Samson
The room seems to hold her essence when she leaves. Her scent. Her voice. The heat she left in the air. I still see the subtle bruising on her neck from my hands, my teeth. And around all of it, her pendant. Justice.
Fuck…
I stay where I am for a moment, staring at the door like I expect it to open again.
It doesn’t.
Good.
I don’t want her back in here.
Which is a big-ass fucking lie.
My hand is still half-curled at my side. I remember the line of her wrist, the pull of her body when I dragged her closer, the way she leaned in instead of away.
I force my fingers open. Close them again.
Twice now.
Twice I’ve let her close the distance.
Twice I’ve chosen not to stop it.
That’s not loss of control.
That’s worse.
That’s desire. No, it’s pure lusty want.
And want is a dangerous thing for a man raised the way I was.
I move behind the desk and brace both hands on the edge. The office is too quiet. From here, I can’t hear the soft jazz, the hum of conversation from the club.
I’m a beast in a fine cage.
The memory hits before I can stop it.
I’m ten.
The kitchen at Vexley House gleams with marble floors and white counters.
I’m holding one of my mother’s crystal tumblers. It’s heavy, and it slips out of my hand, hits the tile, and shatters.
The sound cuts through the room.
I freeze.
Don’t breathe. Don’t move. Don’t look at the pieces.
I expect the maid to come. Or my nanny. Maybe even my mother, but when I hear footsteps, I know it’s not any of them.
I know the sound. I know what follows it.
I brace before I even turn.
But he doesn’t reach me first.
She does.
My mother steps between my father and me and settles one hand lightly on my shoulder. Her touch is not force. It’s not warning. It’s simply there. Calm where everything else in the room is about to become something else.
“Look at me, Samson.”
I do.
Her eyes are steady. Green. Beautiful. Loving.
“Did you mean to break it?”
“No.”
“Then don’t act like you did.”
My father stops a few feet away. He towers over both of us.
His expression is probably unreadable to anyone else. But not to me.
My mother doesn’t move aside. “Power,” she says quietly, her gaze still on mine, “means you have a choice. You don’t have to do something just because you can.”
The words don’t make sense yet.
Not really.
But I remember the way she says them.
Like they matter more than the broken glass at our feet.
More than my father standing there, looking down at me with contempt.
I straighten hard, breath lodged too high in my chest.
My father taught me about power. My mother taught me about choice.
I didn’t choose restraint with Delaney.
That’s the problem.
Not that I lost control. That I didn’t want to choose it.
A knock sounds once.
I don’t answer.
The door opens anyway.
Nate steps inside and closes it behind him. He takes one look at me and knows enough. That’s what I hate about him. Not that he sees. That he enjoys it. He always envied my physical power, which is why he loves seeing me battling with myself.
I push away from the desk and move to the sideboard. I pour a bourbon but don’t offer him one.
“She walked into your world,” he says. “That should have ended the matter.”
“It did.”
“No,” he says. “It didn’t.”
I take a swallow and set the glass down harder than necessary. “I’ve told you a dozen times that I’ve handled it.”
He shakes his head. “I wish I could believe you, Sam.”
I step toward him once. “Careful.”
Nate doesn’t flinch. He knows I could knock him into next week. He also knows I won’t. He thinks I have no restraint? He has no idea how much I’m using my restraint with him right now.
“She’s not supposed to matter,” he says.
“She doesn’t.”
He exhales sharply through his nose. “You’re lying.”
I flex my hand at my side.
He notices.
Nate always was better at stillness than I am. Better at standing there with his hands clean while someone else bleeds for the family.
He takes one step closer. “I told you she’s a weakness.”
I clench my teeth.
To hell with restraint.
I bring my fist up and hit his left jaw.
The sound cracks through the office like the glass in my mother’s kitchen.
And fuck, it feels good.
He snaps sideways. He stumbles once into the edge of the desk, flattening his palm on the polished wood to catch himself. A bright line of blood appears at the corner of his mouth.
For one second, neither of us moves.
The beast in me goes very still.
Nate straightens slowly. Touches his lip with the pad of his thumb. Looks at the blood there. Then at me.
I don’t see outrage. I don’t see shock. Just cold comprehension. “That,” he says, “would seem to prove my point.”
I grab the front of his jacket and shove him back against the bookshelves. Hard enough to rattle the glass-front cabinet beside them.
“No,” I say, face close to his. “It proves you should know better.”
Nate’s breathing stays even, but his eyes sharpen. “Then say it.”
“Say what.”
“That I’m wrong.”
“I don’t answer to you.”
“No,” he says. “But you answer to what she does to you.”
I tighten my grip.
“Funny,” he says, “how quickly you become exactly what you were trained to be.”
I release my hold on him. He uses all his strength to stay standing. He smooths his lapel once, like this is a boardroom conversation instead of a fucking brawl.
“You want action,” I say. “Fine. Here it is. She walked in here. She walked out. She got nothing she can use.”
Nathaniel wipes more blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re wrong.”
I don’t speak.
“Because every time you touch her,” he says, “you give her something.”
I look away first. Toward the dark window. Toward my own reflection ghosted over the city skyline. Broad shoulders. Hard mouth. A man my father built for battle.
Nate moves behind me without sound. “Do you know what Father would say?”
“I don’t particularly care.”
He steels his gaze. “He’d say if a thing can move you, it can be used.”
“He’s not here,” I grit out.
“No,” Nathaniel says. “But you carry him everywhere.”
Neither of us speaks for a moment.
Until—
“And Cain learned from watching both of you.”
I turn. That was deliberate. Our brother’s name. Cain was always the quietest presence in any room. He was always looking, never appearing to take sides. A boy who used to stand in the doorway while our father pushed and our mother held back and Nate observed.
I remember Cain at twelve, lanky and pale in the training room doorway, saying nothing while I split another boy’s lip.
Just watching.
The thought leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
“What exactly are you implying?” I ask.
“Only that some people don’t need to touch the blade to know where it will cut.”
I move back toward the desk because if I don’t put something solid between us, I may hit him again.
“She’s asking the wrong questions,” he says.
“How do you know what she’s asking?”
“I know what matters.”
I rub at my forehead. “That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s enough of one.”
I brace my hands on the desk and lean forward. “Then give me the right question.”
Nathaniel hesitates just long enough for me to notice it. Then, “Who was supposed to be there?”
Because that is the question.
The one Delaney is circling. The one I keep stepping around.
Who was supposed to be there?
Not Halstead.
“You’re done here,” I say.
He nods. “For now.” At the door, he pauses. “Try not to confuse craving with connection, Samson.” Then he leaves.
The glass on the sideboard is in my hand before I quite register reaching for it. I hurl it across the room. It shatters against the wall.
For one savage second, the sound helps.
Then it doesn’t. The office falls silent again except for my breathing.
Broken glass. Ruined whiskey.
A child in a gleaming kitchen.
A mother telling me power is choice.
A father teaching me to hit first.
A brother with blood at the corner of his mouth saying weakness like he enjoys it.
And somewhere under all of it, quieter but worse…
My youngest brother. Cain, who learned by watching, observing, all with a chilling look on his face.
I stare at the shattered tumbler as something cold begins to work its way under my skin.
Not memory.
More like recognition.
The one Arthur Vexley built into me with his hands and my mother, Elena, tried to soften with hers.
The one Cain always seemed to understand without ever stepping into the center of it himself.
I stiffen.
Delaney walked into my world today and left with more than she should have.
Not answers.
Not proof.
Something else.
A crack.
And now that I can see it, I can’t stop seeing it.
I didn’t restrain myself with her.
Worse?
I didn’t want to.
That should make the next move obvious.
Cut her off. Shut the door before she steps farther inside.
Instead, all I can think about is the look on her face when she said it.
You didn’t expect him.
She was right.
If she’s right about that, then the rest is coming.
And that, right there, is where this stops being desire and starts becoming danger.