Page 106 of Snitches and Serpents

Bracken smiles a slow smile. “Yes, if you pull it off, we have a deal.”

36

TRISTAN

Slamming the door shut behind us, I whirl around to face Elle. “What the hell did you do?”

Since I practically threw her into this private room at the back of the club, she takes a moment to straighten and brush her hands down her clothes before she looks up and meets my furious stare. As opposed to the panic and dread that tear through my own chest, she looks completely calm.

“I’m owning up to my mistakes,” she replies.

“This isn’t?—”

“I made you into this,” she interrupts. Pain swirls in her eyes as she motions at me and then at the club around us. “This didn’t need to happen. You were on track to becoming an engineer. And I turned you into a criminal.”

My heart squeezes hard. “I was already a criminal. I stole that lab equipment, remember?”

“To study.”

“It doesn’t matter. I still committed a crime. What you did or didn’t do changed none of that.”

“No, but it changed the way you had to live.” Fury blazes in her eyes as she stabs a hand towards the dark blue wall in the direction of Bracken’s office. “I swear to God, if I have to listen to you address him as sir one more time, I will locate the nearest fork and ram it into his eye.”

I jerk back in surprise at the ferocity in her words. And on her face. She looks like she truly is going to follow through on that.

That fire still burns in her eyes as she stalks up to me and starts backing me up against the wall. I let her.

Amusement and gratitude and approval, and something terrifyingly close to love, swirl inside my chest as I look at her.

My back hits the smooth wall with a thud. She moves until she is standing right in front of me. Rising up onto her toes, she buries her fists in the collar of my shirt and locks a commanding stare on me.

“It’s my fault that you had to get involved with the White Serpents,” she declares. “So if I have to get my own hands dirty to get you out of it, I will. And don’t you dare try to talk me out of it, because this is my decision.”

My heart beats erratically in my chest. No one has ever had my back before. All my life, I’ve had to deal with all of the shit life has thrown at me alone.

If someone had told me that the one person who would end up in my corner was the artificially perfect and always so proper mayor’s daughter Elle Summers, I would’ve laughed in their face. Back in high school, I would never have thought that Elle was capable of anything other than fake polite smiles and pleasant manners.

I never would’ve known that she was hiding this kind of fierceness underneath. But now, I’ve come to realize that this is her. This fiery woman who can still be polite and nice when the situation demands it, but who will breathe fire if someone is rude and disrespectful to someone she cares about, is the real her.

With two quick moves, I flip us around so that her back is against the wall instead. Sliding a hand up her throat, I pin her there while I lean down and claim her wicked little mouth with a desperate kiss.

“So fucking stubborn,” I murmur against her lips.

She grins against my mouth.

I kiss her again and then rest my forehead against hers. With my eyes closed, I simply breathe in the scent of her and savor the warmth from her body. Her hands, that were still gripping the collar of my shirt, slide down to my chest. My heart pounds underneath her palm.

“It wasn’t all bad, you know,” I whisper, my eyes still closed. “This life, with the White Serpents, taught me things about myself too. It taught me to stand up for myself. To be ruthless. To take what I want and to not let anyone stand in the way. I might have hated being trapped in debt, but I don’t regret the experience. I like who I am now.”

“I like who you are now too,” she says, her voice soft.

A short chuckle escapes my lungs, and I pull back enough to meet her gaze again. Cocking my head, I arch a dubious brow at her. “Even though I bullied you and kidnapped you and held you captive and got you arrested three times?”

She tries to glare at me, but the smile she’s failing to suppress ruins the effort. With a huff, she swats my chest with the back of her hand. “You forgot about the rats.”

A wicked smile tugs at my own lips. “Right. The rats. In your room. In your bed.”

“Yeah.” Then her expression turns contemplative. “It wasn’t all bad for me either, you know.”

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