Page 35 of Devil's Riches

“So no matter what sort of relationship you had before you wound up down here, you must love her and care about her wellbeing, right? After she’s taken such good care of you?”

“So what?” Greg repeated.

Nate rose to his feet. “If you don’t answer our questions, I’ll have to hurt her when she gets home later. Right in front of you. Do you think you can stand to see that?”

Worry flitted across Greg’s lined face, but it was soon replaced by amusement. “You wouldn’t hurt your own mother,” he said with a snort of laughter.

I arched a brow and stepped forward. “You know what? You’re right,” I said smoothly. “He probably wouldn’t hurt his mom. But I would. I barely know her. In fact, all I really know about her is that she’s been harboring you for the last ten years—the man who murdered my father. So I have no problem carving chunks out of her if that’s what it takes to get one or both of you talking.”

“She’s not lying, man. She did this to me a couple of weeks ago,” Nate said, lifting his jacket and shirt to show off the knife scar on his abdomen. “I wouldn’t play with her if I were you.”

Greg craned his neck and squinted to get a better look at the scar. “Jesus, you stabbed him?” he said, darting his eyes over to me. “Why?”

“I caught him texting another girl.” I turned and fixed Nate with my most psychotic stare, bright and wide-eyed. “I bet you won’t do that again, will you, babe?”

He grimaced. “Not a chance. Learned my lesson the hard way.”

Greg slowly shook his head. “And you think I’m the fucked up one here,” he muttered.

I smiled. “Are you going to talk or not?”

“Fine,” he muttered in a tentative tone. “What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start from the beginning,” Nate said. “When I first found you down here, you said some stuff to me before you made up that bullshit about being Peter Covington. You said my mom hid you for the last ten years because ‘they’ were going to kill you, whoever the hell ‘they’ are. Was that bullshit too? Or did it mean something?”

Greg let out a short sigh. “It was true. Your mother has kept me safe for a very long time.”

“Safe from what?”

He lapsed into silence for a long moment. “The Golden Circle were coming after me,” he finally said. “Annalise saved me. She convinced them all I was dead and hid me down here. She risked her own life to do it.”

Nate frowned. “Why would she risk her life to help you after the way you’ve treated her?”

“What are you talking about?” Greg asked, eyes narrowing.

“I’m talking about the fact that you spent half your life hating her and treating her like shit. Why would she risk her life for you after that?”

An incredulous expression passed over Greg’s face. “I’ve never hated Annalise,” he said. “I love her.”

“You’ve got a weird way of showing it,” I said, crossing my arms.

Anger suddenly flared in Greg’s eyes. He pulled on his chains, making them rattle on the concrete. “I told you, I fucking love her,” he growled. “And she feels the exact same way about me.”

“Why were you so horrible to her, then?”

“I wasn’t,” he said, nostrils flaring. “I love her more than anything. Always have and always will.”

Something about the way he said those words made my chest tighten, like a thick rubber band was squeezing around it. “What are you saying, Greg?” I asked in a low voice, tilting my head.

He turned his gaze to me. “I’m saying exactly what you think I’m saying, sweetheart,” he said, thin lips twisting into a smirk. “You remember what I told you when I had you on my table, don’t you?”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Nate asked, eyes darting over to me.

A bitter tang appeared in my mouth. Greg’s words were echoing in my head; the ones he spoke to me when he had me tied up on that table in my old garden shed.

Sexuality is a spectrum, you know. To me, it doesn’t matter who someone is, where they come from, or what they have between their legs. If I want to fuck them, I’m going to fuck them. But I didn’t want that from any of the people I took.

“No…” I shook my head, one hand fluttering around my mouth. Nausea was rising in my throat, and my skin felt like it was crawling with thousands of insects. “You’re lying.”

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