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Flynn had stayed with me. He’d asked me what I needed and what he could do for me. He was so damn selfless, but that was exactly why I should cut him off the same way Professor Reid had cut me out.
I didn’t want to hurt him, but I feared I was going to do a whole lot worse.
My heart clenched hard, my breaths shallowing out as the heartbreak cut me deeper, plunging, twisting, and tearing at my bleeding flesh. Tears formed in my eyes, but I batted them away angrily. Zali Stephens did not cry over men. Fuck that.
No, I wouldn’t. I’d hold my head up high and get through this like anything else. I wouldn’t be brought to my knees by dick, no matter how good it was, or who the person attached to it was. I’d go back to hating him. Loathing the sight of his spectacular pale green eyes and that perfectly sculpted jaw. Those lips I was desperate to kiss one last time.
Sitting here with my thumb up my arse wouldn’t do me any good. I needed to do something, and that meant finishing what I’d started. Stripping off as I walked out of my office, I was naked by the time I reached my shower. The water heated quickly, going from chilled to scalding in seconds. I didn’t linger under the stream, though, no matter how relaxing the heat was on my exhausted muscles.
I washed myself, scrubbing my body clean. My mind wandered as I did. There was no doubt I’d miss the sex—who wouldn’t?—but it wasn’t just about that. The words he’d whispered while buried deep inside me had meant something. They’d knocked down my walls and worked their way into my heart. They’d filled me up and left me on a high that I’d never wanted to come down from.
They were taunting me now. Words like “never stopping” and “staying forever” were big fat fucking meaningless lies now.
He was something else. The first time he’d fucked me, it was hard and dirty. He took my arse like he owned it. He’d made me cry out in pain and soar with ecstasy at the same time. Even his kicking us out of his office had been hot in its own way—a reminder that our affair was one that needed to stay secret.
He’d relentlessly fucked my throat, making me scream while taking Flynn’s dick like a pro. That mouth, those hands, and his dick were magic. It was unfortunate that no one except porn stars listed fucking as a talent on their CVs because he deserved a gold star. Hell, he deserved public recognition for how amazing a fuck he was.
But apart from that, he was smart and stubborn. He knew what he wanted and how to get it. He didn’t stand for mediocre. He also gave as good as he got. He loved to push and to provoke a reaction from me, usually shutting me up with his dick. Which I was totally fine with. It was rare that someone had me hooked so quickly and easily and kept me on my toes, challenging me every time I saw them.
Then he’d called melove.
He’d held me while I cried.
He’d been gentle and loving, and I’d gone and fallen for him. But it was over now. He’d made it pretty fucking clear that he was scandalized by who I was.
But it was my fault. I had to take responsibility for being me. I’d told him that I’d stolen my fortune, but he hadn’t believed me. I should have been more upfront with him. I hadn’t mostly out of a sense of self-preservation—I didn’t exactly go announcing to the world that I was Queen. But with the benefit of hindsight, I realized I should have at least shown him the basic respect of disclosing to him how I’d find the information we were after.
My history wasn’t pretty. I’d done some very illegal things in my not-so-distant past. It was a mix of talent, skill, and sheer dumb luck that I hadn’t fucked up and been arrested or hunted down by a target. But it was what I did, who I was. Queen was as much a part of me as Zali was.
It seemed strange to think of myself as two different people, but that was my reality. I kept those personas separate out of necessity. If I didn’t, I could put the people I loved at risk. My targets weren’t always lawyers who did the dirty on their kids or politicians who took bribes. They were the worst of society—they stole children and sold them into sex slavery, they got kids hooked on drugs, they stole identities and destroyed lives. They weren’t good people. One day, eventually, one of them would outsmart me. I had to give myself the best chance to keep my family—Dad, Flynn, Ryder, and even Ezra—out of the firing line, because if there was one way they could destroy me, that was it.
Should I just throw in the towel? One day I would have played with fire one too many times. I’d get burnt. Was being Queen worth it? If I said, “Fuck it,” and quit tomorrow, would I miss it? Could I hop on the straight-and-narrow path if it meant keeping Professor Reid?
I didn’t have an answer for that, which was perhaps answer enough. It was by far the hardest thing to acknowledge. I didn’t know if I was ready to hang my keyboard up. Didn’t I deserve a man who could accept all of me, warts and all?
On-screen, his criminal record stared me in the face. I understood exactly why he didn’t want anything to do with me. The medical records attached to his stay in detention were horrifying. The injuries he sustained were enough for him to never want to risk going back in.
I got it—I did. But I was no longer doing this as part of a university assignment that I’d been talked into doing. I was finding the information because I needed to. Professor Reid had told me over and over that he had to publish something; his backers were insisting on getting the truth out there. So I had to have something—for myself just as much as Mum and Dad. If Mum had somehow screwed up, and I had a terrible feeling that she had, then I needed to be the one to fix things for her. Why? Because I could. To do that, though, I needed information. I could satisfy my professor’s requirements for this class at the same time and ensure that the podcast wouldn’t totally destroy Dad.
Mum should be able to rest in peace. She didn’t deserve to have her reputation destroyed. What good would it do? It wasn’t like anyone would get their money back. Professor Reid would get his podcast, he’d write up a report on how changes to whatever laws could stop people from being incompetent in the future, and we’d be left picking up the pieces. Again. Dad would be left grieving his wife all over again. He would have to go through the pain and humiliation of having his dead wife’s name dragged through the mud. He’d be guilty by association once more. I remembered strangers walking through our house, searching in drawers and taking notebooks and computers from Mum’s desk. I remembered Dad crying and begging them not to break things—trinkets that were important to Mum and Asher—and not to disturb Asher’s room. He didn’t deserve to relive all that again.
And I would do what it took to protect him from going through that again.
No matter the price.
There was no way I would back down, not even if it meant losing one of the people I cared about most. I couldn’t control Professor Reid’s opinion of me. All I could do was protect the people closest to me from getting hurt. If it meant that I would take the brunt of that pain, so be it.
I knew what needed to be done.
After turning off the shower, I wrapped the towel around my hair and strutted out to the stern deck.
“Ry, can you take us back to the marina, please?” I called out. “I’ve just been called to an urgent meeting in Sydney this afternoon.”
“Sure. Let me make a phone call to get the jet ready for us, then we can go,” he responded immediately.
I knew I’d made the right decision when I picked out what served for corporate in my world—black glasses, white button-down shirt, skin-tight black leather pants, and my black alligator-skin Manolo Blahniks. Slipping into them was like donning armour. Finishing the look with my hair pulled back in a tight bun and red lipstick was the icing on the cake.
Head held high, I went back to my office to make sure I could execute my plan.
