Chapter 12 #3
His jaw is tight. There’s a muscle working in it that wasn’t there before. The hand on my arm is steady, but his knuckles have gone white. He lets go of me and turns to face Kozlov, and the entire temperature of the room drops.
Kozlov has been sitting very still. I watch the recognition flicker through his eyes.
“Grayson Wolfe.” He sounds almost excited. “What an honor. I watch every home game. Have a seat.” It’s like he’s forgotten that Grayson was just trashing his lobby.
“I’ll pay her debt.” Grayson doesn’t sit. He doesn’t move toward the desk. “Whatever the number is.”
Kozlov folds his hands on the desk, looking disappointed. “We’ve already reached an agreement, Mr. Wolfe. Miranda and I have an arrangement.”
“Take it off the table.”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple.” Kozlov tilts his head. “She came to me. That means the offer stands until I choose otherwise.” A small smile. The kind that lives on a man who is used to being the most comfortable person in any room. “I’m sure you understand.”
Grayson steps forward.
He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t do anything dramatic. He leans both hands flat on the desk and looks at Kozlov from a foot away and says, very quietly, “Either you take the money or I’ll kill you.”
A scratching sound starts under his palms.
I hear it before I understand it. A thin, sharp sound like nails dragged across stone, high and wrong in a way that grates straight up the spine.
Kozlov’s eyes drop to Grayson’s hands on the desk and then come back up, and whatever he sees when he looks at Grayson makes him go very still in the way that small animals go still.
The silence is total.
I should be afraid. I just watch Kozlov’s throat move as he swallows.
“The amount,” Grayson says quietly.
Kozlov writes it on a piece of paper, sliding it over to him. His hands are shaking.
Realization hits me. He means it. I move forward and grab Grayson’s wrist. “Stop it! This has nothing to do with you. I don’t need you to pay off my debt.”
He looks down at my hand on his wrist.
I feel it the moment he does. The heat coming off his skin is not normal. It has never been normal, and I have always filed that away without examining it too closely. Right now it moves straight up my arm, but I hold on anyway.
“Miranda.” His voice is very low.
“I mean it. Let it go.”
“Take your hand off me and sit down.”
“No.” I step in front of him, putting myself between him and the desk, which is possibly the least intelligent thing I have done today, and today has had real competition.
“I came here, and I made a deal. It’s done.
You don’t get to come in here and throw your money around and make my decisions for me. ”
He looks at me. His eyes are very bright and very close, and I refuse to look away.
“You weren’t making a decision,” he says. “You were checking out.”
The words land somewhere they shouldn’t.
I release his wrist. “That’s none of your business.”
“It is my business.” Something shifts in his jaw. “It became my business the second you walked out of my house and came here.”
“You told me to leave.”
“I know what I said.” His voice drops further, which I hadn’t thought possible. “Move out of the way.”
I don’t move.
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he drags me over to the couch at the other end of the room and deposits me on it. “Stay here.”
Before I can comprehend what just happened, he takes the paper from the desk, reads the number, and takes his checkbook from his jacket.
He opens it on the desk and writes. The scratch of the pen is the only sound in the room. When he’s done, he tears the check out and drops it in front of Kozlov like something he’s finished with.
“The extra hundred thousand covers your men,” he says coolly.
“They came to her apartment. I assume they haven’t called in.
” He gives Kozlov a meaningful look. “The money is for your loss. The condition attached to it is that you don’t look at her again.
You don’t call her. You don’t send anyone near her.
We don’t exist to you. Do we have an understanding? ”
Kozlov picks up the check. His hand is steady, but the ease is gone from his face entirely.
“We have an understanding,” he says.
Grayson looks at him for one more second. Then he turns and takes my arm and walks me out.
The hallway is marble and silence and a large man sitting against the wall with a split lip who watches us pass without comment. The lobby is exactly as it was when I walked in. The doorman looks at Grayson and then quickly away.
We go out into the gray morning.
“Let go of me.” I pull at my arm. His grip doesn’t shift. “Grayson. I said let go.”
“Get in the car.”
“I’m not getting in your car.”
He opens the passenger door and looks at me, and his face says that this is not a conversation we are having. “Get in the car yourself, or I’ll throw you in.”
He means it. Reluctantly, I get in.
He pulls the car into traffic, and I ask tightly, “Where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere we can talk.” His voice is grim, and for the first time since I woke up today, I feel something. I wish I could call it anger.
It would be so much easier if it were anger.