Chapter
32

Franco spun a map out in front of me on my coffee table.

“The new neighborhood you’ll be the contractor for is in Texas, the Richmond area. It’ll be handled through proxies, and the construction company will be through another proxy. By the time the entire housing development is done, you can earn millions there alone. I’m in the works for getting into the Wharton area, as well as Sacramento,” Franco said.

I heard him but didn’t respond. The chaise had served as my bed for the last week, and it had played hell on my back. I covered my eyes with a weary hand and decided not to put a hole in my fucking wall. My balls were tight enough to explode, and I sported a raging hard-on most of the time, but I didn’t touch the only woman who could ease it. From the moment we stepped into this house, she’d shut down. I never saw that woman in the designer shop again. For a fleeting time, I saw what we could be, what we should have been, and lost it. I couldn’t send her to therapy like a normal human being. If she talked, the risk of finding myself back in prison was too great, and she wouldn’t get the help she needed anyway. They wouldn’t understand the darkness in her, but I did.

The very thing she needed, that made her come alive, was what made her afraid. She always, from the beginning, enjoyed the edge of pain that came with being with a man like me. Even when I’d captured her and held her in my cabin, she’d come on my dick, accepted her punishment and swallowing it whole. And when we were in the warehouse, she’d taken her own steps into the darkness.

A therapist wouldn’t understand a fucking switch had been flipped. That people like us didn’t belong in normal society because what was considered normal wouldn’t work for us. We wouldn’t trust it—hell, we’d hate it. Too nice and perfect, with neat little corners. Stupid shit like light bills, what happened on the latest T.V. show, or the heater turning off when it was cold outside were bullshit worries. Ash and me? We lived in a world full of life and death, on the fringes of sanity. Nothing would ever change that. The things we’d seen and done couldn’t be wiped clean. No, a therapist wasn’t what she needed.

“C? You hearing me?”

I looked between my fingers at Franco. “No.”

Franco sighed and sat down on the couch adjacent to me. “What is it, Caesar?”

I lifted my eyebrows at him. In all the time he’d worked for me, Franco had never tried to call me Caesar. But the longer I sat there, I found myself frowning. I didn’t care. Hearing my name didn’t piss me off as much as it had before. To me, Caesar was what Yolanda had always called me. Her name for her silly little brother with the wild hair and crazy ideas. When I’d killed the man who’d taken her from me, I gave up ever hearing that name. The only ones I invited to use it were within my inner circle. For a long time, that only included Sean. Until Ash.

“How did you reconcile who you were with being the man your wife needed?”

He nodded and leaned back. “I thought this was about Ash.” He sighed. “I lied to her, for the most part, in the beginning. I took her on fancy dates and shipped her around the world to meet up with me. She didn’t know I’d just finished killing a man an hour before seeing her. Or that a few times she rode in a car with a dead body in the trunk.” He ran his fingers through his hair and shrugged. “We just … were.”

“A dead body in your fucking truck, while out on a date? Who does that shit?”

Franco smiled. “Men like us.”

I nodded. He was right. It wasn’t like I didn’t have my own share of dark shit in the closet. Hell, some of it I’d done to the very woman I was asking all this for.

“Anyway, by the time she started putting two and two together—because I obviously couldn’t keep that shit under wraps from a lawyer—she loved me. Somehow, someway, I’d made that woman fall for me. And, fuck, I loved her, too. I was more afraid of losing her than her knowing the truth, so I sat down with her and let her ask me anything she wanted to know, on one condition.”

“What was that?”

“That she married me first.”

“Smooth, man.”

“And smart. I knew the shit I was going to tell her could give me multiple life sentences because I knew she’d ask the right questions. She knew it, too, when I gave her my condition. She agreed, and we eloped the next day. I spent most of our honeymoon divulging every secret I had, knowing she could break me if she ever wanted to.”

“But spousal privilege and all that would keep you safe.”

“True. If she didn’t agree to testify, law enforcement couldn’t compel her to say a fucking thing. But if she chose to tell …” He let the rest of his words trail off.

“That was a dangerous game you played.”

“She was worth it. If that woman up there is your Samantha, she’s worth it. But she’s been through some fucked-up shit. She may never be right.”

I knew what he said was true. All I had to do was look at Ash to see she wore her hell on her shoulders. She peeked around corners before she turned, she walked softly and hid her presence. Even in bed, she’d ball up tight, taking as little space as she could. Everything she did was for survival.

Would Yolanda have been any different? I found myself looking to her picture. The golden frame glinted in the city lights and my throat constricted. Had dying been the best thing for her? My chest caved at the thought.

Maybe Franco was right. Maybe too many memories haunted Ash, and I was tied to them as well. Jason the Bitch may have started it, but I’d continued it, and being with me led her to Lorcan. In her short existence, she’d known nothing but pain from me. Pain and the absence of fucking choice.

Just like Yolanda.

“Hey, Franco? What’s today?”

He didn’t have to answer; I felt it in my bones—the same date every year when I grew introspective about my deeds and past. It had never changed me before. But maybe this time could be different.

“January thirteenth,” Franco answered.

I closed my eyes and groaned. “The time?”

“Eleven thirty at night.” Franco’s voice went quiet. He didn’t know about my sister, most of my crew never knew. But Franco was in the inner sanctum now. His attention turned to the picture on the wall.

“She looked like you,” he said.

“Yeah.”

He went quiet. “I’m sorry this is the day of her death.”

I closed my eyes. These were the sort of men Ash was surrounded by. The type that knew not to ask why today was so special because the days that mattered to men like us was when it all ended.

“Do me favor,” I said.

“Anything.”

“Buy me a condo someplace nice and have it fully furnished, then get my jet ready. Once it’s done, let me know.”

“How soon do you want this done, Caesar?”

“Yesterday.”

Franco stood and he pulled his phone out, but before he dialed, he put one big hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

We said nothing more.

Twenty-three hours later, Franco strolled into my bedroom. “It’s done, Caesar.”

My kind of money never irritated me more than it did at that fucking moment. It had taken less than a day to prepare for losing what meant the most to me. And it only took that long because I wanted brand-new furnishings.

Ash curled in the bed, tears dampening her cheeks from her nightmares, and I knew it was the right thing to do. I watched her from the doorjamb of my bedroom.

“Load her things, but don’t wake her.”

“Just me?”

“Only you.”

He nodded and moved to do what I asked without making a sound. I went to the bed and traced one tear trail down her face, thinking that she cried for me because I didn’t know how to cry. Franco passed by for several trips into the darkened room and never once woke her up. I memorized her pouty lips and crescent eyelashes. I fucking waxed poetic and shit.

What do you know? Caesar had a heart, and it was breaking.

Too soon, much too soon, Franco came back and waited next to the bed. “It’s all ready, Caesar.”

“I had her go to bed with pajamas on,” I said.

“What?”

“So you’ll be able to carry her. Fucking stupid, right? I’m letting her go and I still don’t want another man to touch what’s mine, but I won’t put her on that fucking plane if I take her.”

Franco nodded his understanding. “Anything else?”

“Y—” My voice cracked and I cleared it before starting again. “Yeah, hand me that black light on the dresser, will ya?”

He grabbed the light and brought it back. I took her tattooed wrist and placed it under the black light. “When she gets to her new home, show her this and give her the password to that file on her new laptop. She has access to my offshore accounts for anything she needs. They’ll ask for a PIN, tell her she already knows what it is.”

“Fuck, Caesar. Does she know what you have in there?” Franco asked, bewildered.

“No, but that’s why she can have what she wants. I will always make more.”

Franco nodded, and I leaned forward. I took my last sniff, sucking her scent deep into my lungs. I pressed my lips against the softness of her cheek and trailed down to her neck. If I took her now, I wouldn’t stop. Her pulse throbbed beneath my lips and I held my position. My heartbeat, the one I gave her. Fuck, the one she stole right out of my chest.

“I love you,” I mouthed.

I pulled away from her and nodded at Franco. He didn’t take much time lifting her into his arms, and I was thankful for that. I watched her leave with him and tasted salt.

Damn, I guess I could cry.