32. Riley
My heart almost stops.
“Chloe?” I repeat, my lips feeling numb as they form the word. “But she can’t… she’s not… they can’t do that.”
“They are,” Maddoc says calmly.
I shake my head in instinctive denial, fear for my sister flooding my chest.
“You fucking asshole!” I blurt, turning suddenly and shoving at Maddoc’s chest. “Why didn’t you tell me about the plan to plant the bug before we went to the club? I would’ve gotten her out of there if I’d known they were going to use her for something like this. I could’ve—”
“What? Taken a bullet in the back of the head and gotten her killed too?” he interrupts, speaking over me. “We’ve been over this before, butterfly. Or don’t you remember?”
“I know it sucks to hear, princess,” Dante says more gently, laying a hand on my arm. “But this is a good thing.”
“How is it good?” I ask, my voice cracking.
“Because it’s our best chance to get Chloe out. Without getting you or her shot.” He rubs his thumb back and forth over my arm. “We know where and when the drop is happening, and she’ll either be on her own or have limited backup. And ruining the drop will fuck with West Point’s business, not to mention their relationship with Capside. It’ll be a win-win. We get to weaken McKenna’s organization and get them off our back for a bit while they deal with that shit show, and—”
“I’ll get Chloe back,” I whisper, a vise closing around my chest. I shake my head, panic threatening to swamp me. “But that only works if she doesn’t get hurt, and Logan said this other gang is ruthless.”
Logan makes a small sound, but when I look at him, his face is blank.
Dante takes hold of my chin and turns my face back toward him. “Trust us.”
Do I trust them? Can I, when it comes to something like this?
He chuckles as if he can read every thought in my head, then drops his hand and turns to Maddoc. “Back me up, Madd. This shit is a great opportunity all around, right?”
Maddoc is watching the two of us with slightly narrowed eyes, almost like it bothers him to see the easy, casual way Dante touches me, but at his friend’s words, he nods. “It is. If we play this right, we’ll all get what we want.”
“But it’s—”
“Dangerous?” He cuts me off with a grim smile. “Yeah, it probably will be. But McKenna is gonna send her either way, and like Dante said, this is our best chance of getting her out unscathed. It’s worth the risk.”
“Then I’m going too,” I say immediately.
Maddoc raises one eyebrow. “Going where?”
Dante grins. “Where the fuck do you think, Madd? She doesn’t even know what the plan is, but she’s down for it. Rushing head first into danger for her sister. Our girl knows loyalty, yeah?”
“She’s not ours,” Maddoc says sharply, scowling at him.
Something in the tone of his voice makes me wonder if he has some idea of what happened between me and Dante. I can’t tell if he’s jealous or just pissed that Dante didn’t follow his rules about not fucking me, but either way, I don’t have the mental bandwidth to worry about it right now.
“I can be useful,” I insist. “I’ll do whatever you tell me to, and I can help keep Chloe calm. She’s going to be freaked the fuck out, and she’ll have no reason to trust you over West Point unless I’m there.”
Maddoc scrubs a hand over his jaw, looking like it pains him to admit that I have a point. But he finally nods. “All right. You can come. But only if you do exactly what we say.”
My heart leaps, and I straighten up a bit. “So what’s the plan?”
He fixes me with a quelling look. “There isn’t one yet. We just found out about the drop. We need to do more research before we know exactly what we’re dealing with. Logan?”
“I’ll start looking into it,” Logan says.
Maddoc nods sharply. “Once you’ve finished your recon, we’ll make a solid plan and find a way to use this deal with Capside to our advantage.”
“To extract Chloe,” I say, wanting that to be clear. It’s all well and good for Dante to talk about a win-win, but I need to make sure one of those wins is for me.
I’m not naive. The only advantage I can see for the Reapers when it comes to helping me rescue Chloe is that it will fuck with West Point, but that also means that fucking with West Point will be their main priority, not Chloe’s safety.
Maddoc nods, holding my gaze. Something passes through his enigmatic gray eyes, reminding me of the way he looked at me that day in his office when I showed him pictures of Chloe and me, allowing him a glimpse into the most vulnerable, intimate parts of my life.
“To extract Chloe,” he repeats softly, and I can hear the promise in his voice.
“Good.” I say. Then I clear my throat and add, “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
He doesn’t look away from me, and I wish like hell I could read his thoughts right now. I wish I could know if the warmth I see in his eyes is real.
But I have to believe his promise. He’s probably right that this is the best chance to get Chloe out, so it’s a risk I need to take.
“I’m going to get started on research,” Logan says coolly, stepping away from the little group we’ve formed.
“Can I help?” I ask, eager to get this part over with so that we can move on to actually doing something to free Chloe.
He freezes, his ice-blue eyes cutting toward me as if he’s surprised by my offer. He hesitates, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows, then he shakes his head. “No. I… I work better alone.”
“Okay.”
Disappointment fills me, but I nod. I’m not sure how I could’ve helped anyway, and the idea of being alone with Logan is both thrilling and terrifying—like passing your hand through a flame and seeing if you’ll get burned. It probably isn’t something I should be adding to my already fucked up emotional state.
Logan’s gaze lingers on me for a second longer, then he heads for the stairs and disappears up them. Maddoc strides toward the office near the back of the house a moment later, but Dante stays by my side.
“You good, princess?” he asks once we’re alone in the living room.
“Peachy,” I tell him with a smile so fake that he busts up laughing.
“You’re really selling it,” he says, still grinning.
“I’m as good as I can be,” I say, opting for honesty this time. He knows me too well by now for him to believe a lie anyway. “I’m worried, and I’m antsy as hell to get this over with. But at the same time, I’m scared of what will happen when we actually do make a move to get Chloe back. Right now, it’s all just possibility and hope… but when it becomes real, what if shit goes bad?”
“Yeah, I get that. The waiting is the worst part. Too much time to imagine all the ways things could go wrong.” He purses his lips, then jerks his chin at me. “Come on.”
If he thinks we’re going to sneak off and fuck again… well, I wouldn’t say no. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, for a lot of reasons, but it would sure beat sitting up in my room and trying not to let my imagination run wild in the most horrible ways.
“What did I say about trusting me, princess?” he asks when I hesitate.
I shake my head. “Pissing Maddoc off right now could blow my only chance to get Chloe back.”
His green eyes warm, and he drops his head a little to meet my eyes. “It’ll be okay, I promise. Maddoc gets to decide a lot of shit around here, but not everything. I just want to show you something.”
I’m curious in spite of myself, so I follow him upstairs, past my room and past the library where Logan caught me snooping. He opens a door at the end of the hallway that I never got to investigate and leads me up another set of short stairs.
The third floor is a sort of attic space. It’s not too fancy, with unfinished walls and exposed beams. Paint spatters decorate the floor, and there are brushes and dozens of tubes of paint set out on a small table against one wall.
It’s an art studio.
I blink, then look up at Dante. “This is yours?”
He grins, and I realize I don’t need to ask. There are large canvases set up all around the well-lit space, and somehow the abstract paintings… feel like him. I’m not even sure how that makes sense, but it’s still true.
I wander toward one that might be the view out of my bedroom window if it were distorted through a lens that took out all recognizable shapes and just left color. The vibrant green is the same as the swath of foliage behind the house, and it reminds me of Dante’s eyes.
I run my finger over the thick, uneven paint. “I had no idea you were an artist.”
“Nobody is just one thing,” he says with a shrug. “Dad raised me to be a hitman, and the Reapers made good use of those skills when I joined up, but that doesn’t mean that’s all I am.”
My fingers go still, my heart picking up speed as he comes up behind me. He’s mentioned his father before, and it’s clear that he loved him a lot, but the information that his dad raised him to be a hitman is new.
And I’m not sure it’s something Dante meant to reveal about himself.
I want to ask more, but I hesitate to draw any attention to the fact that he said it, or to indulge my deepening curiosity to know more about him.
I don’t really know where Dante and I stand. It’s hard to deny there’s a connection between us, but it’s so fucking complicated that I’m scared to examine it too closely.
I clear my throat, the silence starting to feel awkward. “There’s a lot I don’t know about you,” I murmur.
He chuckles, resting his hand between my shoulder blades, but doesn’t say anything.
Knowing he was raised by a hitman and then followed in those footsteps drives home just how dangerous he is, and the fact that I’m both attracted to and repelled by that danger says things about me that I’m not sure I’m ready to face.
So I focus on the paintings instead. It’s easier. And they truly are beautiful.
“Tell me about them,” I say, moving to stand in front of a canvas saturated in red so bright that it could almost be mistaken for blood.
“My favorite color,” he says, following me. He takes my hand and rubs it over the ridges and valleys of the swirled paint, mimicking what I did with the green one. “I come up here to paint when I’ve got shit to work out in my head. Helps shut out the noise.”
He leads me to the next canvas, and this one is all noise. Noise, but in color. As if he took it out of his head and left it on the canvas.
“I do that too, but with dance,” I say. “Have you always painted?”
“Nah. Not really much of a chance to when I was growing up. I didn’t even know it was a thing. Or like, obviously I knew it was a thing people did, but it didn’t exactly fit in my lifestyle, you know? But I’ve always liked the world better in color.”
He gives me a crooked smile, and it’s so beautiful and real that it makes my heart stutter.
“Anyway,” he goes on, “I picked up the painting thing a few years ago, and ever since, it’s helped me unwind when I need it. Process shit, you know?”
He grabs a palette while he’s talking and puts some paints on it. I’ve never been all that artistic, but they look… decadent. Tempting. Thick piles of vibrant color that call to me.
Dante hands me a brush and leads me over to a canvas that already has a painting started on it. Soft strokes in blue and purple jewel tones that remind me of my hair. It’s all color without form, not really looking like anything at all and yet somehow reminding me of the way it felt to have his hands on my body.
“Why did you bring me up here?” I ask, feelings I’ve been avoiding welling up inside me.
“Downstairs, you looked like you needed to process some shit. It seemed like you might need to unwind… again.”
I laugh, that last, cocky word releasing the tension and uncertainty inside me. “Ass.”
He shrugs, grinning at me. “Well, this way won’t get Maddoc’s hackles up. Go on now. Show me what you’ve got.”
I look back at the canvas. “I can’t… this is already yours,” I fumble.
He guides me onto the stool set up in front of the canvas, settling me onto it. Then he takes my hand, the one holding the brush, and touches it to the palette, dipping it into the same purple he’s already used on the canvas.
“Now it’s yours too,” he says, moving my hand to the canvas and smearing the paint there. “I learned a long time ago not to get too attached to anything. It can all be changed or destroyed in a moment. Life is chaos.”
“Yeah, it is,” I say softly, the words striking me in the heart.
I’ve become viscerally aware of that fact recently, and here he is, offering me a way to shape some of the chaos. To process shit, in Dante’s words.
I smile, and he pulls my hand in the other direction, weaving the color in and out of what he’s already put on the canvas.
“Now you,” he says, taking a step back and leaving me with the brush all on my own. “Go ahead, princess. Make your mark.”
I hesitate again, the weight of the brush different without his hand wrapped around mine. But then I quit thinking and let it draw me in, just like I would if I had the chance to get lost in motion and music.
I scrape the purple off on the palette and dip the brush into the red paint—crimson red, blood red—and slash the brush across the canvas, making this one small corner of chaos my own.
“Fucking beautiful,” Dante murmurs, and the approval in his voice goes straight to my head.