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“Why?” I ask, my voice hoarse, hating how much it’s shaking. “Why go through all of that effort, just to turn around and fuck someone else?At the place where we work together.” I push him back. Not hard enough to move him, but he still steps back. “You’re a fucking asshole, Kay. A narcissistic, selfishprick.”
My hands are shaking, heart pounding, and all he does is stare at me in silence.
“You made me think we’d have something. That wedidhave…something.”
Something cracks in Kay’s hard exterior for a moment. He runs a hand through his disheveled hair, and for a moment he looks less like the cunning devil he usually is. He looks like a vulnerable, confused man, and my heart shatters.
Only for a moment. I quickly pull the jagged pieces back together and guard myself against him.
"Why?" I demand again.
His eyes meet mine, the hard exterior in place once more. “That’s not how life works, Talia.”
“But itis. It can be. You made me believe that it could be.”
“What? You believed your pussy would be so good it would make me a changed man? That I’d suddenly have the morals and self-control you try so hard to have?” He huffs out a short, cynical laugh. “Come on, Talia. Grow up.”
A sharp slice of shame runs through my chest.
I want to punch him, hit him, dosomething. In one last fit of rage, I grab the bottle of liquor he took out of my hands and throw it at the wall past his head. He doesn’t even flinch, he just looks at me through loose strands of dark hair. I hate how devastatingly handsome he still is as I approach, drawing my chin up to look him in the eyes.
“Have fun cleaning up your fucking mess,” I whisper, and waltz out the door.
Chapter Fifteen: Kay
It’s been almost a week since Talia smashed my most expensive bottles of aged whiskey. Almost a week since I decided to sabotage anything we might have had together. A week since I’ve seen her because she’s been out ‘on vacation’, according to Gia. Any other inquiries as to where she might be are met with the most hostile looks Gia has ever given me, even when she was a dancer at the old club, witnessing all of my shady dealings.
She hated me then, but this…thiswas personal to her. Sheloathesme right now.
The week was long, quiet, and boring. Talia wasn’t here to tease, and Gia wasn’t speaking to me, which meant I actually had to dowork, mostly because there was nothing else to do. It was, overall, very productive. The club’s doing really well, and my plan to work exclusively with certain vendors was well underway, with two of the eight on my list agreeing to the deal so far.
Midnights could have a very successful season.
Gia passes my open door, which I don’t normally leave open, but due to the nature of the empty office this week, as well as Gia ignoring me, I’ve left it open in the hopessomeonewould engage in conversation with me. She sends me her fiftieth glare of the week.
I feel so pathetic.
Even the bartenders, even Bea, won’t speak to me, as if Talia’s created an enclosed circle of trust with everyone here and they’ve all iced me out. It’s getting fucking brittle.
Rising from my desk, fed up with the events—or rather lack thereof—I head out for lunch, which will mostly just be a drink.
The sky is cloudless, the sun high and hot with the coming summer, and I’m too distracted with pulling out my sunglasses that I don’t notice the skinny degenerate sniffing around my car.
“Can I fucking help you?”
He rises at the sound of my voice. He’s nothing but a scrawny guy with patchy facial hair and clothes that definitely don’t belong in these parts. He scratches at the inside of his arm, facing me. “I’m sure you can. Are you Kay Beckett? Or should I say,KingK?”
I barrel down on him, and he backs up at my approach until his back hits my car.
He looks genuinely terrified.Good. But it begs a bigger question. “Who sent you, hmm?” I place a heavy hand on his shoulder.
He laughs, his pupils dilated to an unhealthy degree in the burning sun, and then I notice the track marks on his arms. He’s tweaking.
I knew this day might come eventually, that something from my past was going to rise up to bite me in the ass. I had money then, in my days as King K, and I have even more money now—the type of money that the kind of people I used to deal with would want.
“Who sent you?” I ask again, keeping close enough to make sure scrawny guy doesn’t run until I get all of my answers.
“Does-does Julius Caesar ring a bell?” Scrawny guy smiles up at me, but fades in and out, as if he can’t decide if he’s terrified of me or amused by the interaction.
