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“Then let’s keep up the illusion, baby,” I mutter, chinking my glass against hers.
In the ballroom, classical music plays, champagne flows, and crammed between the four gilded walls is every type of asshole I hate. Fat-bellied businessmen in penguin suits with their wives—all too young and too skinny—dangling on their arms. They smile and nod in all the right places, but behind their big hair and false lashes, I can see them mentally totting up how many years they’ve got left until their husband kicks the bucket and they can enjoy his inheritance with their tennis coach.
“His men are everywhere,” Romy hisses, curling herself closer to me.
I graze over the men in the shadows, too brutish and too sour-faced to convince anyone they are here by invitation.
“So let’s give them a show.”
When I pull her onto the dance floor, she comes willingly, but her back stiffens under my palm, and her hand is damp when she slides it into mine. Her beautiful features remain unbothered, though, like she’s trying so hard to act the part.
Fuck, she feels good against my body; looks good too. I know every man in this room would trade places with me in a heartbeat, and I also know they’d soar to the top of my hit list if they tried.
As the song melts into a slower tempo, Romy rests her head on my chest, and I hate what it does to me. It fills me with rage, knowing that things could never be like this. It could never be different because of who I am and what she’s done.
“Walk me through the plan,” I murmur into her soft, silver hair, briefly closing my eyes when the scent of her shampoo drifts up my nose.
“In half an hour, Belsky will take the stage to make his official announcement.” She lifts her head from my chest to subtly locate the journalists clinging onto the perimeters of the room. In scruffy jeans and sporting lanyards, they are as easy to spot as Belsky’s men. “He’ll introduce himself, then he’ll premier his campaign video. And that’s when you’ll send a text to—”
“Declan,” I finish for her.
“Yes. He’ll hack his computer and show my video instead.”
Her chest heaves against mine. At first, I think she’s scared, so I rub my thumb against the curve of her back to calm her down. But when she looks up at me through those thick lashes, I recognize the adrenaline vibrating through her. It’s like looking in a mirror.
“Then we’ll leave, get in the waiting cars, and peel off into the sunset.” Her eyes darken, challenging me. “But like you said, there’ll be no happy ever after. Instead, you’ll decide whether you want to let me live or if you want to kill me.”
I hold my tongue.
“You nervous?”
“No,” she mutters, confirming what I already knew. “Not anymore. Now, I’m excited to finally ruin this man.” Her chin jerks upward so her perfectly plump lips are in line with mine. “Whatever it takes.”
I have to tear away from her gaze before I have another moment of weakness and claim those lips with my own. So I scan the room, locking eyes with one of Belsky’s men. Even from here, I can see him salivating like a hungry dog. My world is full of cunts like him—the type who’d be bragging forever if they managed to kill Donnacha Quinn.
Romy twirls like a ballerina under my hand. When she completes a full circle, I pull her in tighter than before, my semi-hard cock resting against her hipbone. The proximity of her body and the danger that’s engulfing are like a drug.
“We might not make it out alive.”
Her eyes dance at the idea of a challenge. “I don’t fear death. I fear living a life without the only man I’ve ever loved.”
The iron cladding around my heart quivers like an earthquake some hundred miles away is shaking its foundation.
“So you meant it, what you said the other day?”
I shouldn’t ask because what good will the answer do? But the sound of her screaming that she loves me as I left her in the darkness has been playing through my mind like a broken record all week.
Her gaze hardens. “You want the truth or a lie?”
The corners of my lips threaten to tilt upward. “Lie.”
“Well, tough shit,” she whispers, closing the gap between our faces and brushing the tip of her nose over mine like a silk cloth. “You’ll get the truth. The lie is easier to swallow, but the truth is what everyone has to face in the end. I meant every goddamn word of it, whether you like it or not.”
My cock tingles, and a shiver skates up my spine. How is it possible to wish you’ve never met someone and wish you’d met them earlier at the same time?
In a different lifetime, on a different planet…
With Romy in my arms, the next thirty minutes slip through my fingers like sand. My head jerks up the moment I hear the chink, chink, chink, of a fork tapping a champagne flute. The crowd stops dancing, and Romy fits into the crook of my arm as we turn to face the stage.
