7. Samson
SAMSON
Next time you come to me.
I look at the words on my screen for a moment before I hit send. Then I slide the phone back into my pocket.
The car carrying Delaney pulls away, but I still feel her in the space she leaves behind. Her hand in mine as I helped her up from the table. The catch in her breathing when I brushed the inside of her wrist.
Traffic hums past. Someone laughs half a block away. The city is alive around me, but my mind is still at that table with Delaney, on her tongue sliding over her lower lip as she tasted the wine, on the pulse at the base of her throat.
Why did she come to dinner? Why was she in the club the other night?
Not money. She’s not the type. She’s a freelancer, a writer and researcher.
So she was looking for answers.
I don’t know what she thinks I’ll give her.
I do know she wants it enough that she accepted a dinner invitation she probably should have refused. That makes her either brave or reckless. Most likely both.
I take out my phone again and send Nathaniel a message.
Club. Now.
Then I head for my car.
Ten minutes later, I arrive at the club and leave my car with the valet. I roll my ring once over my knuckle with my thumb. The metal is cool tonight.
I don’t remember the first time I became aware of its weight. Not really. It’s lived on my hand so long it feels like a part of me.
Inside, the music is low. No one listens to it. The lighting flatters everyone and reveals nothing.
Conversations dissolve the moment I pass. I’m used to it. I’m the enforcer—the Vexley that strikes fear.
Correction. The Vexley who strikes the most fear.
I move through the main room without breaking stride.
A server shifts aside with a silent nod. No one stops me. No one would.
My office sits behind a paneled corridor off the back lounge, removed from the performance of the club.
The room is dark wood, black leather, clean lines.
No family photographs. No personal clutter.
A decanter on the sideboard. Files in locked drawers.
One painting worth more than most men make in a year, hung not because I like it but because my father once told me a room should contain at least one thing no guest can afford to damage.
Nate is already inside.
He stands near the window with his hands in his pockets. My middle brother always looks composed. It’s one of the things that makes people underestimate how dangerous he is. His hair is the same color as mine, though not as unruly.
He turns as I enter. “What is it? Why the summons? You’re lucky I was already here.”
Right. Nate comes when I call. He has to. He’s the fixer, the consigliore.
“I had dinner with her.” I cross to the sideboard, pour two fingers of bourbon into a glass, and set the decanter down without offering him one.
Nate can pour his own drink if he wants one. He doesn’t.
“How did that come about?” he asks.
“You’re the one who told me to pay more attention,” I say.
“It’s just a question, Sam.”
Nothing is just a question with Nate. I shrug. “She accepted when I asked her.”
“I’ve been thinking. I don’t think she’s random. She didn’t just happen to cross your path.”
I lean one hip against the edge of my desk. “Nothing is random if you stare at it long enough.”
He rolls his eyes. “That line works on other people.”
“It should work on you. You’re the one who says it.”
He almost smiles. Almost. Then he takes a few steps toward me. “She appears out of nowhere. She gets close to you too quickly. She asks careful questions. She pays attention to things most women wouldn’t even clock.”
“Most women bore easily.”
“This one doesn’t.”
“No.”
He meets my gaze, stares at me for a moment. Then, “Jesus Christ. You’re interested.”
“Of course I’m interested. I want to know what she’s after.”
He narrows his eyes. “That’s not what I mean.”
I turn the glass in my hand, watch the amber liquor move against crystal. “You looked into her.”
“I look into everyone.”
“That’s how I know you looked into her, genius. So?”
He doesn’t answer right away, which is an answer in itself. Nate likes facts. When facts don’t line up, he gets nervous.
“There’s enough there to be real,” he says finally. “She’s a journalist. Independent. But she hasn’t sold anything in a while. So I feel like there’s enough missing to be deliberate.”
“You sound annoyed.”
He rolls his eyes. “I am annoyed.”
“Because a woman had dinner with me?”
“Because you know better than to invite uncertainty into your lap.”
“For Christ’s sake, Nate, at the risk of repeating myself, you’re the one who told me to pay attention.”
A muscle shifts in his jaw. Nate doesn’t lose patience often. When he does, it shows in small ways first. A change in stillness. A slight hardening around the mouth.
“She’s after something.”
“I don’t disagree.”
“You say that like it doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t,” I say. “Everyone is after something.”
“That’s a convenient philosophy when you’re the one holding the knife.”
I tighten my fingers around the glass. Like I said, Nate notices everything.
The bourbon sits heavy on my tongue. I set the glass down before I decide to throw it at the wall. Even so, my harsh action makes a bit of it spill. Liquid gold worth more than what most guys make in a month seeps into the carpet.
My brother isn’t wrong. That’s the irritating part.
Delaney is after something.
But I can still see her at the table, candlelight moving over her face, all that cool composure with a live current humming underneath it. She didn’t flutter. She didn’t perform. She looked at me as if she understood I was dangerous and she chose to stay anyway.
I wanted to touch her. God, I still do. That, more than anything, should tell me to keep my distance.
Instead, it makes me want to know how long she can hold out before she stops pretending my presence doesn’t affect her.
Nate shifts his weight. “What did she ask?”
“Nothing direct.”
His lips thin. “That’s not reassuring.”
“I’m not here to reassure you.”
He looks away for a second, toward the closed door. Then, “You know what Father would say.”
I’m about to retort that I don’t give two damns what our father would say when a memory crashes through my mind.
I’m nineteen. I stand in my father’s study with blood drying in a split over my left brow and my right hand swelling under torn skin across the knuckles.
I don’t remember the other guy’s face. Only the dull satisfaction of having put him on the floor after he made the mistake of testing me twice in one night. My father doesn’t ask if I started it. He doesn’t ask if I finished it. Those questions don’t matter to him.
His study smells like paper and the rustic scent of Cuban cigars. Floor-to-ceiling shelves line the walls. Rain taps at the windows.
Arthur Vexley sits behind the desk in a dark suit and white shirt. His tie isn’t loosened even at this hour. His prominent jaw, along with his eyes—dark brown, almost black— make him look almost like the devil himself.
He looks at my hand first.
Then at my face.
“You won,” he says.
It isn’t praise. It isn’t a question. It’s just a simple fact.
“Yes.”
“Did it cost too much?”
“No.”
He opens the top drawer of his desk and removes a small black box. He places it on the blotter and slides it across the wood toward me.
“Open it.”
I do.
The ring sits inside on dark satin. It’s dull as old iron. Not polished bright like a college heirloom. Not showy. It looks older. Rougher. As if it’s been pulled from the ground instead of made by a jeweler’s hands.
I lift it out.
It’s colder than I expect.
The face bears an engraving—a narrow-headed key.
I turn it once between my fingers. “What does it open?”
My father’s expression doesn’t change. “If I thought you were ready for that answer,” he says, “you wouldn’t need to ask.
” He rises then and comes around the desk, not close enough to touch me.
My father doesn’t touch. He dominates without touching.
“Power isn’t given, Samson. It’s not inherited.
It’s not deserved. Many of those who wield it don’t deserve it. ”
I slide the ring onto my finger. It fits perfectly.
“Power is taken,” he continues. “And once you take it, you don’t get to pretend it came without a price.
You carry what it cost you. Every decision.
Every consequence. Every line you crossed to keep it.
If you hesitate, someone else will take it from you, and they won’t care what it costs you to lose it. ”
I look down at the metal on my hand. The key catches the light from the desk lamp.
When I lift my gaze again, my father is watching me.
Is he waiting for me to say something? To show him that I understand?
I do.
And I also don’t. Not completely. But in this house, some lessons are never explained. They are left in your hand for you to make sense of them.
So I nod.
Nate is still standing near the desk, his face unreadable now.
I’m still touching the ring. Nate wears an identical one. So does Cain. So does our father.
I let my hand fall. “Father says a lot of things,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Most of them are useful only in retrospect.”
Nate doesn’t argue. He knows our father taught by breaking things and leaving us to figure out why.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask. “You told me to pay attention, so I did. And now you want me to stop seeing her?”
He draws in a breath. “That depends on what you think this is.”
I almost laugh. I have no idea what she is. But I know what she’s not. She’s not easy. Not harmless. Not impressed enough by my name to forget herself.
And she’s definitely not telling me everything.
I should probably turn away from her and never look back.
Instead, all I want to do is run toward her.
I think of her sitting across from me at dinner in that dark dress, of the soft flush on her cheeks after I called her on what she was looking for, of the way she looked at me outside the restaurant as if she wanted me to kiss her and hated herself for wanting it.
“Samson.”
“What?” I say, irritated at him for interrupting my thought.
“She isn’t a diversion,” he says. “That would be simpler. She’s a problem.”
“Why would she be a problem?”
He draws in a breath. “So you’ve made up your mind then.”
“I have.”
“So why the summons?”
“You told me to pay attention,” I say. “So I did. I wanted your read. Now I have it.”
“Do you?” he asks. “Are you ready to burn when you put your hand in the fire?”
I smile despite myself. “You’re always so dramatic.”
“Dramatic, maybe. Right? Always.” He turns and heads for the door.
I let him go three steps before I speak.
“Keep looking into her.”
Nate pauses with his hand on the knob but doesn’t look back. “I already planned to.”
“Good.”
He opens the door. “And Sam?”
“Yes.”
“When this goes bad, don’t insult me by pretending you didn’t see it coming.” He closes the door as he leaves.
I stand alone in the office and reach for my glass again. The bourbon has mellowed a bit. I walk to the window overlooking the club floor.
It’s all so predictable.
Delaney is not.
I pull out my phone and look at the thread between us. My last message sits there, unread.
Next time you come to me.
A command, yes.
An invitation too.
I lock the screen and slip the phone away.
She came to dinner with purpose. She thought she was being careful. She was. Careful enough to interest me. Careful enough to make me wonder who taught her to move toward danger without flinching.
I rest my hand on the cool glass of the window, the ring heavy against my skin, and think of Delaney’s mouth, Delaney’s pulse, Delaney’s gaze holding mine as if she wanted something from me, as if she hated herself for wanting.
Nate is right about one thing.
She isn’t random.
Neither is what I’m feeling.
And I have no intention of letting it end at dinner.