Chapter 29
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
LYNX
The woman across the table is decadent.
Red, tight dress, red-bottom stilettos, a strand of diamonds around her throat. Onyx hair like one son, the same light colored eyes but in green, and a wedding ring on her ring finger that cost more than most people’s mortgages.
She has a champagne glass in hand, and her red lips are pressed together as she stares at the man beside me, Richman.
Rich is discussing in very bland terms the nature of the job he needs Cassia and Hawthorn for.
Of course, Hawthorn is not in attendance in this private room at the back of the club, three guards—one Rich’s, one mine, one Cassia’s—standing ever vigilant outside the door.
Hawthorn has not been the same since the thing with Cassia that we never speak about.
He rarely comes when I am here, now that he’s aware I’m “temporarily” staying.
I promised it wouldn’t be long.
And it won’t be, will it?
I focus on Cassia Leary and forget what I need to do to have her.
Rich needs a VP taken care of in a discreet and deliberate way.
Cassia absorbs the information without speaking.
I warned Rich it will seem as if she doesn’t care, isn’t interested, maybe even that she’s not taking it all in, but Cassia Leary never misses a thing.
Her eyes seem vacant at times, like they do now as she stares at Rich, who is talking hotel rooms and possible dates and guaranteed obstacles. But she no doubt has logged each time he’s said the word “um” and how many hand motions he makes as he speaks—which is a lot.
I tip back my own champagne glass.
All of it.
I don’t look away from Cassia.
The table is low between us, our couches identical; soft, brown leather. The low lighting on the wall behind her is in sconces, and it casts shadows over the sharp lines of her face. She’s as beautiful as she was when I first fell for her.
That was before Storm Leary ruined my life.
And hers, I like to believe.
But she’s never said as much. She is brash and bold and disgusting, but there are some—very few—lines she will not cross.
She drew one at him the moment he was conceived, no matter what damage it did to everyone around her. To me.
As it is, I’m simply lucky she left me alive.
It’s what I tell myself, anyhow.
But I’m not the only one who could go. Maybe it would solve her problem, but me breathing in this very room means it hasn’t, and that means I have problems of my own.
I think of the way Storm threw his arms around Lydia when she stood on unsteady steps on the threshold of the closet door.
She had a stuffed bear clutched in one hand, blood soaked into the brown fur.
Storm is less than a year younger than her, but he seemed even more so then.
He was covered in blood, but he never saw any of the actual carnage, despite the fact Cassia has never forgiven me for what I did that weekend.
Storm’s arms were so tight around her.
He stroked her back, because he couldn’t reach her hair, given their height difference at the time.
She didn’t hug him back.
She was dead, even then.
But I heard her cry.
The only time I ever have.
Cassia cuts her eyes to me and I have the uncanny sensation—not for the first time—she can read my mind.
She lifts her chin and stares down her slender nose at me.
I know that look.
It’s one she usually gives before she slits a man’s throat.
And I know there’s a blade on her somewhere, no matter that this meeting is supposed to be “friendly.” Nothing with us ever is.
I promised her, like Hawthorn, I was here briefly, and I could put more work in her books.
I don’t blame her for loathing me and the leash I have her on. The torment I put her through.
But it won’t stop me, and she has no idea it’s going to get so much worse.
She ruined my life once.
But I’ve made sure she’s paid for every day since.
It’s still not enough. And it won’t be until she’s mine.
I’ll kill each of her children if I have to, in order to make it so.