Victor: Her Ruthless Crush by Theodora Taylor (beach read book TXT) 📕

I had been traumatized. But in between all those booming proclamations, he whispered threats to handcuff me if I didn’t play along. He told me I was acting crazy. That I had been brainwashed. Victor’s father was a bad, bad guy. Protecting him would doom hundreds of girls my age to a terrible fate. I had to give him my school jacket for some reason.

In the end, his words broke through. Sobbing and guilt-ridden, I fetched my school blazer from where Victor had shoved it along with my shirt underneath the couch in the front room.

I’d later find out that the blazer had a spy camera implanted in the lapel. That’s what my father had really been doing when he took my jacket “to the cleaners” last September.

Looking back, I’m sure they would have found what they wanted with or without me.

But my dad needed everyone else to see me cooperating. That was the only way to prove his story was real.

I later found out that his job as Mr. Nakamura’s guard had been part of a deep, international undercover sting. The kind of thing they wrote about in movies. When Victor’s father had asked him about the daughter who knew ASL, Dad had seen it as the perfect opportunity to gather some possible intel on another crime ring.

I hadn’t gotten away with anything.

He knew. He knew the entire time I was with Victor. But if anything, my footage had been a disappointment at first. Other than the beatdown of Jake Nakamura’s two friends, I’d captured nothing of interest.

But then I had watched them kill the Boston snakehead. The camera in my jacket had recorded everything that happened in that garage. That meant when the time came to arrest his real target, Dad managed to net the head of the Red Diamond gang as well.

My father didn’t share much with me about the case after hauling me out of Victor’s apartment in nothing but a bedsheet. But as often happened with criminal organizations, the Red Diamond members who were caught up in the sting were willing to snitch in exchange for lighter sentences. That intel led to successful raids across all of Red Diamond’s Asian territories and even a few in the States.

The case was still ongoing by the time I left for Mount Holyoke, but the damage was everlasting.

Victor and his family had been taken down. Because of me. He’d spared my life, and his gang had paid the price.

In the end, I had to side with my father.

Yes, I loved Victor. But there were things in this world that were more important than our young love. And my dad did share with me that the raids had broken up several trafficking rings—both the human and drug kind.

Still, I would never forgive myself.

And neither would Victor.

22

VICTOR

4 Years Later

“No, no! Don't do this!” the gang leader begged as soon as Han removed the duct tape from his mouth. “I’ll make a deal with you, okay? Any deal you want. Just don’t kill me! Please!”

Victor exchanged an annoyed look with his chosen brother. He’d had a feeling this was how things would go as soon as Han and two of their men arrived at their Chinatown warehouse with the prisoner crazily thrashing about underneath a black hood. The head of the so-called Murder Crew wore a neon green tank top accessorized with several gold chains. And he was crying like a baby—not exactly the image of a fearless leader, whatever his many tattoos might proclaim.

It became obvious right away to Victor that he didn’t have the professionalism or the stomach for the job.

Not that his job satisfaction would matter much longer. It was just that Victor had been hoping for better behavior from the leader of the Vietnamese gang that had decided to encroach on territories long held by the 24K, a triad that had relocated to America shortly before the handover of Hong Kong back to the Chinese mainland.

Victor's first kill had been over four years ago. Since then, he'd thought that at least one of the people whose lives he was about to end would meet their fate bravely. But here this man was, crying and begging and trying to strike last-minute deals just like all the others.

All the others, except for Dawn, a small voice inside his head reminded him.

Victor hated that small voice. It popped up at the most inconvenient times. Along with that memory of her raising her chin and demanding a weapon so that she could go out fighting, not on her knees.

He had admired her so much that night. He’d been so struck by her bravery and honored that she would choose him, even after what she had witnessed him do. But that bravery of hers had been a lie, hadn’t it? A tactic meant to stall him until her father's arrival.

“What do you want? Money? Girls? Guns?” The desperate gang leader interrupted Victor’s ill-advised trip down memory lane. “I got all of them. Whatever you want! Just let me go, okay?”

Forget about Dawn. He’d been giving himself this same instruction for four years.

He turned his full attention back to the matter at hand. Victor had been working harder than most men his age to make a name for himself and his fledgling triad in the global underworld. But not enough time had passed for his reputation to quite sink in beyond the other Chinese gangs.

This man was woefully unaware that Victor never talked. Nor did he negotiate with men he’d already decided to kill.

But who needed words when actions spoke so much louder?

He nodded toward the vintage surgical table, still covered with the blood of the last person who died on it.

Cue more screaming as Victor’s men dragged the gang leader over and strapped him down. This table, Victor had been told by the collector who had sold it to him, had been used by a private surgeon who operated in a time before anesthesia became widely available.