Page 41 of The Sinner's Bargain

Christ, why was this so fucking hard?

Accepting I had been gone long enough, I crept to the end of the hall and stomped back to the office, making all the noise in the world until I reached the door. I wasn’t surprised to find her in her seat, small hands folded neatly in her lap. Her mug sat on the tray next to her empty plate.

I pretended not to notice.

I kept my face blank as I moved to my chair and sat.

She looked better. Drawn still, but less like she was going to faint. There was a pinch of color in her cheeks at least and a light in her eyes.

I looked away.

“Are you a spy, Blue?” I fixed my gaze back on her, assessing every flicker of thought on her face.

“No,” she murmured without batting an eye.

“Did someone send you?”

Her head was shaking even before I finished. “I promise no one did.”

I sat back. “Are you running from someone?”

Her lashes dropped and her lip curled up between her teeth.

I exhaled slowly. “You’re in a right mess, aren’t ya, sweetheart.”

She peered up at me, captured lip begging me to free it of the abuse. “I’m sorry.”

My eyebrow lifted at the quiet apology. “What for?”

She looked away again. “For bringing you into my mess, but if you let me go, I promise I won’t tell anyone about you. I promise. Please.”

The please was followed by a flick of her eyes back up at me.

Vance would call me a soft fool, but I believed her. You didn’t get as far as I had in the type of work I did without learning to read people. She wasn’t lying, but I still couldn’t bring myself to let her go. Not yet.

“No.”

Her attention shifted to the window just above my head. It lingered there while she contemplated her response, and I watched her. Studied the quiet little spasms of her bunched fists cutting new knicks in her palm. Watched the anxious nibbling of her teeth sawing into her lip. I was so in tune to her every heartbeat that I didn’t miss the barely intelligible tremor in her voice when she spoke.

“What are you going to do with me?”

I almost laughed. The sound was brittle and sharp teetering on the tip of my tongue, but the sight of her tears stopped me. They clung so dangerously close to the edge, turning her eyes luminous in the light of the late afternoon.

My jaw clenched.

“Would you believe that I have no fucking idea, love?” I told her honestly. “Keep you, I suppose.”

“Are you going to hurt me?”

Never, I wanted to tell her, but I hadn’t lied to her this far.

“Yes.”

Because that was exactly what would happen if I kept her there and it would be my fault.

Neither of us seemed to have much to say after that. There was probably a lot more we should have said, but we settled on a reluctant sort of silence that wasn’t exactly comfortable so much as unavoidable.

She watched me pull my paperwork out and begin the process of looking over negotiation contracts for a shipping warehouse I was looking into buying and a fleet of laundry mats I was looking to sell off. The latter mostly to avoid the heat it was getting the last several months from the cops. They wouldn’t find anything. My paperwork was impeccable, but why toy with fate? I had my eye on a couple of gambling halls, anyway. It would make moving money ten times faster.

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