Page 111 of Diamond In The Rough

My chest heaves with silent sobs. “Please stop.”

“Sex for financial reward or career advancement is called prostitution, Tiia.” Enraged, he shoves up tall and circles away, leaving me here. Alone. Broken. Terrified. “You’re a fucking whore.” He closes the door, snicking the locks and shutting out most of what little light penetrates the trees.

Then pressing his back to the steel, he looks me dead in the eyes and drops his hands into his pockets. “I loved you,” he grits out. “I have never, in my entire fucking life, been so stupid as to give my heart to someone else.”

“Micah…”

“And I thought I’d done my due diligence. I thought I’d checked you out. Tested you. Run your background. I was being thorough!” he snaps. “I was taking no risks with my family’s well-being. But I was just looking at the wrong side of the line.”

“Please stop,” I sob, wriggling my hands and searching for a way out. “Please let me go.”

“I was so focused on you being Wilkes’ girl, I never even considered you might be Uncle Sam’s.”

My heart thunders horrifyingly fast—a very real chance I might die of cardiac arrest long before his blades pierce my skin. Or his bullets.

Not his words, though. They’ve already hit me. Like a scattershot of pellets that keeps coming.

“The Feds,” he sighs, dropping his head and shaking it side to side. “We’ve had a dozen just like you waltz through our home over the years. Sometimes they’re dudes dressed up as guards. And sometimes they’re women, posing as a sex worker.” He scoffs. “We always knew what they were. It was so easy to tell, we didn’t even have time to get mad at them. But not you, Tiia Ailani.” He drags his bottom lip between his teeth, staring down into my soul and destroying everything I am inside.

Everything I’ve ever been, or hope to be, in the future.

“No,” he repeats, “not you. You snuck in and made me a fool.”

“I’m sorry?—”

“You want to put my brother in prison?” he booms, making me jump with his harsh words. “You want to hurt a good family? You want to imprison someone who is single-handedly taking New York crime and making things better?”

“Micah—”

“I know your boardroom would’ve been bursting with riled Feds. Let’s get those bastards,” he sneers. “Let’s lock those Malones up and clean our streets. Your people have been trying for longer than I’ve been alive.”

“Please let me go.” I try to stretch my leather cuffs. Squirm. I attempt to wriggle my legs. My arms. I search for movement of any kind and pray I find it before he slits my throat. “Don’t be the Malone that kills a Fed, Micah. Please.”

I’m begging you.

“So you admit it, at least.” He shakes his head. “For the first time since we met, you speak the truth.”

“You deserve better than to do this.” I search his eyes, tilting my head when he glances away. “You don’t deserve to go to prison because of whatever you’re gonna do to me.” My voice cracks. “Please, Micah. Think further ahead than your hurt right now.”

“You want to live?”

“I want you to live!” Tears stream from my eyes. “I want you to not walk out of here and head-first into a hundred guns. Because that’s where this is going. You hurt me, and you’ve condemned yourself to a lifetime behind bars, or worse,” I groan. “Worse, you get yourself shot and buried.”

“You sleep with me to do your job,” he snarls. “And you act like it’s my life you want to save, when it’s yours. All along, it’s been about you and your neck.”

“It hasn?—”

He takes the long, silver knife I’ve seen a thousand times before—in photographs, more than in person—from his pocket and flicks the blade open until the cold steel glints against the muted light whispering through the windows.

“You’re a fucking liar, Tiia. And you’re a whore for hire. But worse…” He pushes off the door and saunters closer. “At least those girls on the corner are honest about who they are. They’re truthful about what they want from a man.” Dangerously, terrifyingly, he stops a foot in front of me and crouches to be on my level. “A handy for a hundred bucks. A roll in a cheap bed for rent money. It’s a simple transaction.” He slides the dull side of his blade across my thigh, slicing through the denim of my shorts like a knife through butter. “They’re honest, Grá. And sadly, that’s not a label I can apply to you.”

“I was never sent here to hurt you.” My jaw trembles. But I bite down on the emotion clogging my throat. I work to dry my tears and harden up. He’s Micah fucking Malone, and he’s already tied me down. I’m not sure he deserves my sorrow.

My heart, yes.

But not my heartbreak.

“I was sent to watch.”

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