Page 298 of Power Play

The command silenced the car.

I should have defended Charm. Even then, some fucked-up instinct inside me wanted to tell Briggs to watch his mouth. She wasn’t the enemy. She was scared, conditioned, and so desperate for love that she kept crawling back to the people who taught her she had to earn it.

I understood every part of what happened, and I hated her anyway.

“Don’t fight over us,” I said. “There is no us.”

Bliss made a small sound, and I refused to imagine her face.

“How cold were you?” Cade asked.

“Cold enough that she’ll never forget it.”

“Did you insult her?”

“Ni madres. I was mad as fuck, but I would never call her names.”

“Did you threaten her?”

My knuckles whitened around the wheel. “What the fuck do you think?”

“I think you were hurt enough to become somebody most people don’t know exists.”

Briggs shifted in the back seat. “El Cuchillo.”

I glanced toward my phone as though I could see him through it. “Yeah, she got my cutthroat, but my hands only ever hit men, pendejo.”

“What did you do?” Briggs asked.

“I severed the fucking tie.”

I passed beneath an overpass, and the sound of the engine came back from the concrete around me.

“I made it vulgar enough that she couldn’t turn it into poetry later. I took my key back, opened the door, and told her to leave.”

“In Spanish?” Cade asked.

“Some of it.”

“Did she understand?”

“Some. She understood the rest from my face.”

I could still see hers.

Charm had stood in the hallway with tears spilling down her cheeks, keys pressed against her chest, and disbelief widening her eyes. She kept waiting for me to soften. Every plea carried the expectation that her Ryan would return if she reached deeply enough.

I almost did.

When her knees weakened, my hand moved before I stopped it. I wanted to catch her, carry her to my bed, and hold her until the shaking ended, even if she woke the next day and chose them again.

That was why I had to make her leave.

I wasn’t strong enough to stay inside the same room and keep choosing myself.

“She looked at me like she had never seen me before,” I said.

“Maybe she hadn’t,” Briggs answered.