Page 47 of Hard Heart

“How do you know?” I asked curiously.

His eyes widened fractionally, and I realised that was the first time Sykes had made an unconscious mistake. He shut down. Hard.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Maybe it does?”

He made an effort to soften his expression, feigning nonchalance. “I saw a documentary once.”

I thought back to the transcript, to the ten thousand dollars in used bills the police had found stuffed in Ruby’s fireplace. Nobody had ever ascertained the origin of the cash. In the news, her occupation had been given as “server,” a nice, innocuous job that wouldn’t invite any questions. I glanced at Sykes’s glacial expression. Ruby had been more than a waitress, hadn’t she?

“Oh my goodness. Ruby was⁠—”

His narrowed eyes said he knew that I knew.

“Off-limits, Serafina. That subject is so far out of bounds, it’s on another fucking planet.”

In the beginning, Sykes had reserved the right to keep some things to himself if he didn’t think they were relevant to the case. This was one of those secrets, wasn’t it? One of the dirty little truths he’d been hiding from me and everyone else. Ruby Costello had been working as a high-class call girl, and Levi Sykes, the man who claimed to love her, knew about it.

“But what if one of her clients⁠—”

“The cameras said otherwise.”

It wasn’t a denial; it was a deflection.

“And were you…?” I didn’t even know what to say. Was he a client? Her pimp?

He just shook his head. “I was trying to get her to quit.”

The door opened, and Jim trooped in with our coffee on a tray. Talk about bad timing.

“Sorry, someone moved the box of pods, and I got caught up.” He set a cup in front of each of us, ignoring the stony silence. “I’ll be outside.”

Sykes managed a “Thanks” while my brain was still processing. Ruby had been a sex worker. What did that mean? What implications did it have for the case? I moved to pick up the coffee cup, then realised my hand was shaking.

This case was a roller coaster, and we were only halfway up the lift hill.

CHAPTER 16

LEVI

The first day Serafina walked into this room, Levi had known she was trouble, much the same way he’d known Ruby was going to rock his world the moment he met her. She’d run into one of August’s lectures five minutes late, flustered, and promptly dropped papers everywhere. He’d been the teaching assistant who’d bent to help pick them up.

She’d been smart but scatty, beautiful but approachable, friendly but stressed by a less-than-ideal living situation. Stuck in a house-share with three people she didn’t like, short of money, fending off a landlord who’d suggested they could work out an alternative method of settling her back rent. She’d loved the tower in Blackstone House. Originally, Levi had planned to keep it for himself, Ruby’s room as his studio and Grey’s room to the rear as his bedroom, but Ruby had looked up at him with those big blue eyes and said, “Please?”

Fuck, he missed her.

They hadn’t been involved romantically for the first year—that had come later. Having grown up socially isolated thanks to his mom, Levi was still awkward as fuck and finding his place in the world. Friendship was all he’d wanted while he figured out how to fit in. All he’d needed, at first anyway. That was when Ruby had developed her “sideline.” He wasn’t sure how it had started, only that her boss at the bar had cut her shifts, and she’d been forced to pivot. That pivot had involved providing “discreet companionship.” Half the time, it didn’t even involve sex. She was merely a decoration who hung on some rich fucker’s arm for an evening and collected a few hundred bucks, often more.

And now Serafina had discovered Ruby’s secret.

“You think she was entertaining anyone else in the house?” she asked, and why wouldn’t she just fucking quit?

“No,” he practically snarled.

“But you said Greyson was a philanderer with fluid morals, and his room was right next door.”

“He didn’t shit where he ate, and he wasn’t into BDSM. There were two people in the house who liked kink—Zach and Jerry, but never together.”