Chapter 17 Cassius
CASSIUS
What the fuck had I just done?
Seriously.
What the fuck had I just done?
I didn’t mean fucking Sarah. That was lovely, and to a certain extent, I could compartmentalize it. I saw, I conquered, I came, and there was a lot more to it than that, but just that alone could be considered a great use of my time.
I meant that I cared for her.
I’d felt guilty, triggered storming out on her after the topic of Virgil had come up. I’d forced myself to say, “now or never.” I’d forced myself to decide between fucking her senseless and fucking her over. I chose the former.
I turned on the inner demon within me, the insatiable, lustful monster that gave every woman it encountered the fuck of her life. But somewhere along the way, at some point between opening my door and climaxing, I saw Sarah as mine.
Not just in the possessive, controlling sense. But in the possessive, caring, genuine sense.
That shook me. I was silent for several minutes post-orgasm, and Sarah seemed inclined to believe it was because of the buildup over weeks—years, in a sense—to this moment. She wasn’t wrong. She just didn’t know from what angle I was seeing things.
What the fuck would happen now? Sex didn’t always cross the Rubicon from lustful to loving, but in this particular case, with all the context and all the build-up to the moment, it now seemed that was exactly what was happening.
It now meant that if this wasn’t meant to last, I wasn’t going to enjoy it.
I was going to hate it.
But I was just as sure that I was going to hate the prospect of putting everything with Virgil aside, loving Sarah, and acting like there was nothing to it.
Fuck!
I rolled back over, finally, and looked at Sarah. Those beautiful green eyes looked at me yearningly, and the smile on her face invited me to surrender to her. It didn’t help that her naked body still taunted me, as if saying there was finally something I could not overcome with my mere will.
“That was… something,” I finally said, to which Sarah just chuckled. She pulled my head in, kissed my forehead, and snuggled against me. Fuck, she took that as a cue of intimacy.
And fuck, I was enjoying it. Liking it, really.
And then it hit me why I was suddenly so scared.
I wasn’t in control of this moment and how I felt about it.
I had relished the feeling of power for so long and controlled so much of my life, whether with money or sheer will, that now, face to face with the reality that I had no control over how I felt and, to a certain extent, what I was doing… I didn’t know how to handle it.
Sex had shattered the barriers we’d had, but more than that, it had broken the illusions I had about control.
I had never really been in control of the direction everything was going.
I’d lied to myself and said that I would make the decision of whether to break her or fuck her—or both—but in reality, my feelings had brought me this whole way.
If they hadn’t… I probably would have broken her.
Slowly, Sarah drifted off into a nap. I was tired, but there was zero chance I was falling asleep.
I had handled financial crises involving the loss of billions of dollars of value more easily than this; shit, I had handled death better than this.
OK, maybe not quite, but it had been a long fucking time since my mind was racing like this.
We’d be here for less than twenty-four more hours. Odds were we’d probably fuck again, and the second time was never as much of a shock to the system as the first. But fuck, there was zero chance I was forgetting this anytime soon.
Nor was there any chance I was not going to be affected by this.
We did indeed fuck one more time, and while it didn’t introduce new fears or shocks to my system, it didn’t mitigate anything.
I barely slept that night, while Sarah slept like a rock.
Of course; she was an artist, used to vulnerability, used to exposing parts of herself to the world, even if through the medium of painting.
When the morning rose, I was experiencing a strange feeling.
I was hiding how I felt. To Sarah, I was the cocky, confident man who knew how to bring her to orgasm with a few simple steps.
I was aware that she could read a little between the lines, that she probably got hints of my conflicting feelings, but I didn’t think she knew just how conflicted I truly was.
If I wasn’t careful, this could end badly—and not just in that Sarah would never talk to me, but that I’d somehow lose confidence in my ability to control it all.
Sure, maybe I never really could. If I could, Virgil would still be alive. But…
I drove us to the private plane, finally eager to have no further responsibilities.
Sarah seemed completely at ease, walking at a casual stroll.
I thought from the way she looked at me she might try to hold my hand; thank goodness she didn’t leap to that quite yet.
I would have taken it, honestly, but it would have heightened the disconnect between how I felt and how I acted.
I really didn’t like this; if I was having that dissonance, I wanted it to be deliberate and of my choice.
But we went onto the plane one after the other. Sarah took a seat first, across from me. I took my seat, let out a gentle sigh, and smirked.
“This is one way to start Thanksgiving,” Sarah said. “I almost don’t want to go back to Phoenix. I mean, I do, I need to see my dad, but this is about as close as you can come to making me change my plans.”
I chortled.
“As long as Dante, Adrian, or Lucas haven’t claimed this property for a time, we can come here whenever.”
I felt my phone buzz. I pulled it out and looked down at it.
It was Dante, telling me that someone had committed an act of vandalism against the Ruby.
Nothing serious; the graffiti on the side of the building had been cleaned before sunrise, making it highly unlikely that any paying customers had noticed.
But it was his question at the end that worried me.
“Should I try again with the Reapers?”
I glanced up at Sarah, then back down at my phone.
This question was becoming thornier by the day; I had wanted them under my grasp simply for reasons of control and power before.
But now, if Sarah was going to be a part of my life…
and if she and the Reapers had, to put it gently, an antagonistic relationship…
Fuck. Things were really coming to a head, not just emotionally but practically.
Why the fuck had I put myself in this spot in the first place? Why couldn’t I have just turned the cold shoulder to Sarah when I first saw “Sasha Carter” on the guest list? Why?
Because what you really want may not be what you really want?
“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked.
I looked up, the smile gone from my face. I sighed. I could hide this from her, keep up this song and dance as long as I could, and eventually crack. Or, with a flight for us to hash things out, I could discuss the truth, hammer out any issues, and go from there.
“We’re trying to figure out if we should bring the Reapers into the fold, help us with some crime stuff.”
The look on Sarah’s face immediately told me I’d made a huge mistake. A massive fucking mistake. She didn’t just look worried. She didn’t just look angry.
She looked furious.
“The Reapers?” she said, seething. “As in, the Black Reapers? The Black fucking Reapers, the ones that drove my father out of town and almost ruined my family’s life?”
I took in a breath. The plane’s engines were roaring to life. A part of me almost wondered if I needed to slow this conversation down; I did not want Sarah to ask off this flight in the middle of a private runway in Wyoming.
“It’s not something we are likely to do,” I said. “It’s something Dante really wants to pull the trigger on. And if we have them under our control—”
“Under your control,” Sarah repeated, the words dripping with venom. “Do you know who the Black Reapers are?”
“Yes, Sarah, I know who the fucking Black Reapers are. I was in Vegas when shit came to a head with the King’s Men.”
I took in a breath. This was not helping anyone, and the last thing I needed to do with Sarah was become the cold, domineering asshole. I mean, I could do it very well, but I thought I’d found something worth being a gentler version of that for.
Maybe I’d jumped the gun. Fuck. I knew I had reason to be worried about this. Fucking stupid!
“I am aware,” I said slowly, adapting the level-headed, neutral businessman tone I knew so well, “of what I am getting myself into. I will not let anyone I am associated with, you included, be tainted by them or touched by them.”
“Are you telling me the whole truth, Cassius? Seems to me you’ve been pursuing the Reapers for a long time. I’m not sure I believe you.”
Oh.
Oh, that was how things were going, was it?
Suddenly, I could not be fucking trusted?
The plane lifted off, and it was a fucking good thing that it did.
I might have stepped off myself and told the pilot to take Sarah home so I’d never have to see her again.
There were few things that truly got under my skin, and having my word questioned was one of them. Especially by someone who knows better.
“You don’t believe me,” I growled. “You want to know the whole truth, Sarah? I want the Black Reapers. I want them under my hand and in my control. But I’m also not a fucking idiot.
I don’t pursue what will never work out.
I’ve gotten the cold shoulder from them for the last four years.
It’s something I’ve entirely outsourced to Dante now, because he’s a harder dumb fuck who thinks it’s worth trying. ”
“You let him keep going.”
“He’s my fucking brother!” I roared. “You question me. I find that disappointing.”
“You hid this from me, Cassius, until now,” Sarah replied. “Forgive me for wondering what else you might have been hiding. Like maybe what your true plans have been for me.”
“Would you believe me if I said they changed?” I said.
Sarah scoffed, but she didn’t say anything.
“I came to you intending to destroy you, Sarah,” I said.
“I know you weren’t responsible for Virgil’s death.
But he doesn’t die without getting in the car with you that night.
I wanted you to feel the pain I felt. And then, wouldn’t you know it, I spent time with you.
I began to see you weren’t the same woman as before.
I began to see that you were a good, thoughtful soul.
But now I see that you are not a trusting soul. ”
Sarah bit her lip and glared into—not at, into—me.
“I fucking knew it,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She sounded like she was on the verge of tears, but nothing came out of her eyes. “You played this whole game to set me up to fall from grace. I fucking knew it. And you waited until we’d fucked to bring down the Reapers part.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but ultimately, I said nothing. There was nothing I could say.
“You wanted to ruin me, Cassius?” she said. “Stop pretending you haven’t. You have.”
There was nothing I could say because nothing I said would matter. The fucking Black Reapers…
We flew in awkward silence, Sarah retreating to the bathroom for frequent long stretches. It gave me plenty of time to confront the truth.
My desire for control and power—not over Sarah, but over a force I could never quell—had in fact given me exactly what I wanted at the start of everything. The breaking of Sarah Carpenter. And it had come just when I realized I’d never really wanted it in the first place.
Perhaps there was some solace in knowing it would never go past one night of deeply passionate sex. I could revert to who I was, put Sarah behind knowing we’d tried twice and failed both times, and move on with life. I could turn my attention to fucking crushing the Morrils once and for all.
But I knew the truth now.
I was rich beyond all measure, powerful beyond all comprehension, and in control of everything except myself and my true desires.
And that meant even when we landed and Sarah undoubtedly bailed, hoping to never see me again, I would struggle to ever forget her.