Chapter 11
brENDEN
Sunset throws long pinks across a semi-cloudy sky. I haven’t moved in a half hour. My legs are sore from crouching. My feet are deeply asleep.
The door hasn’t changed.
It’s not going to.
Strange. I’ve cased a thousand targets in my career, but this is the first one I could walk straight into without any issues. I have the damn spare key in my pocket already.
No sneaking, no skulking, no climbing or picking or breaking.
My own house. And inside it—
I close my eyes and stand, rubbing my lower back.
We got married three days ago. Since then I’ve tried very hard not to think about her.
Talin Sarkissian, now Talin McGrath, my wife.
Bane of my god damn existence. Her naked chest in my hand, her nipples stiff, her tits spilling over my palm, her hips grinding my thigh, and at first I thought she was playing along until I broke off the kiss and she gasped and tugged at me like she wanted me to keep going.
The needy look she gave me, her mouth hanging open—
The fucking photograph she took.
Anger flickers again for the thousandth time. I keep waiting for Arsen or Cormac or Alexan Sarkissian to show up at my apartment door with a silenced pistol and a copy of that damning image. Hasn’t happened though, which means my wife doesn’t want me murdered.
Not yet, anyway.
The fucked thing is, I could steal it back. Even if she emailed it to herself, I could make sure it got deleted. Alan Way’s my hardware guy, but I have guys for a thousand other illicit tasks, and many of them are highly competent.
If I wanted Tallie’s email hacked, all her data destroyed, her entire online existence torched, I could make it happen.
Instead, I’m letting her keep that sword above my head.
Why? For fucking what purpose?
She could ruin me—but I don’t want to ruin her in return.
It’s all so fucked as I trudge up the stairs to my house.
I don’t even know what I’m doing here. She won’t be happy to see me.
I’ve been acting like she doesn’t exist for days now, but it’s time to face reality.
This is where I’m supposed to be, and if I want to appear at least somewhat normal, I’d better show my face.
Good, that’s a solid excuse. I can keep telling myself this is all for my cover. Play along, lay low, stick to the plan. Hide in plain sight.
I’m not coming home because I actually want to see her.
No, that can’t be it.
“Tallie? You here?” I step inside. It smells like cinnamon and apples. There’s an end table, a mirror on the wall, art hanging along the steps. Nice art too, not cheap, tacky Home Goods stuff. “Hello? Talin?”
I drift deeper into the house. My fucking god, in three days, my wife managed to transform a hole of a building into what looks like an actual livable space.
The kitchen has plates and bowls in the cabinets, forks and knives in the drawers, and a loaf of freshly-sliced quick bread is lying on a cutting board. I pick up a piece. It’s delicious.
“What do you think?” Tallie’s sitting on a couch in the living room watching me over the back, one arm draped lazily down the side. Her dark hair’s pulled back, her deep red lips soft and calm. I expected yelling. I didn’t think there’d be food.
“It’s really good.” I eat another piece. “Your recipe?”
“Found it online. Figured it’d be a nice way to break in the kitchen.”
“You did all this?” I move over to a table. It’s big, circular, and looks very expensive.
“Who else?”
“I assume your sister had a hand in it.”
That gets me the ghost of a smile, which I love. “Annie was willing to help.”
“It’s nice,” I tell her and I really mean it.
“Welcome home.” She goes back to looking at her phone. “Feel free to move your stuff in. I left space in the closet.”
This is worse than I expected.
I was prepared for yelling. I figured there’d be a thrown shoe or two, maybe some tears, maybe a few punches. A part of me wants her to be upset I’ve avoided her for three days. That would at least show she noticed and cared.
The indifference hurts.
I go back outside for my bag. I hadn’t been sure what I planned on doing.
The master suite is inviting with a kingsize bed, chairs near the fireplace, a host of female grooming objects scattered on the vanity.
She’s been here for at least a night or two, which means this place came together in a hurry.
I put my duffel on the bed and hear her on the stairs before she appears in the doorway.
“Are you hungry? I can cook.”
“You don’t have to.”
“It’s fine. I don’t have anything else to do.” Some hair spills in her face and I want to push it away. Why do I want to touch her? Why am I tempted to drag her into this bed? There’s nothing stopping me, nobody around to interrupt. We’re husband and wife alone in our house.
“Alright, I can eat.”
She nods past me. “Your side is the left.”
“We’re sharing a bed?”
Her amused shrug pisses me off. “We’re married, right? Or maybe you forgot.”
The first hint that something might be bothering her.
She disappears back downstairs and I give her a few minutes while I explore what she’s done with the place.
It’s not all furnished—she clearly focused on the main rooms—but what she’s done so far is tasteful and understated.
There’s a warmth to it though. She favors bold colors and bright lines.
There’s none of that terrible Millennial beige and earthy brown.
Talin glitters, she glows. I like that a lot about her.
There’s no hiding, even if she wants to.
She serves pasta at the main table and puts a glass of bourbon at my elbow.
I drink it, wondering if there's some ulterior motive to the alcohol, but the food’s incredible.
Silky sauce and bronze-cut noodles. Tallie picks and doesn’t eat much, mostly watching me as I dig into the first decent meal I’ve had since we got married.
“How long do I have to wait before you ask?” I say and take a long sip of my drink. It’s smoky and smooth. I swear, this girl knows instinctively what I like, which is dangerous.
“Ask what?”
“We don’t have to play the game.”
“There are a bunch of questions I should ask you. Like for example, where have you been the last three days?”
“My apartment.”
Her lips tug downwards, but she must’ve known I had my own place. “Or maybe I should ask why you’ve been avoiding me?”
“Personal reasons.”
Her fingers grip a fork as she leans closer. The knuckles turn white. “What were you doing on the night we got married, Brenden?”
“There it is,” I say gently, drinking more, wishing we didn’t have to do this. Dinner was nice to this point.
It felt almost normal, eating in total silence with a beautiful woman who clearly hates me.
“You’re up to something. I want to know what.”
“No, you really don’t.”
“Stop treating me like an idiot. I keep catching you in these awkward situations, snooping around like you’re searching for something. What’s your game?”
She’s right about that and it deeply bothers me. I try not to glance at her mouth or down to the low-cut top she’s wearing. I like when she challenges me, but it also pisses me off.
I’m not used to people finding me in compromising positions.
“Thank you for a lovely meal.” I push my chair back and stand.
“No, don’t you walk away from me.”
“Sorry but that’s exactly what I’m doing.” I tilt my drink back and swallow it down. The burn’s nice and steady in my gut.
This is what I do. When life gets hard, I disappear. Tallie thinks she wants to know what I’ve been up to, but she really, really doesn’t. It’s better for everyone if I keep my distance and don’t drag her down into the hell I’m building for myself.
The stakes are too damn high.
I turn my back to walk away, feeling like hell, but knowing this is for the best.
“I’ll show them the picture I took.” She grates it out like it’s painful and I stop mid-step. “That photo I took of you in the piano. I’ll send it to Arsen.”
“You wouldn’t.” I don’t look back. I swear, if I do, I know I won’t like the look she’s giving me. And I’m afraid that if I stare into her eyes, if I let my attention drift to her mouth, if I let my mind wander to what it feels like to be close to her, I won’t be able to make the hard choices.
“I will and don’t think you can stop me.”
“Tallie—“
“I made copies. Not just the email, but saved to a private, encrypted physical storage device. More than one, actually, since I know you like to poke around where you’re not invited. I don’t care how good your hackers are. You’re not getting it, not unless I want you to.”
That makes my blood go cold. When it was in her email, that was simple enough. Even if she put it on a service like Dropbox, I could still hire someone to make it all disappear.
But a physical device? And multiple for redundancy?
That’s the sort of cleverness that’ll get me fucking killed.
I turn back to the table, struggling to maintain my composure. How the fuck did I let it come this far? When she took that photograph I should have hired someone to handle it immediately. Hell, I should’ve wrestled her to the ground and physically deleted it myself.
Instead, I was soft. I let her have the victory thinking she wouldn’t do a damn thing with it.
I misjudged her.
Big fucking time.
In some ways it’s impressive. I’m not sure most people would think that far ahead. Tallie’s clearly much more than the perfect little crime lord princess she seems. Daughter of privilege, but it didn’t dull her.
No, maybe some of her father’s sharpness rubbed off.
Which makes her fucking dangerous.
“You have no idea what you’re doing right now, Talin.” I speak as calmly and as measured as I can. “This isn’t a game. You don’t want to blackmail me.”
“You’re right, I don’t.” Her face is pale.
Her chin is up. She’s trying her best to sit with a straight back and to project strength, but I see the way her fingers tremble as they nervously rub together.
All these years Tallie’s been living around men like me, hell, around men much worse, but she’s never had to dirty herself.
They’ve kept her clean since she’s worth more that way.
Now though? She’s climbing into the fucking mud, and I bet she doesn't like it.
“Then drop it. What I’m doing isn’t your business. It’s work, that’s all.”
“You’re lying to me. I want to know. We’re married now, Brenden, and whatever you’re doing involves me whether you like it or not.” She flattens her hands on the table in front of her palms up. “Please, we don’t have to be enemies.”
“My allies don’t hold dirt over my head.”
“You’re not giving me much of a choice.”
“There’s always a choice, Talin. You don’t like the alternatives.
” I shove the chair aside. It falls over and clatters to the floor.
Her eyes never leave mine, though her shoulders flinch like she wants to protect herself.
“What the fuck do you want from me? Honestly, what do you want out of this? You want money? You want power? I have nothing to give you. I have nothing left.”
It hurts, admitting this out loud, but we both know it’s true.
I’m not exactly a high-value person in the family anymore.
My father was happy to toss me aside and Arsen only wanted me for the potential value of my thieving skills, assuming he can twist me to his own benefit.
Tallie’s a soft chain around my ankle and nothing else.
But she stays straight and fierce. “I want out.”
The way she says it makes me pause. Some of my anger ebbs. “You want… out? What does that mean?”
“All this. The life. This world. Our sham of a marriage. I want out.”
She snarls it with the conviction of a true believer.
Well, fuck.
This was extremely unexpected. I take a moment to drink her in and realize what I took to be nerves is actually something else—
It’s rage.
Pure and simple anger.
A deep, dark, bitter well of it, flooding up through her, and it’s definitely not all aimed at me.
Hell, I doubt I’m even remotely the cause of whatever she’s got hiding inside.
Which is fascinating.
Tallie comes off a lot like her sister does: pretty, cultured, a creature of delights and comforts. But this side of her is dark and wicked, a hidden strength I hadn’t thought she contained.
Another mistake on my part.
I bend over and pick up the chair. I set it down with a sharp clack and lower myself carefully into the seat. I fold my hands in front of her and meet her at her level.
“How badly do you want it?”
Her jaw twitches. The corner of her eye wrinkles. “All my life.”
“How far will you go?”
“As far as I have to.”
“What about your siblings? Your sister? You’ll have to leave them behind.”
Her nose wrinkles for the briefest moment. “I’ll deal with it.”
“You know what you’re asking, right?”
“I want a way out, Brenden. No more family, no more oversight, no more living in the spotlight of my father’s name.
I want to be my own person for once in my life.
” The desperation spilling off her makes my heart flutter.
I fucking swear, I’ve never seen a woman more beautiful than she is right now.
“I don’t care what you’re doing. I really, really don’t.
I’ll keep your secrets, whatever they are, so long as it ends with my future in my hands. ”
It’s tempting to stretch this out. I could tease her, push her to breaking, see exactly what she’s made of. If I’m careful, I might even get her to beg.
But I don’t want any of that.
Instead, I bask in the glow of her anger and determination, and it warms me in ways I never imagined another person could.
“You help me get what I want… and when it’s done, I’ll help you escape.”
“What do you want?” she asks too quickly.
I shake my head. “You don’t get to know.”
“Are you joking?”
“Not in the slightest. You do what I say. You tell me what I need to know. But you don’t get to ask questions.”
“I’d rather turn you in to Arsen.”
“Go ahead. Turn me in. Get me killed. Then you’ll be the woman who betrayed her husband. Who do you think they’ll marry you off to next after that, huh? You play by my rules and we both win. That’s the deal I’m offering.”
What I don’t say is simple:
I don’t trust her.
Not even remotely.
But if I can get what I want, and she also wins in the end, then we can be reluctant partners.
She looks down at her hands as her fingers wrap into fists.
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
“Fantastic.” I get up for a second time. “There’s a bar called the Elk Room. Show up there tomorrow at five-thirty and find out the bartender’s name. If you can do that, we have a deal.”
“Wait, what the hell?”
“Elk Room. Five-thirty. Bartender’s name.”
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“No, baby, it’s called a test.”
She calls after me, but I walk away smiling to myself, buzzing at the thought of the fun we’re going to have together.