28. Delilah
Delilah
Ihad moved on from Adrian Vale.
That was what I told myself as I drove home from a late night at the office. I hadn’t heard anything from him since the note, which was… strangely disappointing. Like, that was it? There wasn’t going to be any more grand gestures, no more sweeping attempts to win me back?
I guessed not. That meant I had to move on and focus on my new investigative work.
And the one perk of being in a new city, surrounded by new colleagues, and with new sources was that no one knew how to read between my lines.
If I told them I was fine, they had no reference point to believe otherwise.
If they thought I looked pained, they would assume the simplistic explanation I gave them was true.
In a sense, it was true. It just wasn’t the full truth.
But this definitely was the full truth, moving on from Adrian Vale.
It was also true that I was beyond exhausted today, even if the name Adrian Vale had meant nothing to me.
I had spoken with an assassin who had moved from Russia and, on the surface, operated a chain restaurant.
It had been one of the tensest encounters I had ever had, especially since he had said, “I will shoot your fucking brains out if I so much as hear a siren.”
Had Adrian been there, I knew he wouldn’t have let that fly. He might not have done something stupid, but he would have done something strong. Why am I even thinking about this?
I had to admit, objectively, the assassin was a handsome man.
I was not attracted to him—I liked my men powerful, but not so much so that they took lives—but it was easy to see that him saying he could get any woman he laid eyes on was not as much a brag as it would have been on other men.
His presence, too, was chilling; not in the way Adrian’s was, but in a way that said he would absolutely kill if he had to.
It left me wondering what might happen to the woman he laid eyes on that he decided would be his. He swore he had never killed a woman, but, anyway—
I pulled into my apartment complex to a very peculiar sight.
A silver Lamborghini Aventador.
The very car that Adrian had driven me to Aces Up in.
There was… no fucking way, right? Even if Adrian wanted to win me back, I didn’t think he’d drive all the way up from Vegas to here. He valued his time too much. The King of Diamonds would never lower himself to driving a long road trip for any one woman.
The lights on the car flashed suddenly.
And out of the shadows, a familiar figure moved.
In just about any other circumstances, fear would have washed over me. Not even a journalistic instinct to observe and learn would have kept me rooted to my feet. The sight of any man in the dark that I was not expecting was cause for alarm, most especially with my new role.
But this wasn’t any other circumstance, was it?
“Delilah Reyes,” the familiar voice said. “Hello. Did you miss me?”
He stepped into the light.
And Adrian Vale was dressed surprisingly casually.
Oh, he still looked good. His white polo shirt fit snug to his body, and his dark jeans wrapped well around his legs. I could still imagine how good they made his ass look.
Adrian Vale was understated, but even an understated Adrian looked better than any man I knew.
But if his dress was understated, his facial expression was whatever was below that.
His eyes looked haggard, worn, as if they needed sleep yet could do anything but.
He wore a smile, but it looked frayed; not in a frightening way, just in the way that a man who had fought to his last ounce of strength did.
“I… did you drive here?”
It was not the first response that Adrian deserved, but I was so shocked to see his car the entire length of the state from home that I couldn’t help but blurt it out. Thankfully, Adrian took the response in stride, chuckled, and drew in a long breath.
“No, no, I did not,” he said. “I suppose the perk of having money is if you want something accomplished, you can get it done. I flew here and arranged to have my car brought.”
I nodded and waited for whatever came next.
Admittedly, a large part of me was wondering if that charming King of Diamonds might appear.
I was kind of happy to see him, but as the shock of his presence subsided, the alert side of me reared its loud mouth.
Do not trust appearances. Be wary of manipulation.
“Now then, Delilah, before I continue,” he said, clearing his throat, “I want you to know that everything I say is the truth and only the truth itself. There is no hidden agenda beyond what I say, and if you think I have not said everything, just have patience. I will. But I am only going to do this if you will hear me out. If your career has taken full priority, I will respect that. If you have found someone else… so will I.”
His eyes flared at that last line, but he kept his voice steady.
“So, with that said, will you hear me out?”
He stepped forward and offered his hand, as if making a handshake. Nothing but the truth and only the truth itself? And if you think I have not said everything, just have patience. If I shook his hand, in other words, I would get everything.
I took it. It was electric, almost unbearably so.
All the sensations that had come back to me at Adrian’s, at Aces Up, even in our office confrontation came roaring to the forefront of my mind, and it became nearly impossible not to melt before him.
I found the facade of my composure, but his touch was going to complicate things.
I withdrew my hand at what felt like a steady pace, but who the hell knew what was actually normal right now.
“Something I have come to realize with the delivery of that letter was that my instincts have always depended on being the King of Diamonds,” he said.
“Power. Money. Love. They all derived from a sense of creating pressure, of creating heat to make the diamond in the rough I wanted. Even after you told me to walk away, even when you in fact walked away to this city, I still ended up deferring to it. What does that mean?”
I could see Adrian’s face in full, but the darkness shrouded some of the nuances that I wish I could have picked up. I only caught glimpses of his eyes, for example, and though every time I saw them they seemed sincere, I couldn’t quite get the full picture.
Which meant I was reliant on his speech to get everything.
And so far…
“It means that I must accept that side of me will always be there,” Adrian said.
“It would be foolish to fight my dark side, just as it would be foolish for you to fight your job or your passion for knowledge. Maybe my darkness comes from Virgil. Maybe it comes from my older brother. Maybe it comes from some other combination of factors. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck. But.”
He took a step forward. Not quite close enough to pull me in yet for a passionate kiss, but close enough he could have comfortably put his hands on my shoulders.
“I must also accept the lighter side of me, the good in me that you helped me find,” he said, widening my eyes.
“You stripped me bare and showed me that the most defining part of me was also a significant weakness when it came to romance. This car? That note? The casinos? They might have been outcomes of prior successes, but romance isn’t something you can buy or manipulate your way toward.
If you do, it’s not romance. Only through honesty and vulnerability, something I could never show growing the business or handling the Morrils, could I do that.
Only by stripping away everything on the exterior and showing you nothing but who I am at the core could something like this work.
This was challenging for me to learn, but I’m doing the work. ”
He took another step forward. Now he was close enough to lean and kiss. Not once did I take a step back.
Not in the face of this level of honesty.
“If you are looking for a promise that I will be perfect, Delilah, tell me to fuck off and I’ll go right back to Vegas tonight,” he said.
“If you are looking for a promise to throw away the King of Diamonds, to discard my empire, to become a pauper with you in a small apartment, I cannot do that. Not because I value money over you or anything stupid like that. But because just as I need you to see that I do have good in me, I must not suppress the dark too much. I have to let it out in safe environments. With people I care about.”
In bed. When our vulnerability and fully exposed selves aren’t emotional, but physical. The thought in just about any other context would have been incredibly arousing. This was more of a creep than an immediate flush of eroticism, but it had planted the seed.
“But if you are looking for a promise that I will try to remember who I am with you and who I am with the world, if you are looking for a promise that I will not be the King of Diamonds with you, but only Adrian Vale, then that? That, I can and I will promise. So… make your choice, Delilah.”
My choice?
My initial reaction was to melt back into his touch.
The honesty was something that Adrian could not have realized even two weeks ago, because it was a level of self-awareness he hadn’t possessed before.
True, the more controlling, hungry side of me might have wanted Adrian to forever drop the King of Diamonds facade, but he was right.
Trying to get rid of it would only make it rear its ugly head later.
For him to realize this suggested a level of maturation beyond anything he’d shown before, even in the letter.
But…
Can he truly change? Even if he realizes what he must do? Is this yet another manipulation?
I had to ask. It was the only way.
“How do I know you will live up to your promise?” I asked. “How do I know this isn’t yet another play? Your words are good, but…”
“You don’t know,” Adrian admitted. “And that’s going to be a challenge for you, Delilah.
You’ve always known. Even when you don’t know, you can read between the lines.
People refuse to comment, they give glib answers…
you have something. But you and I both know only time and genuine commitment can show this is another play. You have to take the leap.”
I gulped as the truth of that statement flooded me. How could I have been so blind as to think only Adrian would have to make a giant leap? I, too, would have to defy journalistic core tenets and accept the unknown.
Strange, though. As much as that terrified me, realizing Adrian and I were in this together made me feel strangely more secure. Like we could both be open about it, and as a result grow through the struggle.
“I want to say that I can take the challenge, Adrian,” I said, my mind and my voice operating in parallel but not quite on the exact same topic. “But to risk my heart again… to put myself up to a situation where one of us could get ruined by the other’s weakness…”
“Is that not the case for everyone?” Adrian said. “Is that not the case for Sarah and Cassius? For Bridget’s sister and her biker husband? Of course it’s scary. But the payoff is beyond priceless; it doesn’t even fall in the category of being slapped with a price.”
“I know, but—”
Adrian raised a hand.
“You don’t know, Delilah,” he said. “I don’t know.
None of us knows how this will go. It’s a leap of faith for two people who don’t believe in making decisions off faith, only on control.
I have applied only the heat that is part of this process.
I have said all I can. So, I will ask my last question, and however you answer this will decide if I stay or go. ”
He took one last step. We were now so close, even though we weren’t touching, I felt like I could feel his presence. I had to look up at him, not just slightly raise my eye level. Every part of my body trembled; I prayed it was not obvious, even in the darkness.
“Do you trust me, Delilah Reyes?”
I looked into his eyes. They were as fiery as ever, but also more sincere than ever.
My mind felt like a frantic roller coaster, going down one path, up another, corkscrewing around, never able to feel settled.
Memories of intimacy clashed with memories of fights, and memories of arguments clashed with memories of kissing.
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Adrian’s gaze remained unwavering.
And then I found the words I was looking for.
I found the path I would take.