30. Delilah
DELILAH
I follow Kane out of the dark passage looking like I have been thoroughly mugged by a mouth.
Which, obviously, I have.
And I liked it.
My lips are swollen. My hair is disastrous. The back of my dress is bunched up into my underwear, and it takes several firm tugs before the fabric hangs down where it’s supposed to.
Kane, meanwhile, walks ahead of me looking crisp, composed, and criminally pleased with himself.
How annoyingly on-brand.
He opens a door off the front hall and waits for me to enter. I follow uncertainly, not sure whether to expect a room full of alligators, or a candle-lit torture chamber.
Okay, that’s excessive. It’s probably just gonna be something boring. A study, perhaps. Maybe a library.
Rich men love rooms lined with books they have never once cracked open. It tends to photograph well when they’re starring in Forbes magazine spreads about how wealthy and powerful they are.
This, however, is an office.
A pretty simple one at that. That’s not to say that it isn’t nice. Everything in it—the computer monitors on the desk, the nineteenth-century map of Brooklyn framed on the wall, the alarming row of locked filing cabinets—has the subtle gleam of stuff that was probably very expensive.
But it’s not garish. Nobody had Forbes in mind when they were decorating in here.
The problem is that I cannot appreciate the tasteful restraint of Kane’s office while my body is still vibrating like I’m a gong that someone just hit with a battering ram.
My mouth tingles. Every step sends a warm little aftershock through me. My thighs keep clenching together, which is making matters worse, not better.
I clasp my hands behind my back, mostly so I won’t fan myself like a maiden in a BBC period drama. Not that maidens usually get groped against kitchen walls during Orthodox Christmas.
Maybe there’s a deleted scene somewhere. PBS does have standards, after all.
Kane glances over his shoulder.
I immediately look at the map so he can’t read my eyes. He stopped touching me out of respect, or so he claimed, which is somehow hotter than if he had kept going.
Horrible. Deeply unfair. A woman should not be expected to survive ethical restraint in a man with a butt like that.
I breathe slowly and order every mutinous organ to behave. My brain is in charge here, dammit! Not my stupid vagina!
Not one bit of me acknowledges the chain of command.
Kane shuts the door behind us and guides me into a large leather chair on the visitor’s side of the desk. He goes to claim his seat, and then waves a hand.
“Open the envelope,” he instructs.
“Could I have one minute to reconstruct my face first?”
His gaze settles on my mouth. “Why? I like it just the way it is. Nothing better than knowing I ruined you without taking off a single piece of clothing.”
I blush hard enough that my blood vessels raise several alarm bells.
I pull out my phone and open the camera so I can see just how visible my internal state of mayhem is. “Some of us prefer not to broadcast to forty dinner guests that we spent the family photograph grinding against the host’s thigh.”
“Some of us do,” Kane agrees. “Some of us wouldn’t give a damn if the whole world saw you coming on my lap, just so long as they knew that you’d only ever do that for me.”
Oh.
My.
God.
We can’t be having conversations like this. It’s so far beyond the carefully laid out boundaries of our deal that it may as well be a different universe.
So, nope. Abort. Retreat. Will not venture further.
Using my phone’s front-facing camera as a mirror, I attempt repairs.
The lipstick has migrated beyond the borders of my mouth.
I wipe away the damage with my fingertip, add a new coat, press my lips together, and decide the result will have to satisfy Kane’s many armed relatives, colleagues, and employees.
Kane watches all of this with that ever-present smirk simmering on his face.
“You could pretend to do paperwork,” I tell him. “Or something.”
“I certainly could. I’d rather watch you, though.”
I scowl.
Then my screen lights up before I can put the phone away.
NIKO MAKOV added you to MAKOV CHRISTMAS.
A torrent of unread messages appears beneath the notification. Most are photographs of children making faces, Anton defending his cookie box from Yuri, and little ones scampering around.
Then the family photograph arrives.
I am in the center.
Kane sits in the middle chair with me on his lap and one hand wrapped around my hip. Niko crouches beside us, grinning recklessly. The little ones in front are making rabbit ears over one another. Everyone behind us has squeezed close enough that there are no gaps.
I am glaring at Kane.
Kane is looking at me.
Not one other person in the photograph has his attention.
“Niko added me to your family chat,” I say.
“I will have him executed in the morning.” Kane extends one finger toward the envelope. “Quit stalling and open it, Lilah.”
He’s right. I am stalling.
And I’m not quite sure why.
Is it because opening it feels like admitting something? Not about the gift itself, whatever terrifyingly generous act of organized crime Kane has tucked inside.
About us.
There is an us now, apparently. And this “us” involves sitting on laps in front of his whole organization, and making out in kitchens. This “us” has something to do with hands wandering up beneath the hems of dresses that they really should not be wandering underneath.
This “us” is fucking complicated.
If Kane were merely extorting me, I could file him neatly in the mental cabinet reserved for men I wouldn’t let within a thousand yards of my lady parts.
But extortionists aren’t supposed to seat you next to them.
They don’t remember your hangover order or look at you in a family photograph the way he was looking at me.
And I am not supposed to like being wanted this much.
My thumb slides beneath the flap, then retreats.
Coward. Sensible coward, but still.
Because once I open it, I participate. I accept that this thing is changing shape faster than croissant dough in an overheated kitchen. I acknowledge that the sexual undertone has become a sexual air-raid siren.
Kane waits.
I set my phone facedown.
“Fine,” I say. “What is it, anyway? Did Connor sign over a kidney?”
“Why, do you need one? Say the word and I’ll send a man over with a scalpel.”
I shudder. “I’m pretty sure you’re joking, but I’m not sure enough to laugh.”
Still smirking, Kane points at the envelope again.
I work my finger under the flap and remove four documents.
The first is a copy of a gambling debt agreement. Connor’s name is printed across the top, followed by an account number and an amount large enough to make my eyes bulge out.
His signature is at the bottom.
The second document identifies the security he pledged against the debt: his car.
The third is a formal demand for payment.
The fourth is a receipt confirming that the car was surrendered at 3:29 P.M. this afternoon.
I read all four pages again. Then I drop them and gawk at Kane. “You’re gonna have to explain this to me in a very slow, very clear voice, because I’m confused as all hell right now.”
Kane leans back in his chair. “Your ex-husband likes cards,” he says. “Unfortunately, he’s bad at them. He borrowed money from a man in Marine Park to keep playing. And unfortunately again, that man works for me.”
“And the car?”
“He pledged it. He didn’t pay. So I took it.” Kane shrugs. “That’s all this is, Lilah. He made a promise. He broke it. I collected. It’s long past time that Mr. Boyd learns there are consequences to his actions.”
I look down at the receipt, then back up at Kane. My head is still spinning.
“He loved that car,” I mumble.
Kane’s mouth twitches. “He can walk around town now. It’ll give him lots of time to think over his decision-making.”
Out of nowhere, I’m consumed by laughter.
It starts as one startled little snort. Then I picture Connor standing on the curb while a tow truck hauls his beloved car away, and I laugh again.
Then louder.
And snortier.
And louder again.
Kane sits back in his chair and watches.
I laugh until my stomach hurts. Until tears gather in my eyes and I have to blot beneath them so my reconstructed makeup survives. Every time I think I am done, I imagine Connor polishing the rims in our driveway while I unloaded groceries by myself, and it begins again.
I press the pages to my chest. “This may be the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.”
“Your standards are poor.”
“My husband slept with my sister. The bar is in hell.”
Kane’s smile deepens.
Then one detail intrudes on my happiness.
I frown. “Did anyone hurt him?”
“No.”
“Kane. Promise me.”
“He handed over the keys.”
“Without an argument?”
“… I didn’t say that.”
“But nobody broke his hand or took him to a basement?”
“He was not harmed, Delilah.”
I relax into the chair. Connor is an asshole and I wish nothing but the worst for him. But I don’t want him in pain. That’s not right. I’m not that cruel.
Still, I do hope he has to spend a lot of time on the bus. And if I also add to that a wish list that the bus is always late and every seat is always mysteriously damp and sticky… Well, I’m only human.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
Kane studies me across the desk. “You wanted the car returned to him?”
“God, no. I want to print this receipt on a sheet cake and eat it just so I know exactly how good revenge tastes.” I set the papers down. “But you already got him out of my house. He signed the settlement. I get the divorce. Why keep dismantling his life?”
“Connor built his life out of favors, lies, and things that belonged to other people.”
“Including me.”
“Yes.” Kane reaches across the desk and taps the repossession documentation. “Eventually, consequences arrive. I am those consequences.”
I tuck the documents back into the envelope. “You really do consider yourself a force of nature, don’t you?”
“No. Nature is much less vicious.”
I laugh again. Then I put the envelope in my purse.
“Thank you,” I say.