I hate it when people have excellent memories.
“Hold on. Let me uncross my eyeballs. Are you saying that if I told you right now that you could trust me, that would be it? You would?”
“Aye.”
“And you’d tell me all your onion peel stories?”
“Aye.”
“Pardon the insult, but that seems extremely naïve for a man in your position.”
“It would be, if I didn’t already know you’d never say I could trust you if I couldn’t.”
Dammit. This relationship will never work if he’s going to be right all the time. “I propose a compromise.”
“I don’t like compromises.”
“What a colossal surprise. As I was saying, I think there’s a middle ground somewhere between the two extremes. Why don’t you tell me one secret, and we’ll go from there?”
When he only stares at me, lips flattened, I say, “A small one. Like why you never wear a color other than black. Think of it like trust with training wheels.”
After a moment where he practices his glower, he says darkly, “There will come a time, lass, and very soon, when I’ll need to know one way or the other.”
He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. Then he rises, gets dressed, and leaves the room.
When he still hasn’t returned three days later, I’m in a panic unlike anything I’ve ever known.
Because according to the news, the boss of every mafia syndicate in the country is being murdered, one by one.
33
Declan
It’s late when I enter the house. Nearly three. I expect to find Sloane asleep in bed, but instead, she’s in the media room, curled up on the sofa with a glass of red wine. Two wine bottles sit on the coffee table, one of them empty, the other a quarter full.
The television is tuned to a twenty-four-hour news station.
She doesn’t notice me. I stand watching her from the door as she gulps from the wine glass and gnaws at her thumbnail. She looks exhausted. Strung out. Frantic with worry.
I feel a twinge of guilt, but am still glad I didn’t call.
Not that it was easy.
She hasn’t been off my mind for a second since I left. If I didn’t already know I was obsessed, three days apart drove the point home with the subtlety of a hatchet.
Grabbing the remote, she starts clicking through channels, jumping from station to station, pausing mere seconds between each. Looking for something.
I know what.
“Try CNN. They love the bloody stuff.”
Sloane jumps to her feet, dropping the glass of Cabernet to the floor. It spills all over the cream-colored carpet, leaving a pattern like the spray of a slit jugular vein.
Curling her hands to fists, she stares at me with wide, unblinking eyes.
“You’re alive.”
“Ah, those astonishing powers of observation.”
Her eyes flash. “Don’t you dare be nonchalant with me. Don’t you dare be glib.” She points a shaking finger at the sofa. “I’ve been sitting here for three fucking days, listening to reports about murdered gangsters. Three. Days. Do you have any idea what I’ve been through? Why didn’t you call? Where the hell have you been?”
With every question, her voice rises. She’s mad as hell.
That shouldn’t make me happy, but it does. It makes me so happy, I could float.
“Working.” I glance at the television, then back at her.
I know she understands when her face drains of color.
“You…you…”
I say softly, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
Closing her eyes, she shakes her head. “And now you’re quoting Sun Tzu,” she says bitterly. “Like that makes any sense at all.”
“Just testing that superior IQ of yours. You passed. This time.”
Her lids fly open. She impales me with a look of such fury, I almost smile.
“What the fuck, Declan?”
I lean against the wall and fold my arms over my chest. “You’re cursing an unusual amount, lass, even for you. What’s that about?” I let my smile unfurl, like a snake’s coils. “Don’t tell me you missed me.”
The air around her head shimmers with a rage bordering on insanity. I expect her eyes to pop from her head. She looks like she’s channeling the ghost of Charles Manson.
She walks to where I’m standing and slaps me across the face.
When my head stops spinning, I look at her and grin.
“How dare you smile at me, you son of a bitch.”
“Is that a rhetorical question? I thought you didn’t like those.”
“I’ve been sitting here thinking you were dead!”
“No, not me. Just the heads of all the other syndicates. Except Kazimir. I kept him alive because you asked me to.”
She sucks in a breath so hard it’s like she’s trying not to drown. Her face screws up and turns red.
I think because she doesn’t know what else to do, she slaps me again.
I grab her and kiss her, hard.
She bursts into tears. “You asshole! I hate you! I hate you!”
“I know, baby,” I say, chuckling and holding her tight. “You hate my bloody guts. Except you don’t. You’re crazy about me. You’re so in love with me, you cried because I’m alive.”
Sobbing into my shoulder, she pounds a fist on my chest.
I whisper into her ear, “Sweet girl. My fierce little lion queen. Give me your mouth.”
She sniffles and whimpers as I kiss her, clinging to me like she’ll never let go.
I’ve never been happier in my entire life than right now, in this moment.
Until she pushes me away, that is.
She turns and walks away with her hands on her head, growling in aggravation.
I watch her walk slow circles around the room, inhaling deep breaths, then blowing them out slowly. She wipes her cheeks with shaking hands and walks more circles. When she’s regained self-control, she stops and looks at me.
“Thank you for Kazimir. And fuck you for leaving me hanging. Don’t ever do that to me again.”
“I won’t.”
“Good. Jesus Christ, I think I’m having a stroke. What happens now?”
“Now I wait until your girlfriend’s man calls me for a sit-down to discuss a cease-fire.”
“How do you know he’ll call?”
“That’s the only way he’ll be able to get me in a room so he can try to kill me.”
After a beat, she says, “It’s always going to be like this, isn’t it?”
“Aye. That’s the life. War. Death. Kill or be killed. Now you see why I’m in such a good mood most of the time.”
She stares at me beseechingly. “Don’t be sarcastic. I can’t handle sarcastic right now. Just give it to me straight. Is he going to kill you?”
I cluck my tongue. “O ye of little faith.”
“Quote the Bible to me again and see what happens to your two front teeth.”
“He’s not going to kill me.”
She peers at me, unconvinced.
“I’m going to give him a good reason not to.”