Page 161 of Grumpy Billionaire Bad Boy

She lowers her arms and silent tears stream down her cheeks.

God, it fucking kills me to watch her cry, but there's not a damn thing I can do to stop it, not when she's already made her decision.

I sit on the armrest of the nearby sofa chair, the gun still in my grasp, my head hung low. "I had it figured out," I say again, this time louder.

"I didn't know, Archer. I didn't know. I'm sorry." London remains where she stands, where I snapped at her not to touch me. "I didn't think I had a choice."

I look up at her despite it unleashing another bout of agony raging through me. "That's the thing, London. Youalwayshad a choice. And you made yours. You couldn't be bothered to talk to me, to trust me. I told you I'd figure it out. I gave you my word, did that mean nothing to you?"

"It did, I promise you, it did, but I still thought we were in too deep." She wipes her cheek, her chest sputtering from the tears she can't control. "I couldn't give myself to him, you have to understand what that would be like. You heard him, what he was planning on doing to me." Her lip quivers. "But even as badly as I wanted to, I couldn't go through with it." She shakes her head. "I couldn't do that to you."

"But you did, London. You had every intention of killing him when you came here with this." I shove the gun into the air between us, causing London to flinch. "You trusted Seven, but not me?" I slump my head once again, trying to make sense of everything.

"I don't trust Seven over you, Archer. I just knew he had no moral compass and would help me. I manipulated him because I knew I could, that was it."

"Is that what you've been doing to me?" I meet her watery gaze. "Manipulating me?"

"Never," she says, her voice barely a whisper. "I wouldn't do that to you."

"I don't believe a word coming out of your mouth."

"Then kill me." London spreads her arms wide, inviting me to end her life. "I'm going to lose you either way. Just do it."

I scoff. "I'm not going to kill you, London. I don't care how much I hate you. I could never kill you." I couldn't even bring myself to kill Madison, although the thought crossed my mind, and I don't know what that says about me, about my character. "I wish you would have talked to me first, told me what you were planning on doing. I wouldn't have stopped you; I just would have asked for more time." I pause, my mind going a mile a minute. "That's what's fucked up, you know? I understand why you did it. But it doesn't make it hurt any less. After everything we've been through, after telling you what Madison did to me, you went and did the same thing. Only, this is worse, because I actually loved you." The words slip out of my mouth before I have a chance to stop them.

London inches forward, hesitantly. "Archer." She drops to her knees next to me, her hands on my leg, her head tilted up at me.

"Don't say it, it's only going to make this worse."

"But…" Her eyes dart back and forth between mine as if she's trying to telepathically communicate with me, and as much as I hate it, I can read her mind.

I can feel how sorry she is.

I can sense every bit of love she's begging me to understand, but it doesn't matter—it doesn't change anything.

If she loved me, truly, she wouldn't have done this.

"Why are you here, Archer? If you weren't here for me, why were you here?" London changes the subject and I'm grateful because I can't stand to think about everything we lost when she came here today.

"To kill him," I tell her truthfully.

"I'm not following." London stays at my side, her hands practically burning their way through my pants and into my body.

"I guess we were both here for the same reason." I swallow the lump in my throat. "You came here to choose yourself, and I gave myself up to choose you."

"What do you mean, you gave yourself up? To who?"

"I went to Blake Manor, I confessed to hacking into the Manor, I told him I was the reason for the breach. I figured my only choice was to take away the one advantage Vito had over me."

"You didn't come here to talk to Joe?"

"No, I already told you, I came here to kill him." I lift my shirt to reveal the gun I had tucked up under my waistband, never needing it since London brought her own. It was cake hacking into the elevators and granting myself access, and Vito did me a favor when he ordered room service, giving me the perfect opportunity to get into his room. He was a careless and overly confident man and because of it, I was able to come in nearly undetected, until I spotted London inside the room and that changed literally everything.

"But if you told Blake, that means you…"

"Confessed to breaking the treaty," I finish when she doesn't. "I took full responsibility for it, sparing my siblings’ lives and businesses. Blake was thrilled, but reasonable, accepting my life in exchange for payment."

"Archer, no." She shakes her head as if she's realizing the magnitude of the situation and the lengths I went through to save her life. And that's what makes it worse, because I traded my life for hers and she did nothing but stab me in the back when I wasn't looking.

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