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I shrugged, even if the idea bubbled anger in my gut.
“Then she refuses. I can’t be faulted for trying.”
“And if Jesse learns of this arrangement?”
My back tensed, but I maintained my even disposition.
“What bearing does that have on my life?” I asked innocently.
I understood why Sage was questioning me, but the reality was, Jesse was not going to come for me. He was far too weak, and there was little he could do.
“You know you cannot touch that girl, Atlas.”
I frowned, springing forward to drop my forearms on the chair with a scowl.
“Have you mistaken me for Gabriel?” I hissed. “I can keep my dick in my pants.”
Sage held up her hands in surrender.
“As you wish, Atlas. I’ll have Geoff relay the message at once. Tell me exactly what it should say.”
“I’ll write it. Ensure that it’s delivered discreetly. Jesse is apt to shoot the messenger and the recipient—plus anyone else in the vicinity as well.”
“Of course.”
I reached into my desk for a fountain pen and a thick piece of paper, scrawling an official offering before sealing the page with my crest in wax. Sage ambled forward to take it from me, her eyebrows drawn into a vee, but she didn’t protest again, even though I could see she wanted to.
“Hurry up,” I urged her. “I want this done in the cloak of darkness, and it’s almost morning.”
Nodding, she hurried out of the office, leaving me to stare after her, a small smirk formulating on my lips.
Take that, Jesse, you pathetic fucker.
A strange sensation slithered down my spine, and it took me several seconds to identify what it was, the feeling both foreign and vaguely alarming.
Excitement.
I was excited at the prospect of bringing Bianca Barrett into my house and sticking it to Jesse, even if he might never learn about it.
It had been a long time since I’d felt blood rushing through me like this, but I had a sneaking suspicion that, with Bianca at my side, I’d experience it with a lot more frequency. As my assistant, she would be a few feet away from me for hours at a time, flashing those huge, dark eyes my way, tempting me with a mere bat of her lashes.
Great. I was hard again.
Chapter5
Bianca
Dahlia’s restless sleep made my own impossible. She moved and muttered at my side, but I reminded myself that these were good signs, that it meant she was alive. We had already lost our mother. If I lost my twin, too, I wouldn’t be able to go on.
I snuggled closer to her, hoping to calm her nightmares, but even my nearness didn’t seem to help her, and as the gray outside the filthy window turned to a golden pink, someone crept into our tiny house.
Instantly, I bolted upright, ready to scream. I’d been dreading this, an unscheduled visit from Jesse in the night, and although a part of me had prepared to fight him off, now, at the moment, I wasn’t sure I was equipped to do it.
“Don’t scream,” an unfamiliar voice growled at me. I blinked furiously, realizing that it wasn’t our captor, but one of his guards.
Gregor? Ginger?
Something that started with a G, anyway.
