31. Samson
SAMSON
I wake the way I always do. All at once.
For a second, my body goes on instinct. This is the wrong bed, the wrong ceiling. Every muscle pulls tight. Every nerve goes on edge. I almost reach for the weapon that’s not beside me because this isn’t my bed, my room, my house.
Then I feel her. The heat at my side. The soft breath against my chest.
Delaney.
The memory comes back in pieces. Her mouth under mine. Her hands on me. My hand in her hair. My cock in her throat. Her body arching. The sound she made when I gave her exactly what she needed and exactly what she should have run from.
The marks I left.
The ones she let me leave.
I stare into the dark, the truth of it pressing low and heavy inside me.
I stayed.
I never stay.
Not after sex. Not after violence. Not after any moment that puts me off balance, and last night put me further off balance than anything has in years. Maybe ever.
I turn my head.
She’s asleep on her side, facing me, hair spilled across the pillow. Her lips are slightly parted. A bruise low on her throat. Another shadow at her shoulder where I was too rough.
Mine.
Something brutal and possessive stirs in me at the sight of it, but that isn’t the feeling that sits deepest.
That one is worse.
Because somewhere in the middle of her pushing into me instead of away from me, somewhere between the fight in her and the surrender in her and the way she said my name like it meant something other than a warning, I had one monstrous thought.
I would burn everything for her.
Not a room. Not a deal. Not one expendable man or one disposable structure.
Everything.
The club. The houses. The accounts. The carefully sealed doors of the empire my father built with blood and obedience and fear. The machine Nate keeps polished and precise. The whole dark kingdom of it.
I would put a torch to every last inch if it meant keeping her.
The thought should disgust me.
It should sound like weakness. Madness. Treason written in the language of desire.
Instead it settles into me like a vow.
Nate was right.
She is a weakness.
The realization doesn’t make me softer. It makes me colder. Sharper. More dangerous. Because weakness is only fatal when you refuse to see it for what it is.
I look down at the ring on my finger.
My father put it on my hand and told me some things are opened only once.
He meant power.
He meant loyalty.
He meant doors that should stay shut unless a Vexley chooses otherwise.
But lying here with Delaney breathing against me, the ring feels less like power and more like prophecy.
The key.
And beside me—
The lock.
Beauty sleeping next to the beast.
The image should almost be laughable. A child’s story, dressed up for little girls who think monsters can be loved into gentleness.
That isn’t this.
I am not gentle.
And if there’s any magic in this room, it’s not the kind that saves. It’s the kind that ruins. The kind that turns men inside out and leaves them staring at things they were raised to kill in themselves.
Desire.
Devotion.
Need.
I brush my thumb over the ring once and then ease out of bed.
The room is cold without her heat. I drag on my pants and then stand for a second beside the mattress, looking down at her.
She doesn’t wake.
Her body remains angled toward the place I just left, as if even in sleep some part of her notices my absence and reaches anyway.
I turn away before the thought can sink its teeth in.
Focus.
I move through the apartment, checking the front door first. I turn the deadbolt and open the door. The lock plate catches my eye immediately.
Scratches.
Fine ones. Recent ones. New ones. New since the first break-in.
I crouch, dragging two fingers over the metal. I close the door, locking it once more, and head toward the window. I lift the blind a fraction.
It’s still dark on the street. Parked cars are illuminated by the orange lamps. A man sits on a stoop, smoking.
I let the blind fall and turn to the desk.
Delaney’s notes are spread there. Receipts. Names. Times. A sketch in the corner of one page. Measurements. Arrows. The marina. Access points. Service entries. Lock positions.
The marina records room. The sublevel restricted area. Has she figured out that it was restricted? Who it belonged to?
And the lock replacement.
I stare at the page, and something in me tightens.
She isn’t chasing a man anymore.
She’s chasing a door.
The thought hits like a fist, and in a flash I’m twenty-three again…
Rain slams down so hard it turns the marina black.
Water is slick under my boots. The old wood dock shines wet under the lights. My coat is heavy across my shoulders. I’m already flexing because this is what I was sent for. This is what I do. I step into messes and make them simple.
Nate is a few feet away, my backup. And Cain… Cain is farther away, always watching with that unreadable expression on his face.
He shouldn’t be here. He’s only sixteen.
But he insisted, and our father agreed. It was time. I could have fought harder, but I was way deeper into all of this shit when I was Cain’s age, so fuck it.
Then I see him.
Halstead.
He’s the problem. That is all that matters.
I move toward him.
Time to end it.
That’s always the lesson. Don’t drag it out. Don’t invite complication. Don’t wait for a second blow if the first can finish it.
I ready myself for what I came for.
But something is off.
Halstead slips on the damp wood, his shoe scraping.
He freezes.
It’s time.
I move forward, clamp my hand on his arm, and yank him backward.
He stumbles. “What the hell—”
“That’s far enough,” I say.
Halstead swallows. “You’re making a mistake.”
I tighten my grip.
Nate emerges from the shadows. “I don’t think so.”
Halstead lets out a breath. “You don’t understand. What I have—”
“We understand exactly what you have.” I grip him harder.
“Then you understand what happens next,” he says, his voice cracking. “This doesn’t stay here. It doesn’t disappear. I made sure of that.”
Rain hammers harder against the dock. Water splashes up against the wood.
I keep hold of him. One slight move from me, and he’s history. I know it. He knows it.
“Did something change?” he asks. “I was told that—”
“Shut up!” I squeeze his throat.
“I think,” Nate says quietly, “you’ve misunderstood your position.”
Halstead shakes his head. “No. I know exactly where I stand.”
Nate moves. And everything that happens next goes too quickly to stop.
I’m on him.
Impact.
A sick collision of force and bone and wet wood underfoot.
He goes down hard.
Too hard.
His body hits with a sound I still hear some nights when the house is too quiet.
And then…
Nothing.
No shouts.
No rush of men.
No chaos.
Just rain pouring over all of it.
Just the shape of him on the dock.
Just me standing above the wrong ending to something I still don’t fully understand.
The room snaps back into place around me. My hand is braced on the desk hard enough to whiten my knuckles.
I straighten slowly.
Last night in bed, Delaney asked me nothing that mattered aloud. Her body asked everything. Her mouth. Her hands. The way she opened for me.
A floorboard creaks outside.
I move before the sound finishes. I unlock the door again and walk quietly down the hall.
At the far end of the hall, the stairwell door swings softly on its hinge.
Someone was just here.
I take the stairs two at a time. Push through the lobby. Cold air slams into me as I hit the street.
A figure cuts across the far end of the block. A male in a dark hoodie, running.
I go after him.
He glances back once, sees me gaining, and bolts harder. He knows these streets or he’s been told where to go. He hooks left into a narrow alley between two brick buildings.
I follow.
The alley reeks of damp concrete and old trash. I slow just enough to listen.
A scrape.
Then silence.
I keep moving, but I find nothing. Just a chain-link gate at the far end, rattling faintly on its latch.
He’s gone.
Or he was never alone.
Fuck. I left Delaney alone with an unlocked door.
I race back.
By the time I reenter Delaney’s apartment, my pulse has settled. My body has not.
She’s still asleep.
Still on her side.
Thank God.
I go back and lock the door, scoffing at the deadbolt and chain. It’s useless. A child’s toy against wolves.
Then I go back to the bed and stand over her.
The beast in the tower.
The woman foolish enough to stay.
Except in this story, she doesn’t yet know the worst room in the castle. She has only pressed her hand to the door.
And I’m standing here with the key in my hand, knowing exactly what opens when I let her too close.
I look at my ring again. The key pressed into black platinum that looks like iron and worn like a birthright.
Samson.
The name has always felt less like a gift than a command. Strength. Violence. A man chosen for force and ruined by what he lets too near his heart.
I was taught to be the hand. Be the blow.
But Delaney makes something impossible rise in me, something my father would have broken out of me with both hands if he’d seen it young enough.
Rebellion.
The desire to choose one thing over the whole damned altar I was raised on.
She stirs.
Her lashes flutter. Her brow creases faintly before her eyes open.
For a second she says nothing. Just looks at me standing there in the dark like something out of a dream…
Until—
She squints at me. “What happened? Were you outside?”
I cross back to the bed and sit on the edge. “Someone was outside.”
She pushes up on one elbow. “Outside the apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see him?”
“I saw enough.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re done staying here alone.”
Something flares in her eyes, but she’s awake enough now to know the difference between command and fact.
I look at the marks on her throat, her shoulder. Then back at her mouth.
She is a weakness.
Too bad.
I reach for her, slide my hand around the back of her neck, and pull her toward me until her forehead nearly touches mine.
“They’re already watching,” I say quietly.
Her breath catches.
I cup her cheek. “Now,” I say, “they get to watch me watch back.”