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Micah lowers into the car the moment our driver rolls up and opens the door. “Cordoza didn’t call you stupid,” he smirks, glancing across as I slide in after him. “He justthinksyou are. As do I. And Arch… Cato… even Mary…”
“Shut the fuck up.” I pat my breast pocket and think again of my cigarettes, but I take out my phone instead and check the time on the screen. Swiping to unlock the device, I hit dial on the last number I called and look to my brother. “I’m not stupid for taking her.”
“You don’t think so? Bigger men have fallen in their quest to tame the untamable, Lix. You’ve bitten off more than you can chew this time.”
“Have not.”
“Mr. Malone,” Mary answers. “Yes, sir?”
“Put Ms. Cannon on the phone, please.”
She doesn’t ask questions. Doesn’t argue. Only does as I command and moves through the house to find the woman whose existence has somehow scrambled my brains and left me making questionable business decisions.
While I wait, I lift my free hand and present my middle finger to a still-staring Micah, who only sniggers.
Pettiness makes me happy sometimes, and fighting with my brother is my God-given right.
“Ms. Cannon?” Mary murmurs on her side of the line. The house is quiet. Footsteps echoing on tile, and thetap-tap-tapof a computer keyboard the only noises I hear. She lowers the phone away from her face, so her voice grows fainter. “Mr. Malone would like to speak with you.”
Silence hangs, loaded and tense. But Christabelle is a lady of impeccable breeding. She would have been tossed into etiquette school long before she was able to cross a room in five-inch heels. So although she probably wishes to tell me to fuck myself, she accepts the phone and slowly brings it to her ear. “Felix?”
“How are you feeling?”
“Why?” She’s suspicious. Wary.
Probably reasonably so.
I gaze out the car window as our driver takes us out of Cordoza’s long, winding driveway. “Because I asked. Dizzy? Headache? Tired?”
“Yougive me a headache. And your existence tires me. I’d like to go home now, Felix. I’ll let Mary know you’ve said to order me a car.”
“Not yet, Darling. Go to your closet and find a dress. We’re having dinner tonight.”
“No.” She changes our call to speaker and sets the device down with a clatter that hurts my ear. “I don’t think we will. Perhaps I’ll consider your offer in three to five months, assuming you allow me to leave right now and go back tomyhome. Tomylife.”
“No deal. Dress. Heels. Panties optional. I have a couple moreerrands to run before I get home. Then we’re having dinner at six, since I’m starving and you have blood-sugar issues.”
“You’re uneducated and you sound dumb.”
She’s cranky and petulant.
“Educated enough to get a doctor in the house and not let you die from your own stupidity. Find a dress, Christabelle. Or dine in my shirt. Doesn’t bother me either way, but I’ll see you in a little while.”
“I said no! You and I are?—”
“Oops. We’re heading through a tunnel.” I bring the phone from my ear and kill our call, then I look to Micah and switch off my smile when I find him staring. “What? Fuck you. Shut up.”
He only shakes his head and turns to stare out the window. “It’s all gonna come crashing down, Lix.” Linking his hands, he uses the good one to massage Pastore’s mutilation from earlier this year. He never admits to the pain, but will often grimace and work to rub away the ache. “Tim bedded women and then killed them. Youshouldkill this one, and never bed her. But I know you’re about to fuck it all up, place her on a pedestal, and be the reason we all burn.”
I scowl in displeasure. “I don’t put women on pedestals.”
He turns back to me and raises a single, challenging brow. “Mayet?”
“Well… sure,her. But she’s Arch’s, and she deserves it. I mean I don’t place womenIfuck on a pedestal.”
“And here you are,notfucking Cannon! She’s been in our home for days already, Lix. You’re yet to slip your dick in. You’re asking her out to dinner, dressing her in your clothes. And you’re pretending like you won’t set the city on fire when she screws you over.”
“And you’re so sure she will.”Fuck him. Fuck his cynicism.And fuck her too, for starting this mess when she wrote about my family. “She writes stories for a living. She’s a spoiled socialite who’ll marry some jackass and swim in gold for the rest of her life. She’s not a real threat to us.”
