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My eyes were still wet with tears, but they were old now, and there were no new ones to replace them. “I ask you things all the time, and you ignore me or say—”
“Yes or no.”
“Yes or no, what…?”
“Do you want my fidelity?”
Out of pride, I should say no, but I couldn’t do that. The idea of him going out and being with another woman made me sick, and not because I wanted to stay clean. It was much deeper than that. “Yes.”
He turned to the door again, like the matter was settled. He opened the door and stepped outside, where his car was waiting.
My unease had been swayed, but there was still a gaping hole of confusion inside. “Why will you give this to me but nothing else?” I went after him, ignoring the valet who stood there and Gilbert, who appeared out of thin air.
Fender turned back to me once more.
“How can you give that to me so easily but dismiss me all the time? When you ignore all my questions? When you treat me like I mean nothing to you? Explain to me how that makes any sense.”
He considered me for a long time, those hostile eyes infinite pools of darkness. He had a sinister energy and radiated constant coldness, but he was the strongest, most handsome man I’d ever looked at, and the idea of sharing him…made me irrational. “You said you would never abandon me.” But every time he left, he did. Every time he excluded me from his life, he did. “I want more than that.”
“And you would have had it if you hadn’t run from me.” His voice deepened and turned angry. The sting of betrayal was obvious in the burn of his eyes. Even after our conversation about it, he was still furious. He said he never let anything go—and he wasn’t kidding. “You fucked my brains out, and then the next day, you threw yourself at death.”
“For my sister,” I snapped. “And you wouldn’t have done the same?”
All I got was a staredown.
Gilbert slowly stepped away, nodded to the valet, and they excused themselves somewhere on the grounds so we could talk in private.
Fender didn’t seem to care whether they were there or not. His look continued to pierce through my flesh and to my skull. “If I let you go right now, would you leave?”
I stilled at the question.
“Answer. Me.”
“I don’t understand why—”
“Answer the fucking question.”
If Fender really let me go and I could walk out those front gates and return to a normal life…I wasn’t sure what I would even do. The only thing I’d want to do is go to the police and tell them about the girls at the camp so they could rescue my sister, but my limited time with him taught me that he was invincible, that he dared me to escape because he was untouchable. The authorities would do nothing. And if I couldn’t do that, then I didn’t know what I would do with myself. I didn’t know how I would adapt to normal life, not after what I’d been through. No one would ever understand, and the men I met wouldn’t understand either. And they wouldn’t compare to Fender anyway, the man who made other men undesirable. If I couldn’t save my sister, then an existence out there felt pointless, not when I had everything I could ever dream of right here—including him. “No.”
His eyes remained rigid for a few seconds before they released me. It took him time to absorb my answer, but when he got it, his hard body began to soften everywhere, not just in his eyes. “I haven’t been with anyone since you, nor did I ever intend to. I’m meeting someone I work with. And I’ll see you when I return.”
Twelve
Bartholomew
Fender
The club was dark. Music blared overhead, the bass thumped, the walls were covered with red velvet that smelled like decades of smoke. The leather chairs sagged in places because they hadn’t been replaced since the place opened decades ago.
I sat alone, the glass of scotch in front of me, my eyes surveying the idiots who danced to the music, took shots, flirted with people they would never see again after the next morning. A group of girls seemed to be celebrating a bachelorette party because one had a fake veil on top of her head.
With police cars in the streets and cameras everywhere, people assumed the world was a safe place. Well, I was sitting just twenty feet away from them, and I could shoot each of those girls in the back of the head with no consequence.
And they had no idea who was about to join me.
He appeared through the darkness and the smoke, dressed in all black, wearing his signature military boots. As he passed the girls, one reached out to grab him by the arm. His head wasn’t even turned her way, and he sidestepped the touch and kept going.
