27. Adrian
Adrian
Every time anger threatened to bubble to the surface, I had to find a way to channel it into something appropriate.
Anger that Delilah had not responded to my note.
Anger that I had fucked up somehow.
Anger that this might truly mean the end of Delilah, having to move on to something else, and knowing it would never be as good.
Cassius had had it fucking easy. His prior love with Sarah had meant that even after their fight, they knew what they were capable of reaching. Delilah and I had no such history to fall back on. If we failed, that was the definition of our courtship.
But I would not be a pussy who got consumed by heartache.
I threw myself at times into working out, at times into my work—the legal, morally unambiguous parts of my work—and at times even into reflecting on why I was this way.
The temptation to fuck up the Morrils for what they were doing was strong, but the minute I did that, I would undo so much of what I had worked toward.
And to be fucking frank, Lucas and Dante were far better equipped to handle that than I was.
When the work, exercise, and reflection subsided, though, questions peppered my mind.
What exactly had not worked out with the note?
Some of the wording might have been rough around the edges, sure, but that was kind of the point.
I was not a gentleman, not in the way some envisioned men in suits and ties to be.
I was protective, assertive in that protection, and controlling.
Controlling, that was, of Delilah’s safety, freedom, and well-being. It might have been a paradox to some—maybe even to Delilah herself—but it didn’t seem that way to me.
Maybe there was something from Delilah’s perspective that I was missing. Or maybe she had just truly moved on, and I needed to get the hint. Only one problem with that.
I wasn’t very good at taking hints.
So what the fuck was I doing wrong? Maybe the King of Diamonds needed to emerge. Maybe…
Do not mistake being an asshole and being a king for the same thing.
And do not insist on having it all—because you will not.
You will either control everything and no one, you will think you control everyone but actually nothing, or you can accept you can control yourself, a lot of things, and no one.
It’s the last one that you want, no matter what you think.
Fucking Cassius.
My phone rang, providing a merciful relief from the bouncing thoughts in my head. It was Lucas.
“Hey brother,” I said. “What’s the word?”
“Do you know about the connection between the Morrils and the rising crime in Reno?”
What does that have to do with anything?
“No, I don’t. Should I?”
“It’s something we might be able to use against them. We’ve been hearing things that your former love is unearthing on the ground over there.”
“Delilah?”
Ah, fuck. Well, if I was expecting relief from the bouncing thoughts in my head, it seemed like I was going to get the exact opposite here.
“Yeah. She’s been locked into her new role in Reno.
All we hear from those we know up there is that she’s asking questions, digging up dirt, and learning things that we didn’t even know ourselves.
I know we’ve talked about keeping our focus on Vegas, but if the Morrils are willing to get their hands dirty here, it’s far more likely we need to pay attention, even if we don’t get our hands involved, in Reno. ”
Lucas kept talking, but his words never quite reached my ears. Without even realizing it, he had told me all I needed to know about my note.
Delilah had either not gotten it and didn’t care, because she was so focused on her work.
Or, quite possibly worse, she had gotten it, did not care, and continued to focus on her work.
There was something indescribably brutal in the sheer simplicity of this finality.
The news had not been delivered with warning, anger, or fury.
I suppose Lucas was trying to warn me to some extent about the Morrils, but honestly, who gave a fuck?
If we really wanted to, we’d find a way to have all of them dead by the end of spring.
No, the lack of any emotion behind it made it clear.
My grand gesture, deliberately understated to avoid seeming like the King of Diamonds had driven this home, had failed. I had gone in the exact opposite direction of my usual persona, and still it had failed.
“… and I’ll talk to Dante about next steps. That sounds good?”
“Yeah, sure, sure,” I said, grateful to have caught just enough to make it sound like I’d heard enough. Lucas hung up shortly after, leaving me to ponder what the fuck had happened.
So if not the King of Diamonds persona… if not this letter…
then what? It seemed like there was something I was overlooking, some part of Delilah that I had failed to appreciate both before and with this letter, that I could not quite grasp.
A more rational person might have said this was the sign to move on, that the last attempt to win her back had failed and it was time to find someone else.
Fuck.
That.
I would not quit this. If this spoke to my refusal to give up control, call it a stubbornness that took on more positive outcomes.
If this spoke of my being a fool, well, sometimes risks looked like idiotic mistakes until they paid off.
It was how we ran our business, it was how Cassius had gotten Sarah, and it was how I would get Delilah back.
But… how the fuck would I do that?
I couldn’t do it in my penthouse or at Ruby.
But a stroke of an idea came to mind for where I might just get the clarity I needed to move forward.
About an hour later, after speeding through north Vegas at probably unsafe speeds, I tossed my keys to the valet at Aces Up, demanded a key to the top floor penthouse, and stepped into the room where I had come almost literally inches from fucking Delilah for the first time.
To be honest, walking in here, I was at first more pissed off than anything else. I had been a bit conniving, a bit ruthless, even a bit manipulative to get Delilah to this spot. And what had happened? I’d almost fucked her.
Almost.
Fucked. Not taken for good.
That… that was the heart of this, wasn’t it?
I hated Cassius not because I thought he’d gone soft, but because he had what I had always wanted.
I saw Delilah as a woman to control not because I wanted the carnal thrill of fucking her, but because she was one of the few women that I actually could see spending the rest of my life with.
I brushed off Lucas and Dante not because I was superior to them, but because I was drifting to a lifestyle that was unlike theirs.
And most of all, I wanted power not so much because I needed it, but because I feared what would happen if I let go.
“You protected your control. Your power. Your wealth. Your name. Not us.”
Delilah’s words echoed in my mind, an inescapable memory of an argument that could have burned me to a crisp. But it also brought me back to just before that fight, the night before when everything had gone so right.
“I no longer wish to control you, Delilah. I just wish to be with you. If that means you get Adrian Vale and not the King of Diamonds, whether that be in bed or on a plane or at dinner, then so be it.
“Now, this is the part where I give you a choice…if even that offer concerns you, or if you have too many doubts, then walk away. I have shown you more of myself than I have to anyone, perhaps even my brothers. I can do nothing more but to offer a progression. The choice, Delilah, is now yours. What will it be?”
As those words reverberated in my mind, I had to wonder—how had that note come across?
From afar, detached, with powerful words but without me having to put myself on the line.
I could have hired someone to write the letter.
I could have even asked an AI program to write it. I hadn’t, but I could have.
My note had still been about having some measure of control, orchestrating a response on my terms, and subtly manipulating her emotions.
If I wanted Delilah Reyes once and for all, I had to go there—there being Reno.
But to leave my brothers behind for a spell? Especially when, if Lucas and Dante were to be believed, things were escalating more and more by the day?
“The Morrils came in? So what? You’re always going to have enemies when you have the money you have. You could have given up the lust for power and image. You could have, as you said, committed to fulfilling your real debt and being vulnerable, but a threat appeared, and what did you do?”
“Last time, Delilah, I chose to play a game that always meant losing you,” I said out loud to no one. I was alone; not even housekeeping was up here right now. “This time…”
I had to do things on her terms. I had to meet her where she was. I had to do it without any strings attached, without any opportunity to misinterpret what I was doing as manipulative or image conscious.
The King of Diamonds wasn’t a part of this conversation; hell, even Adrian Vale, the man I wanted Delilah to see, couldn’t be a part of this.
Only my rawest self could be there, and I had to accept whatever happened.
No note; no flashy car; no penthouse. If Delilah was living in a studio apartment in the worst part of Reno, eating takeout pizza every night, I had to fucking meet her there.
It was the only way to make it work.
That, and doing whatever it took to stop playing the fucking game that seemed so fun, so captivating, and yet was truly so destructive to everything and everyone I loved.
Minutes later, I was back in my car, speeding to the private plane bay of Harry Reid International Airport. I didn’t play any music while I drove, and I didn’t make any calls along the way. It was one of the quietest, most focused drives I had ever made.
This was giving up my time, my focus, and my gravitas to prove to Delilah that I meant to have her back.
If it didn’t work, it would be a miserable experience, a waste of a private flight to and from Reno.
There was, frankly, a very good chance that was bound to happen.
It felt entirely unnatural to be going without a gift, without my diamond cufflinks, without anything to give her other than myself.
I even promised myself that unless she asked for it, I would not offer her the private plane.
Not because I didn’t want her a mile high.
But because I had to let her choose if she wanted us to be forever.