Chapter 15 I Could Show You #3
“When infiltrating Heart facilities for medical supplies, for food? Yes,” she snapped, annoyance flaring. “The people dying of infection don’t care how I get the antibiotics.”
Silence stretched between them. Callum looked back and forth, then clapped his hands once. “Well, this has been illuminating. But I have places to be, people to threaten, credits to collect, the usual evening activities.”
He moved toward Greyson, pulling him into one of those masculine embraces that involved more back slapping than actual hugging. “Try not to kill each other,” he said, loud enough for her to hear. Then he whispered something against his ear, something she couldn’t quite catch.
Greyson nodded once, his expression unreadable as Shadera’s suspicions piqued.
Callum turned to her, offering a slight bow that somehow managed to be both mocking and respectful. “Well, killer, welcome to the Heart.” He paused at the entryway, glancing back. “You know, Greyson is more than what you see on those screens. Much more.”
Before she could respond, he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him.
Greyson returned to the stove, plating whatever he’d been cooking with the same focus he probably used to clean his weapons. Two plates, arranged with an attention to detail that seemed excessive for food.
Shadera drifted to the window, drawn by the lights below. The Heart sprawled beneath them, glowing like circuitry that spilled over the rings. Beautiful and cold. From this direction, you couldn’t see the execution platform. Couldn’t see the blood that never quite washed clean from the stones.
“The city is almost beautiful from up here,” she said, not really talking to him. “When you can’t see the suffering.”
“Almost.” His voice came from directly behind her, closer than she’d expected. She could see his reflection in the glass, watching her instead of the view. “Beautiful things are often built on ugly foundations.”
She paused, staring at him through the glass, desperately trying not to overanalyze his words. She turned to face him, finding him less than an arm’s length away. “Speaking from experience?”
“No,” he answered quietly, quickly. “There’s nothing beautiful in my world.”
The words hit Shadera with a force she wasn’t prepared for.
It was sad, really, all this luxury, all this wealth and stability, and still he found no joy in it.
Shadera knew better, had seen with her own eyes that beauty could be found in every corner if you looked for it. Even when the world was burning.
He held out one of the plates. “Eat.”
She didn’t argue.
The food was perfect. Of course it was. Everything he did, he seemed to do to perfection. She ate standing by the window, aware of him moving through the space, cleaning up the messes until the kitchen looked as if it had never been touched. It felt domestic, strange.
“I could show you,” he said suddenly.
She looked up from the plate. “What?”
“The Heart. Tomorrow, before the dinner. I can show you what it looks like in the light.”
Suspicion flared immediately. “Why would you do that?”
He met her eyes then from across the low-lit room, the intensity of them cutting through her drunken haze still clouding the edges of her thoughts.
“Because we need to sell this arrangement. You need to look comfortable in my world, like you belong here. And because . . .” He paused, his throat working.
“Because I have people I care about who are in danger if we fail at this.”
The honesty of it caught her off guard. “Callum,” she stated. “It was him in the drone footage with your sister, wasn’t it? I recognized the mask he wore tonight from what your father showed us.”
He didn’t answer, only nodded once.
She thought of Jameson as her eyes turned back to the window, of the drones that had hunted him, of what Maximus might do to him if she stepped wrong.
They were from two very different worlds but both trapped inside the same nightmare.
Both performing for an audience that would destroy everything they cared about if they missed a single line.
Shadera closed her eyes, pulling in a deep breath through her nose and letting it slowly exhale through her lips as she let the situation sink in, truly sink in.
She hadn’t let herself see past the idea of killing him until now, hadn’t let herself accept that she was, in fact, a prisoner here until she could concoct a plan that wouldn’t get the people she loved killed.
She wanted him dead. Needed him dead. But Jameson, the people in the Boundary, they didn’t deserve to die because she couldn’t look past revenge. She wouldn’t let anyone else die on her path to vengeance.
Slowly her eyes peeled open and she strode toward the island, crossing the living space into the soft light of the kitchen. She set her plate down on the counter and turned toward Greyson. Her fingers found the marble edge and she hoisted herself up onto its surface.
She didn’t meet his eyes, but let her gaze fall to the dried blood on her leg where the glass had cut her, to her bare thighs visible from underneath the oversized shirt, to her hands folded in her lap. To the numbers tattooed across her fingers. 9758.
“So,” she started after a few minutes of silence as Greyson leaned against the back of the couch, arms folding over his chest. “You want to kill me.”
Greyson nodded, answering though it wasn’t a question. “Yes.”
“And I’m going to kill you.” His head tilted at her words, a smirk forming as if to say ‘debatable’ as she continued. “But if we kill each other, everyone else dies.”
“That seems to be the predicament.”
Shadera blew out a breath.
“I’ll let you parade me around the Heart and sit at your father’s dinner table. I’ll play the part in public, for now. But the moment I see my way out, the moment I can safely leave here and the opportunity presents itself to kill you—I won’t hesitate to take it.”
She finally dragged her gaze from her hands to find his eyes already on her. They weren’t hard, they weren’t full of hate, but understanding, recognition. Respect almost.
“As long as you know I’ll do the same,” Greyson answered. His right hand slid over his chest, then wrapped around the left side of his neck as he stretched it, his fingers brushing over the cut of his jaw.
Shadera’s eyes followed the movement, watching as his thumb grazed the edge of his bottom lip. Heat burned over her skin, settling at the base of her spine.
“What’s it like?” he asked, snapping her out of her sudden trance.
She shook her head, clearing her throat. “What’s what like?”
“Living in the Boundary?”
She stilled, anger replacing whatever heat was just pumping through her veins. “You want a poverty tour? Poor little heir wants to know how the other half lives?”
“I want to understand—”
“No,” she snapped, cutting him off. “You want absolution. You want me to tell you it’s not that bad, that people manage, that there’s some kind of dignity in the suffering. So you can sleep at night in your silk sheets thinking you’re one of the good ones because you cared to ask.”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s not—”
“It’s exactly that.” She dropped from the counter, the remnants of vodka flaring back to life in her stomach as she grabbed the edge to stabilize herself.
“You want to know what it’s like? It’s watching children fight over scraps.
It’s choosing between medicine and food.
It’s watching your family be shot on billboards for falling in love with someone in the Cardinal.
It’s selling yourself in whatever way keeps you alive one more day. It’s—”
“Why?” The word exploded from him, sudden and fierce enough to make her pull back.
“I’m trying to coexist with you. To find some middle ground where we can survive this arrangement without tearing each other apart.
But you—” He pushed from the back of the couch and moved toward her.
“Every word is a weapon. Every gesture is an attack. Is it physically impossible for you to have a conversation without turning it into an argument?”
“When the conversation is with you? Yes.” She squared her shoulders. “You don’t get to play tourist to my suffering.”
He moved closer now, close enough that her head tilted back as she maintained eye contact.
Warmth flushed through her body—rage, she told herself, not the sudden awareness of how close he’d come, how his eyes had darkened with emotion, how his voice had dropped to a register that seemed to vibrate in her chest.
He took one last step toward her and his hands curled around the counter on either side of her waist, thumbs brushing against the curve of her hips.
“I may not know poverty, but don’t think for a second I do not know pain.” His words were a growl.
She could feel his breath against her face, slipping through her lashes. Her senses flared, hyperaware of every point where the space between them had collapsed.
They stood frozen, bodies touching, the air around them charged.
Greyson’s eyes dropped to her mouth and she realized she was breathing too fast, that her lips had parted without permission.
It was just the vodka. It made her notice things she shouldn’t—the heat radiating from his body, the way his chest rose and fell, the fact that if she tilted her head up just slightly . . .
She wondered what he tasted like. Whether the Executioner’s mouth would be soft or harsh. Whether he’d kiss with the same control and perfection he maintained. Her tongue swept across her lower lip without conscious thought, and she watched his pupils dilate.
The air between them went electric, the energy of it standing every hair on edge. He leaned closer, just a fraction, and even with every instinct screaming in her head, she wanted to feel his hand back around her throat.
He jerked back like he’d been burned, turning away from her so fast she nearly stumbled. His hands gripped the edge of the couch hard enough to turn his knuckles white.