Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 98121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
I shift my gaze to study her in profile. Her eyes are still on the reflection of me. “Do you want that? To disappear,?”
“Sometimes,” she says.
The pain in that single word is immense. I don’t only hear it. I feel it at my core.
The two of us stand in the aftermath of this confession. Amal bared for me to see. Exposed. By choice.
In the end, she’s the one who breaks the silence.
“You don’t have someone making your bed for you?” she asks, casual as can be. Like we didn’t just have that moment.
She walks around the oversized king bed that sits on wooden pallets. No headboard, no nothing. It’s unmade, the heavy duvet resting half on the floor, a stack of books and a lamp on my side of the bed. Nothing on the other. No one sleeps here but me.
“I told you. I’ve never brought anyone here.”
“No girlfriends?” she asks this without looking at me.
“I don’t do girlfriends.”
She takes this in and crosses to the wall of windows, looking down into the spray of water. “Is this where you get rid of the bodies?”
I walk up behind her. “I don’t bring my work home with me.”
She turns, gasps. We’re so close she’s almost in my arms.
Almost.
A beat passes, her eyes flicking to mine, then down, fingertips coming to my chest, tentative there. She cranes her neck to look up at me.
I should step back. Give her space.
I don’t.
I don’t want to. I like looking at her like this. Seeing this difference in size between us. Like how much smaller than me she is. Like how her eyelashes try to hide her pretty cut sea-glass eyes from me.
I especially like how her fingertips hesitate as they dance across my chest.
“That’s not funny,” she finally says.
“No, you’re right. It’s not.”
Her eyebrows furrow when she takes in the scar on my cheek. A bullet grazed me. I was lucky. Another inch, hell, another centimeter and things would have been very different for me.
She reaches up to touch it and my breath catches. She notices. I know it in the beat that passes before she speaks again.
“Malek did that to you,” she says. She meets my gaze and waits, the air heavier around us, as if she’s expecting judgement. Condemnation.
“You rarely call him your father.”
She seems surprised by the comment, then shrugs. “A name on a piece of paper.”
“Well, you give him too much credit. Malek wasn’t that good a shot.”
“And this,” she continues somberly. Fingertips brush through my hair, black mostly, gray at one temple. Overnight that happened. “Everywhere I turn I see the traces of him. How can you stand to look at me? How can any of you stand it?”
Her eyes fill with tears and when she drops her hand, I capture it, hold onto it. I understand her meaning. Me, this scar. Allegra. Her missing finger. Fingers, really. It was all him.
“What he did is on him, not you. It’s not your fault. You do know that don’t you?” Because this is the crux of it. This is the root of all her brokenness.
My damn phone rings obliterating the moment. Why didn’t I turn it off?
“Fuck.” I step backward, dig it out of my pocket.
She clears her throat, turns her back to me to watch the water.
I walk away from her. “What?” I bark.
“Where the fuck are you? And what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“If you’re asking like that, I’m guessing you know.”
I hear Cassian draw a tight breath in. I can just see him counting to ten. “Jet. What the fuck?” he asks with a little more control.
I rub the back of my neck and watch the reflection of her in the antique mirror leaning against the wall. It’s the only old thing in this place. It belonged to my grandfather. I fucking hate it but it’s good to look at myself in it. To remember.
To never forget.
Amal rests her forehead against the glass wall. She traces a pattern in it.
“She’s with me. She’s safe,” I tell Cassian quietly thinking if I had to describe what she’s feeling right now in one word, that word would be despair.
“That doesn’t really answer my question.”
“Yeah well, maybe I’m not in the mood to answer to you.”
I can almost see his eyes narrowing. Hands clenching into fists. Allegra beside him trying to calm him. Although I’m pretty sure I’m not in the top ten of people she’d like Amal hanging around with.
My relationship with Cassian is a strange one. I became an advisor to him after the shitstorm of Enzo’s betrayal and Malek’s attack. Then, somehow, I took on the role of enforcer. That fit me better. I discovered a talent I didn’t realize I had, sick as it is. But I’ve never needed Cassian. The Blackstones have always been a powerful family, money or not, and now, money’s no longer an issue because we’re back at the top of our game.