspin.

“Dmitri?” she whispered, every hope, every breath hinged in that name, her pulse fluttering so fast that it whooshed in her ears.

The tightness of his hold relented, a sudden shift in the hardness that encased her. His breath landed on the rim of her ear, tickling her. “At your service, Jasmine.”

Relief came at her in shuddering waves, her lungs expanding, her throat thick with pent-up fear.

Long fingers moved up and down her arms, stroking her. “Breathe, pethi mou.”

A streak of longing rent through her at the endearment, tearing at the hardened chunk of self-imposed loneliness that was her core. God, she hadn’t been held like that in forever.

“You came,” she whispered, feeling light-headed and shivery.