I frown.
“The cyanide,” he clarifies. “Were you really going to use it?”
I snap my attention back to the ocean, wishing I hadn’t made the confession. Realizing he could easily use the information against me. Against my family.
“Could you have killed someone, Layla?”
I keep my mouth shut. My lips fused.
He approaches, sidestepping the edge of the sofa in my periphery.
“Stop.” I turn to face him, glaring. This is serious. I need to rewind time and remember all the things I’ve told him. All the clues I’ve given. All the insight I’ve shared. “Stay where you are.”
His face falls. Plummets. And in the split-second of this powerful man’s pained rejection, I see myself reflected in him.
I see the woman forsaken for the mistakes of her past. I see the person turned pariah due to circumstances out of their control.
“Just…” I attempt to shake my head free from the emotional onslaught. “Just give me a second.”
I need to think. To understand. To do damage control.
“Layla, you’re bleeding.” His attention narrows on my hip, his expression transforming from devastation to concern. He strides forward, forcing me to scamper backward. “Don’t fight me on this,” he warns with an edge of malice. “Let me make sure you’re okay. You mean so much to me. I—”
“You don’t even know me.”
He stops a foot away, his nostrils flaring. “Yes, I do.”
I shake my head and glance at my dress, trying to see where the hell I’m bleeding from. “No, you don’t.” I twist, finding blood splotches that match the red fabric, the material nicked with tiny cuts along my side. “You have no idea.”
“So everything between us was fake? Was it all for sex? For the lifestyle? For attention?”
I gape. “No, I never—”
“Then I know you. I know how I feel when I’m with you. I know how good we are together. How we fit. How we’re perfectly matched. How we can hold a conversation for hours. And fuck until we’re exhausted, but far from sated, because being with you means I’ll never get enough.” He bridges the space between us in an adamant step. “That’s how I know you. And it’s the only knowledge that matters.”
His admission shakes me. Grabs me by the arms and rattles me to my bones.
I’d thought I’d known him, too.
I’d thought the knowledge I had was all that mattered. Now I’m painfully aware that’s simply not true.
What he kept from me changes everything. It bends and twists the already stretched limbs I’d stepped out on to have this secret relationship in the first place. It makes the already unattainable nauseatingly impossible.
“Let me see why you’re bleeding.” He doesn’t quit holding my gaze as he reaches out, fingering the material at my waist, bundling it in his hands.
My heart clenches, beating harder at his affection. At the weeks of deception.
“Why did you bring me here?” I blurt, unable to contain the mania.
His brows knit. “To Virginia Beach?”
“To the meeting. To the hotel. Why introduce me to Lorenzo? Why risk my life?”
“I didn’t think there was any risk. Nobody has dared to target him in years. I never would’ve brought you otherwise.” He keeps my dress bundled in his hands, his chin lifting. “I’m sick of the secrets, Layla. I wanted him to get to know you. I want you to know who I am.”
My pulse weakens, my entire body withering.
I return my attention to the ocean, unable to voice a protest when he bundles more of my dress in his grip. Unwilling to deny his cautious affection. Powerless to walk away even though I know I have to.
I thought he was my safety vest in the midst of the pummeling waves of my life. Instead, he was nothing more than a mirage. Yet I still hunger to cling to the illusion. I continue to hope he’ll save me from drowning despite him being just another shark in the water.
The hem of my dress rises from my ankles to my calves, then my thighs.
I hold my breath against the exposure. I clench every muscle against the judgment of my family snipping in my ears. Their recrimination. The fury.
But Matthew hasn’t lost the calming touch. He soothes me. Provides solace.
How?
How can his proximity dilute the devastation of my situation? How can he—a man now exposed as having underworld ties—comfort me?
Because despite the darkness of his admission, he’s the only support I’ve got.
The fabric creeps higher, exposing my lace panties, my bra. He keeps pulling the dress farther until it’s over my shoulders and head, then lets the clothing fall into a pool of crimson on the carpet.
I close my eyes as he steps around me, his fingertips gently gliding from my shoulder to the ribs at my back, every inch of nurtured skin awakening in a blanket of goose bumps until his touch stops at my waist.
“You’re covered in scratches,” he murmurs. “None deep enough to require stitches, but too many for me to escape more guilt over bringing you here.”
I battle inner turmoil as his fingertips trail intricate circles along the sensitive flesh at the small of my back, the beauty of his soothing contact tearing me to shreds.
“Forgive me.” He closes in behind me, one hand still learning my injuries, the other arm taking liberties to skim around my waist to my stomach, holding me to him. “I’ve made mistakes.” He speaks against my shoulder, his breath sending a shiver down my spine. “I’m not that person anymore.”
A whimper tightens my throat.
I’m not the person I used to be either.
“Start a new life with me, Layla,” he whispers my wishes into existence. My dreams. My hopes. “Be with me for who I am now. Not where I came from.”
“Where you came from just had us ducking for cover.” I turn to face him, finally able to ignore all the parts of me that want to disappear into the shelter of his arms. “You haven’t moved on, Matthew. That life is still a part of you.”
“No. I walked away from their—”
“How can you say that when Lorenzo was asking you to take over right in front of me? He was begging you to come back.”
His jaw ticks with tension. “I’m next in line because his sons declined the offer. He’s growing desperate. But I’ll never go back.”
“It seems to me that you’re going back every time you meet with him.”
“I’ve been out for years,” he enunciates with slow adamance. “Bishop and I—”
“Yes, tell me about Bishop.” I’ve never trusted that asshole. “If you wanted distance from your old life, why keep him with you?”
For a moment he’s silent, perhaps biding his time.
“Matthew?” I raise a brow and snatch my dress from the floor, huddling it against my chest.
“He’s with me out of misguided obligation. He thinks he owes me for getting him out.”
“And how did you do that?”
“I did whatever I had to. I wasn’t leaving without him.”
His words say nothing, but I understand regardless. I know the sins. The darkness. The bloodshed.
The duties of underworld men aren’t unfamiliar to me. I’m aware of the atrocities my brother inflicts on our enemies. Hunter, Decker, and Luca, too. And all the underlings that follow.