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It took several minutes for me to regain my breath, and then my voice, but it was Atlas who spoke first.
“We could stay like this forever, you know?” he teased, still inside me.
I relished the weight of him on my back.
“I wish.”
He chuckled and rained kisses along my shoulders.
“We’ll never be far apart again, Bianca.”
I turned my head and looked at him, reading the sincerity in his face.
“Do you promise, Atlas?”
He nodded, kissing my lips.
“I promise, my love.”
Chapter38
Atlas
Twenty-four.
I could hardly stomach looking at them in various stages of life, mostly beaten and depressed, resigned to the future that Jesse had pushed upon them.
“He’s not lying to you,” Bianca piped up from beside me, noting their disinterested expressions. “He’s going to give you all new lives, houses, your own starts.”
One by one, they eyed me warily, darting their glances back toward Bianca, as if they were trying to figure out if they were being tricked or not.
“The kind of life like we had with Jesse, you mean,” one half-toothless deer shifter demanded. She couldn’t have been older than forty, but she looked sixty-five. My gut twisted at the sight of her and the others.
This is what would have happened to Bianca and Dahlia, too. Jesse collected these women and treated them like slaves.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alanah signaling furiously, and we glanced toward her. Half of the harem raised their eyebrows, clearly understanding what the housekeeper was saying. She had since joined our house staff after Vivian had found her praying in the pantry closet on the day of the clean-up.
“What’s she saying?” I asked Bianca in a low voice.
I still hadn’t mastered SSL in any proper form, despite recognizing some of the signs. Alanah was moving far too quickly for me to keep up, anyway.
“I don’t know, but whatever it is, seems to be working to our advantage.”
“You own all of Forny now?” This wife’s name was Jessica. She was younger—closer to Bianca’s age and not as harried as some of the others.
“No,” I replied honestly. “Only Jesse’s holdings over Forny.”
Bianca tensed, and I realized that might not have been a good revelation, given our current audience.
“What are you going to do with all his… stuff?” Jessica asked.
I grimaced.
These were bordering on trade secrets now, but if I wanted to win these women over, I had to be frank with them.
“That depends on the stuff,” I admitted.
It had been a daunting few weeks of sorting out the mess that Jesse had made with his inherited land. Forny was wild, unfettered, and ran off groups of sub-gangs who needed to be reeled in. There was so much going on that I hadn’t even begun to uncover. I wasn’t even sure I had the gall for it.
