Page 63 of Kingmakers, Year Two

It takes a lot to get under my skin. Still, even I feel a twinge of discomfort, standing vulnerable and naked under the water.

I won’t let Rocco see me squirm, though. Not for a second.

“You keep staring and I’m gonna charge you for an Only Fans membership,” I say.

“Just assessing the competition,” Rocco says. “Wondering what was so alluring to my fiancée last night.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie.

I’d like to rub it in Rocco’s face that I was dancing with Zoe all night, but my desire to protect her is stronger.

“Don’t pretend to be stupid,” Rocco says. “And certainly don’t pretend that I am.”

He strips off his robe, revealing his body—lean, pale, reasonably fit. There’s nothing deformed about him. Yet I feel a wave of revulsion, like I turned over a rock and found him underneath.

“Are you thinking you could beat me in a fight?” Rocco says, turning on his showerhead. “Maybe you could. You’re taller, heavier. But I think you lack a certain viciousness. The willingness to go past the line. Past what you might consider dishonorable, immoral, even disgusting. I have no line, Miles. None at all. There’s nothing I won’t do.”

He stands under the shower spray, the water flattening his dark hair so it plasters against his skull, his waxy flesh making him look more than ever like some sort of white plastic automaton.

“Do you think you’re the first person who’s tried to threaten me?” I say.

“No,” Rocco replies. “You’re a hustler, right Miles? A deal-maker? You think you can manipulate people. Make them do what you want. That’s how you feel a sense of power—not by violence, but by bending men to your will.”

Despite the hot shower, I feel a chilling cold in my guts.

“You like the idea of taking Zoe from me because you like flouting authority. The school, her parents, my parents, our marriage contract. You like thumbing your nose at all of it. And deep down, you have a little of that hero complex that afflicts your cousin Leo so heavily. You want to save Zoe because you pity her.”

“I don’t pity her,” I growl. “Irespecther.”

“Respect?” Rocco says mockingly.

That’s a foreign concept to him. I doubt he respects his own friends or even his family. He admires only himself.

“Yes. I respect her,” I say. “You have no idea. You’re like a toddler wiping your shit on the Mona Lisa. You couldn’t be more ignorant to what she’s worth.”

“You’re wrong there,” Rocco says quietly, his gleaming eyes fixed on me. “I see Zoe’s qualities. If she was weak, if she was willing, then there wouldn’t be any fun in it. It’s the challenge of breaking her. The joy of deconstructing her, piece by piece, then rebuilding her the way I want her to be. Reforming her like melted glass. Of course there’s always a chance the glass will shatter . . . but if not, I’ll make her exactly the way I want her.”

My guts are churning. I want to rip his fucking throat out, show him how it feels to be torn to pieces like he imagines doing to Zoe. I’ve met men who were greedy, violent, callous. But I’ve never met someone this destructive. Rocco has the soul of an arsonist. If he has any soul at all.

In that moment, I make a decision.

I’m going to save Zoe from Rocco. I don’t know how, but I’m going to do it. Not to be a hero. I’m gonna do it because this is fucking wrong, and it can’t happen. She can never belong to him.

Rocco sees the spark of decision in my face. He’s perceptive, I’ll give him that.

It angers him.

“I’ve never failed to get what I want, Miles,” he hisses. “I’m not like the other men you’ve faced. I don’t eat. I don’t sleep. I don’t give up. I can’t be threatened. I can’t be bargained with. None of your tricks will work on me.”

I turn the water off with a sharp twist, shaking the droplets out of my hair. I pick up my towel and wrap it around my waist, slowly and deliberately, refusing to break Rocco’s laser stare.

“You talk a lot,” I say to him. “You think you’re smart, or convincing. I think you’re limited. Stunted. Pathetic, quite honestly. You don’t even know what you don’t know.”

Patches of color come into his face, splotchy and random.

Rocco can read people, but so can I.

I know that what he wants more than anything is to be feared. He wants to seem formidable. He thinks he’s smarter and stronger than everybody else, purely because he isn’t bound by the usual rules of fairness or compassion.

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