Boldly arguing that McAngus—son of Angus—was no different than Rodriguez or Perez because the “-ez” meant “son of” hadn’t earned him respect. Only more taunting.
He’d told Nikolett the truth—if he hadn’t clearly hated his name, his peers would never have picked up on it. If he’d stopped reacting, they might have stopped too.
When he was eight, his father showed up after being absent for years. It was the first and only memory Angus had of the man, though his mother had tried to implant memories of what a happy family they’d been when Angus was born.
All he had were stories, and then one day, this big stranger was there, and Angus had been awestruck. He knew his mother had met up with him—she’d occasionally leave him to go “visit”the man, but this was the first time he came to their small home in the equally small town of Ripoll.
Angus’ mother proudly showed the stranger some of Angus’ school work, though he clearly didn’t care. The man—big, blond, with cruel eyes the same color as Angus’—looked at the name on the paper, written in a child’s blocky handwriting, and laughed.
“Angus McAngus? You actually named him that? I said it as a joke. It sounds stupid. McAngus isn’t even my last name.”
The man’s words carried an odd accent, and he was speaking Spanish rather than Catalan. Angus looked at his mother, hoping maybe he’d misunderstood. Until he saw her stricken face. Then watched, in real time, as she boxed up those words, shoving them somewhere deep inside to maintain her cognitive dissonance and smile at the monster she loved. She took his hand, guiding him into her room.
The last thing young Angus heard before the door closed was, “I thought I told you to give him up for adoption.”
The next time he went to school, he lashed out when the teacher called his name.
He’d surprised himself, admitting to Nikolett he hated his name. He’d been Angus McAngus as a child, but changed his name once he left home and had the funds. He’d been a million people since then, but the sobriquet he used when he thought of himself was the Spaniard. A moniker earned with his blood, sweat, and pieces of his soul.
Introducing himself to Nikolett with his long-unused birth name was part of the plan. Telling her he hated it, that his father had meant it as some dismissive joke, wasn’t.
A lot of things didn’t go according to plan tonight.
Because of Nikolett.
She was more than he’d anticipated. She should be only a means to an end. A weakness he could exploit.
Her mix of strong and soft, bold yet sometimes unsure, was intensely alluring. She was funny, witty, and confident. Successful and self-assured, but not pretentious.
He’d come here tonight to hurt her, and an hour in, he’d realized that if he didn’t do something, they would end up having sex. That was a bell he couldn’t un-ring, and for all his carefully honed callousness, he knew that if he had sex with her, it wouldn’t be aloof fucking.
It would be intimate and amorous, and afterward, he wouldn’t be able to hurt her, not the way he needed to.
The plan had always been to drug her, and he’d carried through on that at least, slipping the powder into her dessert wine while one of her guards set out dessert. Instead of feeling calculated, slipping her something to put her to sleep felt like a panicked move to ensure they didn’t have sex.
The intimacy of holding her on his lap while she was entirely vulnerable was almost as bad. The feelings racing through him weren’t cold triumph, but something akin to panic.
The guilt swirling in his stomach after he saw the bandages on her leg was another unwelcome emotional complication. The cast was one thing, but that sad little sound she made when he accidentally pressed on the side of her calf nearly killed him.
She was so delicate. Not notably short, based on the average for women, but fine-boned. He had a feeling she was thin not by design or metabolism but because she missed meals.
Her image on surveillance video and photos warped the perspective, and her body language did the rest, turning her into a formidable, powerful figure. Even the image he had of her on her knees in a resort in Amalfi hadn’t communicated how slight she was, because the image made it seem like she only looked small, thanks to the hulking shadow behind her.
But here, in his arms, she was small, and he didn’t think it was just his size that made her feel that way. She was a mighty, powerful queen packed into a too-easily-broken package.
He swallowed hard against another thought. It was sheer luck that he hadn’t managed to accidentally kill her. Even the venomous snake he’d snuck into her house might have been deadly, given her weight. It had been meant only to hurt her and scare Eric.
Eric Ericsson. His true target.
The name echoed inside Angus’ skull, the reverberations muting other thoughts.
It was enough to have him reach over to his discarded jacket, pulling the glasses case out of the pocket. Sliding his glasses onto his face, he wrapped an arm around her middle back, the other under her knees, and rose to his feet.
He carried her through the suite, bending his knees when he reached the door to the bedroom so he could open it without putting her down.
She mumbled something, shifting in his grip.
He slid into the bedroom, pushing the door closed behind them with his foot.
