Free Operation Heartbreaker by Christine Thomas Page B

picture. She rarely smiled, he noticed. There were also snapshots of her friend. What was her name again? Julie was written on the edge of the photograph. Well, she was definitively more his taste. But he wasn’t looking for a new flirt. He needed something else, and this girl would provide it to him.
    The corners of his mouth lifted as he picked up the photo and looked at it again. You don’t stand a chance. His smile widened. He’d make sure she would fall for him until she’d do anything for him. They always did. Women weren’t particularly complicated. Most of them were looking for a ruthless bastard with a heart of gold. The first part was him, the second–not. Whoever saw a contradiction had no idea about the other sex. The women hitting on him were fully convinced that he was tortured soul. An ass, sure, but one driven by inner demons who just hadn’t met the right woman yet. Somebody who’d understand him. Everyone of them wanted to be that woman, taming the beast.
    Well, bullshit! He should’ve been shocked that he, barely twenty years, played this fucked-up game so well. But it didn’t. In the end it was just a game–one he won too quickly for his taste.
    He was bored out of his mind. Before a new conquest he hoped to have found a worthy opponent. And every time he was disappointed again.
    The worst kind were the ones that pretended to be aloof in hopes of seeming more interesting, when really it was just one variation of the same strategy.
    Boring.
    A woman who’d be able to capture him, had to be real–no games.
    It was time to find out what kind of stuff this Ally was made of. And how long it would take for her to become wax in his hands. Smirking, he put the photo back into the file.
    He gave her a day, maybe two.
    When Danilo knocked, Viktor’s mood had lifted. In the end they all fell into his lap, Ally wouldn’t be an exception. With one last look at the photograph he closed the dossier and turned towards his head of security, whom he purposefully didn’t offer a seat. He wasn’t supposed to be comfortable, a good preparation for this conversation.
    Injured , that was the word he’d been looking for to describe the expression in Ally’s eyes.
    Well, too bad. Injured girls were an easy prey.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    The Le Bristol turned out to be a super duper luxury joint near the Champs-Élysées, which explained Julie’s sassy grin on the bus. As soon as they’d reached their suite Julie threw herself onto the king size bed and fell asleep within seconds with a smile on her lips.
    Ally on the other hand was wide awake. First, she put together her cell phone and realized she’d missed a half dozen calls, all of them from David. She didn’t call her mailbox. He was probably livid and threatening to ground her until the end of days. She could do without that. What she wanted were answers, and they were somewhere in that lappy. She only had to find them. She turned it on, typed in the password and entered different search functions: Cole, CP, OSK and her name. The contents seemed to be encoded, but from Cole’s last messages she gathered that he was always moving in a specific pattern. He never called from the same location twice. Instead, he changed positions counterclockwise. The first call came from the Nineteenth Arrondissement, the second from the Eighteenth, the next from the Seventeenth district and so on. If he continued like that, next time he’d call from the Fifteenth Arrondissement, the largest district of Paris.
    It was a strange feeling that he might be just a few blocks away from her. She’d never come this close to him before.
    After having looked for clues for two more hours she got tired and fell asleep over her work.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    The ringing of her cell made her sit up with a start. According to the position of the sun it was early morning, but it still felt like night. Damn jet lag. Ally rubbed her eyes and glanced at the display. Judging by the number, the call came from