31. Jamison #2
She kept talking, softer now, as if each word had to be chosen from somewhere tender. “I know a lot about the man everyone sees. I don’t know what you do alone. What makes you calm down. What you liked before everything became work.”
“I fight,” I said eventually.
Her brows drew together. “For work?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes because it calms me.”
“That sounds…”
“Violent?”
“I was going to say lonely.”
I looked away.
She was too good at that. Walking around the obvious blood on the floor to touch whatever sat underneath.
“It’s simple,” I said. “A fight has rules even when men pretend it doesn’t. Body moves, body answers. No council language, or family history. Pain is honest.”
Her eyes stayed on my face. “Do you get hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Badly?”
“Rarely.”
Her mouth tightened.
I slid my hand from her knee to her shin under the water. “Do not make that face. I’ve survived worse than fists.”
“That is not comforting.” The corner of her mouth lifted. “What else?”
I took another drink and leaned back on one hand. “I drive.”
“You drive?”
“When I can’t drink.”
She looked genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know you liked cars.”
“I own garages full of them.”
“Garages?” Her eyes widened. “Plural?”
“Yes.”
“How many cars do you have?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you not know?”
“Because I own garages full of them.”
She laughed, and I found myself watching her mouth again. “Why cars?”
“My father restored them.”
That changed the room more than I expected.
Her expression gentled. She did not pounce on the tenderness, which I appreciated. She only rested her cheek on her folded arms and waited.
“He built collections for each of us,” I said.
“Marcel got the older black models. Heavy. Formal. Cars that look as if they should arrive at funerals and take over the will reading. Harrison got the fast pretty ones. Expensive, sharp, built to offend speed limits and women’s fathers.
Mine were… mixed. Muscle cars. Old European sedans.
A few prototypes. Things he said needed discipline. ”
The memory sat in my chest.
“Did you work on them with him?”
“Marcel did. He had patience for taking engines apart and putting them back together. Harrison pretended to help until he got bored and charmed mechanics into doing his share. I watched sometimes. Learned enough to understand value. Never had the patience.”
“But you kept them.”
“Yes.”
“Do you drive them when you miss him?”
I looked at her.
She held my gaze, quiet and steady, and again I had the unpleasant feeling of being seen in places where my own hands could barely reach.
“Sometimes,” I said.
That answer seemed to matter to her. She gave a small nod, as if I had handed her something fragile and she would carry it carefully.
I cleared my throat. “I smoke. Drink. Fight. Drive. Play cards.”
She sighed. “I’m bad with gambling.”
“You own pieces of Harlan’s casinos by marriage. You can’t enter my life unable to play.”
Her nose wrinkled. “I don’t like taking someone’s money. What if they need it?”
I stared at her.
She stared back, sincere as sunlight.
“That is the worst gambling philosophy I have ever heard.”
“What if they have children?”
“Then they should make better decisions before sitting at my table.”
“Jamison.”
“No. I’m still teaching you baby.”
“You can teach me without making me cruel.”
I lifted the cigarette to my mouth to buy time, then remembered she was naked beneath bubbles and watching me as if she wanted the parts of me no one had asked for properly.
“What do you do?” I asked, partly because I wanted the focus off me and partly because I wanted the answer.
“When I’m alone?”
“Yes.”
She thought about it. “I dance, even when I’m meant to rest. I read old gallery catalogues. I watch films I’ve seen too many times. I collect stationary, never use most of them. I make playlists for moods I’m too embarrassed to admit I have.”
She looked pleased by the admission and tried to hide it. Failed. I was learning all her failures and becoming fond of every one.
She tilted her head. “Where do you live in Harlan?”
“I have a lot of places.”
“I’m asking where you go when the work stops. Where is home?”
Home.
A dangerous word from a woman in bathwater with her face tipped toward mine and my ring still absent from her finger.
“Old side of Harlan,” I said. “Estate near the ridge. Large grounds. High walls. Close enough to the city, far enough from people.”
“Do you live there alone?”
“Yes.”
She went quiet.
The bathwater shifted around her shoulders as she drew one knee slightly closer to her chest beneath the bubbles. The bubbles thinned, sliding over her and I had to force my eyes to stay on her face.
Her fingers traced a small circle along the marble edge.
“Are you seeing anyone?”
My body stilled with the glass halfway to my mouth.
Sienna saw the reaction and lowered her gaze immediately, as if she had stepped on a wire and expected the room to explode. “I mean now,” she added quickly. “Not before. Not… years ago. I don’t have any right to ask about that.”
“You have every right to ask.”
Her eyes lifted, cautious.
I set the whiskey down beside the ashtray. “No, baby. I’m seeing no one.”
“I always assumed you were.”
My jaw flexed. “Why?”
“Because you were always at the clubs.” She looked down again, and her hair slipped loose from the knot, a dark strand clinging to her cheek.
“People talked. I heard things,about private floors. The women. The rooms no one spoke about properly. And you were never… with me. Not really. So it made sense.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“It did to me.” She smiled faintly, too understanding, which made it worse. “I thought maybe you had someone at the estate. Or in one of the apartments. Maybe someone who knew not to ask too many questions. Someone who suited you.”
“Sienna.”
“I asked about your house once,” she said, voice quiet. “Do you remember?”
I remembered far too much now.
A winter event. She had stood beside me near the bar and asked what my house was like, whether the old side of Harlan had gardens in winter. I had been on my phone, angry about a dock issue and angry at her for wanting a piece of me I had given no one.
I had told her she wouldn’t like it.
Then I had walked away.
“Yes,” I said.
“You looked at me as if I’d asked to move into a room I had no business seeing.
” Her fingers rubbed lightly over the token ring, turning it without realizing.
“So I stopped wondering where you slept and started wondering who knew the answer. I thought someone else had private claim. I used to think about it from your side too, which is probably stupid.”
“Tell me.”
She breathed in slowly. “If you had someone you actually wanted behind closed doors, and then you had to spend public events with me, I understood why you hated it, and needed whiskey. Why I felt so…” She paused, searching for a kinder word than the truth. “Inconvenient.”
The word hit wrong.
Ugly.
Because she had spent years building empathy for a version of me who went home to another woman after leaving her standing beneath chandeliers with my name around her throat.
I reached into the bath and touched the side of her knee beneath the water.
She startled, then leaned toward the touch, even with that fear still in her eyes. Her body trusted me faster than her memories did.
“You were never inconvenient.”
Her mouth curved sadly. “Jamison.”
“No.”
I moved my hand slowly up from her knee to her thigh beneath the water, keeping the touch firm enough to ground her, gentle enough that she could move away. Her lashes flickered, and her body shifted closer to the edge of the bath without any instruction from me.
“I did have women before you,” I said. “I won’t pretend otherwise. I was deep in it. The clubs, the rooms, the whole structure. Dominance suited me. It made sense, rules, consent, and limits. Negotiated touch. Clear expectations. No guessing.”
She swallowed. “Subs?”
“Yes.”
“Dynasty women?”
“Some.”
Her face changed.
Pain first. Then humiliation. Then that horrible little attempt at dignity that meant she was about to turn the knife inward so I wouldn’t have to feel guilty holding it.
“Have I sat across from any of them?”
I said nothing.
Her eyes filled.
“That means yes.”
“It means names won’t help you.”
“They matter if I know them.”
“They were before the announcement.”
“But I might have been kind to them.” Her voice shook now, even as she tried to control it.
“I might have sat across from a woman who knew how you sounded in those rooms while I was trying to get through dinner with you. I might have smiled at someone who had a standard appointment with you while you looked at me as if you couldn’t stand breathing the same air. ”
“That didn’t happen.”
Her eyes flashed. “You just said—”
“Listen to me. Before the engagement was announced, yes, there were women. After? No one.”
She stared at me, fighting the truth because the lie had lived longer in her head.
“No one,” I repeated. “Not once. No club arrangements, and secret girlfriend in my bed. The day our engagement became public, that part of my life closed.”
“Because of the contract?”
“Because Crows don’t cheat.” I let my hand stay on her thigh, thumb moving slowly through warm water. “We’re many things. Faithful is one of them. Once a woman is placed under our name, no one else touches what belongs to her. Body, bed, house, private rooms. Closed.”
She looked as if she wanted to believe me and hated how badly she wanted it.
“But you didn’t want me.”
Her breathing had started to sharpen. Tiny, quick pulls of air. She was looking past me now, into some room from years ago, seeing women and old rumors lining up until they became proof.
No.
I caught her face between both hands.
“Look at me, baby.”
Her eyes found mine.
“Stay here.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re halfway in some ballroom where you think I humiliated you in front of women I was fucking. That room is dead. Come back to me.”
Her lips trembled.
“Breathe.”
She tried.
“Again. Slower.”
Her shoulders lowered a fraction.
“Good girl.” I brushed my thumb along her cheekbone.