“Why?”
“Because a biker president scares the bejesus out of everyone.”
My lips parted as Arthur wrapped his arm around my waist, pressing me hard against him. The rapid thickening in his trousers made my insides melt. “I’m still scary … even if I’m wearing a tie.”
I struggled to continue with the conversation. We’d bounced from lust to anger and back again. And now all I wanted to do was drag him away from this hoity-toity crowd and prove to myself that despite his plans and headaches and stubbornness he was still the boy from my past.
Nothing was complicated as long as we remembered that.
I whispered, “Not to me.”
His eyes burned deep emerald holes into my soul. “No, not to you.” He kissed me quickly. “The minute I’ve spoken with Senator Samson, I’m having you.”
Having me?
As in sex?
“What, here?” I squeaked.
He inhaled deeply, dragging my spritz of perfume—orchids and summer sunshine—into his lungs. “Here.” Laughing softly, he looked around the room as if seeking a dark corner in which to carry out his threat. “I’m going to sink inside you somewhere inside this house and prove to you that it doesn’t matter what I’m wearing or what situation we find ourselves in, I’m still yours.” His eyes shadowed. “For some reason, I think you need reminding of that.”
My heart expanded with love.
Letting me go, his hand disappeared into his trouser pocket. Opening his fingers, he said, “See?”
My muscles locked. The worn Libra eraser rested like a talisman in his palm.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it. “Do you take it everywhere?”
Tucking it away safely, Arthur nodded. “Every day. It started off as something I hated because it reminded me too painfully of you. But every time I went to throw it out, I couldn’t. I couldn’t remove you from my life.” He shrugged. “It became a good luck charm and I grew superstitious that if I didn’t have it with me, my luck would run out and I’d end up even more alone.”
Right there. What he just said. That was why I was petrified of the future, of what he planned to do. That after all this time apart we would end up more alone than before—all because he couldn’t move on.
Closing my hand over his, I pushed aside my worries.
With a ruthful smirk, he linked his fingers with mine. “Come. I think it’s time I introduced you to Samson.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kill
Wallstreet had taught me something invaluable.
A lesson I’d never thought to consider. Cleo was dead and I was all alone. I drowned in guilt, festered in heartache. I was weak.
But in Wallstreet’s eyes, I wasn’t weak. I was perfect. Because without pain, I couldn’t be strong enough to do what he truly needed me to do. He’d said I was the Armageddon that he’d been waiting for. And it was up to me to use my pain to deliver others’ happiness. —Kill, age eighteen
Sometimes ignorance was easier than knowledge.
I’d been that way once upon a time. I’d been a child, believing in fairness and truth. I’d been a teenager, believing in togetherness and love. And I’d been a man, stripped of all hope by lies.
I’d witnessed what fellow humans would do for power. I’d grown up.
But despite what had happened, Cleo didn’t see the world the way I did. She still believed in fairness, truth, and love. She was still gullible at heart and I envied her.
I envied her acceptance of a world steeped in deception. I wished I could relax. Just stop chasing this need to fix and tweak and change.
But I knew too much. I’d dug too deep and seen things I couldn’t unsee. I had to do this. I had no choice.
Because if I didn’t do it, who would?
It wasn’t that I wanted to become someone I wasn’t. It wasn’t that I wanted public recognition or entitlement that came with my future placement. But I did want to right my wrongs—and this was my path to forgiveness.
All this time, Cleo thought I was the same math-obsessed boy from Dagger Rose. The same boy betrayed by those most dear and corrupted by a prison inmate.
True, parts of that boy survived, but the years had changed me, turned me into an entirely new man.
Tonight, she would see everything. She would finally know all of me. She would hear what I’d been working on. What the lawlessness, the trading, even the trafficking had been building toward.
I wasn’t just a man with a vendetta. If I was, I would’ve killed my father years ago.
I was a man with a mission. A mission to eradicate this world of filth. To stop corruption. To end those who lie and cheat and steal.
I wasn’t a vigilante.
I wasn’t a crusader.