39. Caden
Caden
Pain throbbed through my temple.
Jesus-fucking-Christ. How much did I have to drink?
“Cade?”
Opening my eyes to slits, I glared at my cousin.
“I really need to change the code to the lift,” I grumbled, debating whether punching him would cause any more pain to radiate through my head.
Sebastian sat beside me, his usual frown in place while his wife hovered in the background. “The doc’s given you the all clear.”
“Doc?” Groaning, I sat up. My body felt like it had gone one-on-one with a truck and lost. Dragging a hand down my face, I pulled it back to see my palm smeared with black.
“What the fuck happened?”
“It’s activated charcoal,” Arabella said calmly, stepping forward to take Sebastian’s place on the edge of the bed. “It helps absorb any GHB still in your stomach.”
My head snapped towards her, eyes narrowing into slits. “Did you just say G?”
Sebastian crossed his arms, watching me carefully. “Your wine was drugged. How much do you remember?”
My mind was sluggish, but I remembered. “I was on that fucking date with Vivienne Blackwater.” The words tasted like ash.
“Did you leave the table at any point?” he asked.
Shit.
“Yeah.” I’d been with Aeris … long enough for Vivienne to spike my drink. “Where did you find me?”
Sebastian and Ara shared a look.
I’d never thought a man like me could be fucking spiked, a mistake I wouldn’t make again.
“Bas,” I growled. “Where. Did. You. Find. Me?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “In a hotel room, pretty much naked and unconscious.”
White-hot rage exploded through me, burning away the fog in my head. I swung my legs off the bed, ignoring the way the room spun. My gaze caught my reflection in the mirror across the room, my chest bare and streaked with black vomit from the charcoal they’d clearly forced down me.
The humiliation was fucking searing.
I was going to rip Vivienne’s spine out through her throat.
“Where’s Lang?” I stood slowly, fury coiling tight in my muscles.
“He’s with Aeris in the other room.”
My gaze snapped to his, a strange, vicious panic slicing straight through the rage. “Why is he with Aeris?”
Sebastian watched me carefully. “She’s the one who called us.”
“He hurt her?”
“You’ll have to ask him that.” Sebastian studied me carefully. “But her life is forfeit after last night.”
“You don’t touch her.” My jaw tightened as I said it.
“She needs to be taken out,” he replied evenly. “We’re close enough to the endgame that she’s becoming more of a liability than an asset.”
“Don’t test me, Bas,” I warned. “No one fucking touches her but me.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked dryly. “Keep her around like some dangerous little pet?”
“Isn’t that exactly what you did with Ara?”
“I’m right here,” Arabella said dryly.
“Don’t bring my wife into this,” Sebastian growled, though there was more amusement than anger behind it. “Ara was never an assassin blackmailing us.”
“No one touches her,” I said, leaving no room for argument.
Sebastian raised a judging brow, the prick. “Fine,” he said after a beat. “But if she puts anyone here at risk, I won’t hesitate to fucking destroy her. Understand me?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t tell him Aeris had somehow buried her nails so deep under my skin it was becoming an addiction.
An obsession with the very woman sent to destroy me.
The women before Aeris had been nothing more than willing bodies, chosen for a need and discarded once I’d grown bored. Most had wanted the fantasy of taming something cruel for a night, to believe they’d seen something soft beneath the monster.
They never did.
But Aeris … Aeris fought me with fire. She never tried to soothe the violence in me, to soften or melt the monster. She met me head-on, clashing with me in twisted games that would always end with her staring up at me with pure, burning defiance in her eyes.
And maybe that was the problem.
She made me feel things I shouldn’t: possessiveness, hunger, the constant, gnawing need to keep her close enough that nothing else could touch her.
It was dangerous, because I no longer knew whether I wanted to destroy her … or consume her whole.
Aeris was asleep, arms bound tightly behind her back with her body slumped forward in the chair like a broken doll. Her hair had fallen over her face, and I clenched my fist at my side to keep from reaching out and brushing them back.
“She say anything?” I asked Langdon.
He shook his head, attention locked on her like a cat watching a mouse it wasn’t allowed to kill. When his gaze finally flicked to mine, I saw raw panic in it.
“I’m fine,” I said, grabbing the back of his neck and pressing our foreheads together so he could see the steadiness in my eyes. Only when the wildness in his expression eased did I let go. “You touch her?”
Langdon hesitated, then shook his head. “No,” he signed, fingers quick. “We thought you’d want to deal with her yourself.”
I glanced back at Aeris. The sight of her like this, helpless and exposed, sent a violent storm ripping through me. Not just rage at what she might have done, but because she looked so fucking vulnerable it made me want to destroy whoever had put her in this position … even if that person was me.
“Leave us.”
Langdon didn’t argue. He pressed a cold knife into my palm then slipped out, the heavy door clicking shut behind him.
The sound jolted Aeris awake. She blinked slowly, disoriented, until her gaze lifted and found mine. Her eyes widened at the sight of the black mask, but she recovered quickly, lifting her chin.
“You’re okay?” she asked, the concern in her voice sounding almost genuine.
“I am. No thanks to you.”
Apparently, I’d been lucky. Combined with the wine, Vivienne had slipped me enough of the drug to kill a smaller man.
If Aeris hadn’t called Sebastian when she did, I probably would’ve stopped breathing before anyone realised something was wrong.
According to the doctor, Sebastian’s emergency treatment had been the only thing keeping my organs functioning long enough for the poison to work its way out of my system.
“I’m the one that called for help.”
Crouching in front of her, I slowly pressed the flat of the blade under her chin, tilting her face up to meet mine.
“You’re going to tell me exactly what happened last night,” I murmured, tracing the blade lightly along the delicate line of her jaw.
“And if I even suspect you’re lying to me …
I’ll make sure you never get the chance to betray me again. ”
Her breath hitched, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, she held my gaze, unafraid.
“She was never supposed to hurt you,” she whispered.
“So you knew what she’d planned?”
“Vivienne thought you’d be more … responsive if she slept with you. She wanted an aphrodisiac.” Aeris swallowed, the movement making the knife glide against her skin. “I gave her natural supplements. Nothing else, I swear.”
My grip on the hilt tightened.
“I didn’t know she’d bought something. Otherwise—”
“Otherwise what? You’d have warned me?”
There was a stubborn clench of her jaw, but I saw the raw pain flickering beneath it. “I didn’t know.”
I dragged the flat of the knife slowly down the side of her throat, right over where I’d already cut her. “You expect me to believe that?”
“I’d never …” Her voice faltered, breath catching hard enough that she had to steady herself before continuing. “I’d never have agreed if I thought she’d do something like that. The supplements were supposed to make you aroused, that’s all.”
She swallowed hard.
“It was always supposed to be your choice whether you touched her.”
It hit me like a blade between the ribs. I remembered the conversation I’d overheard between her and her father. The way her voice had gone flat as she spoke about the rape.
A primeval, murderous rage coiled tight around my lungs, squeezing until I could barely breathe. It made me want to hunt down every person who had ever laid a hand on her, make them suffer until they begged for the mercy she’d never been given.
She must’ve seen the fury on my face, thinking it was aimed at her.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” she whispered.
I tilted my head slightly, studying her like I could tear the truth out of her by force alone. “Which side are you really on, Aeris?”
“Mine,” she replied instantly, fire flashing in her eyes despite the ropes biting into her wrists and my steel pressed to her throat. “I’m on my side.”
Her chest rose sharply with the force of her breath.
“I’ve put myself in danger by giving you everything I have.
I told you about Selene’s plans, her weaknesses, the offshore accounts …
everything. I’m helping you set the trap so you can destroy her from the inside out.
I’ve given you what you need to protect yourself, to protect Sebastian and Langdon.
” Her voice cracked slightly, the words seeming to tear out of her.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m not still her puppet. She holds the leash on my family.”
Her eyes locked onto mine, fierce despite the trepidation flickering beneath it.
“One wrong move … and they pay for it.”
Silence stretched between us as I searched her face, looking for the lie I was certain I’d find, but all I found was raw fear, determination, and exhaustion.
Slowly, I lowered the knife. “How far did she get?” I asked.
Aeris stiffened. “Caden …”
“Answer the fucking question.”
“She didn’t.” Her lips pressed together briefly, but the relief flickering across her face was genuine. “She gave you too much. You passed out before she could do anything, then she panicked and called me.”
“Why did you call for help?”
Aeris let out a shaky, bitter laugh. “What do you want me to say?”
Her gaze lifted to mine again, glassy with emotion she was trying hard not to show.
“I was terrified. You were lying there unconscious … completely defenceless, and I—” She broke off, swallowing hard. “I called the only person I knew wouldn’t hurt you.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
“Even though they might have killed you for it?”
She held my gaze without flinching, silence my only answer.