Page 35 of Raiden

“Congrats.” She waves her hand at the bed before she crosses her arms and plants her feet in a wide stance. The flush of anger or maybe embarrassment creeps up her neck above the open top button of her blouse. “Hope your PI achieved whatever you wanted. You could have just asked me. You won’t figure out whether I’m playing your or not by gathering facts about my past.”

Shame curdles in my belly. She deserves more than this. More than me. I could have asked her, but we’re not in a position where we trust each other enough to believe the answers.

She would have told me the truth anyway.

There’s something inherently honest about this woman that everyone else seems to lack. She’s like her brother that way. Fundamentally good. Salt of the earth. Honest to a fault. Tough as all fuck in her own right. I just couldn’t see it.

I sit up and gather up the pages, tucking them back into the folder. My legs swing over the bed, and I lean my elbows on them.

She waits, looking like she’d spit on me if given the chance, but behind her justified anger and hurt at my betrayal, there’s something sweet. It’s more than just her perfume and the natural scent of her. It catches me off guard, as does the way my body reacts. The visceral tightening, the flood of heat, the surge of protectiveness and possessivenesswhen I think about what I read in that file, isn’t something I can fight.

I brush my hand over my shaved head. “Fuck…” I exhale, drawing out the word. “After what I read, I understand how deeply I hurt you. I can see how it would be triggering for you.”

Her mouth works as she struggles to keep her words in, to choose them wisely instead of just firing them at me. “That’s a stupid term. What you did was predictable and exhausting. It was disappointing. I thought you were more than that.”

Her words strike like a flint, igniting the primal, deep-seated fury at the heart of me, but I’m not mad at her. I’m mad at myself. At the world. “I’m not.” There’s nothing subtle about the fisting of my insides as I watch her arm herself in front ofmy eyes. I point at the folder. “This isn’t about me. I should have asked you, but now I know anyway.” It’s also taken everything inside of me not to ride off half-cocked and commit first degree fucking murder, gouging out eyes, cutting off hands, and staving in skulls of the pricks who made this woman’s life hell.

That’s not something I want to dwell on. The fact I can’t stop thinking about it doesn’t bode well for me.

That shit isn’t romance. It’s straight up craziness. I can’t afford attachment. The only allegiance I owe is to this club.

“You were doing your degree at an Ivy League school. Not easy to get into, but you were smart. Everything was fine until your last year. You tried to file harassment charges against not one, buttwoof your professors. It was swept away, and you were the one who left. It was you who the dean and probably a whole lot of other people called a liar.”

She studies her nails, which are freshly painted black. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

“You finished your undergrad back in Nevada and did your Master’s there, and then you were working on your PhD, but you left in your second year, just shy of finishing.” Her eyes darken despite her efforts to look bored. “Why was that?”

“You know why,” she spits, a new kind of violence I haven’t seen in her before rising up. “It was the same age-old story. It must have been my fault. I must have been asking for it. Led them on. Seduced them. Even though I was trying to live in their world, I was never going to fit. I wanted my Master’s. Wanted my PhD. It was my dream to be a professor one day, to open doors for people and open worlds that I never had opened for myself. I was never going to be them. I thought if I couldn’t join them, I’d beat them, but it didn’t happen that way. All they saw in me wastrash, someone they could ruin and discard, laying the blame entirely at my feet.”

I open the folder and scan the list I’ve placed at the front. “Their names are all here.” I manage to sound casual, not like a beast longing to tear these men apart and feast on their hearts. Which is, I have to admit, incredibly fucking unlike me. “You tell me which ones I have to kill.”

“Jesus Christ!” Her eyes widen and after a pause, she laughs. I wish it was real. “If I wanted them dead, they’d be dead already. You think I didn’t get offers from my dad to take care of me?”

“You allowed them to chase you away.”

“It didn’t happen like that. What you’re not going to read in that file was that I stabbed him in the thigh with a pocketknife. He agreed not to press assault charges against me if I was the one to leave and keep quiet about it. He was twice my size. He was the one who asked me to come to his office and tried to assault me, but I was the one looking at potential jailtime. It was my word against his. He was well respected. He came from money and could afford a lawyer who would twist things in his favor no matter what really happened. He made me sign that NDA and agree to leave. I had to withdraw from all my classes a few months before the semester was over.”

I’m on my feet before I even realize that I’ve surged up and off the bed. “I will fucking end him.”

Her smile is full of sadness. “I’ve fantasized about it repeatedly, but you won’t get the chance. He hurt someone else. The wrong girl. She had connections I didn’t have. More money than him too, I’d bet. He’s the one doing jailtime for raping her.”

“An easy target then.”

“I think he’ll get taken care of there. No one likes a sexual predator.”

“Your dad knew about this, and I didn’t?” Fuck. it would be nice to have a conversation without coming across as a whining, butthurt child.

“He might be a mad bastard to you, but to me, he’s my father.”

I struggle for control, which means looking away. “I don’t want you to take this wrong. It’s going to come out badly because of what’s already been said and when it’s been said but… why now? Why did Zale only come for you after he was finished with this club and ready for his revenge?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “I always thought it had more to do with my mom. She didn’t want me coming up here. She never said so, but she was scared that if I liked it, I’d want to stay. She also didn’t want a man like Zale, who wasn’t father material, in and out of my life. That’s confusing and painful for a kid. When I was an adult, she didn’t step in and stop it because I was old enough to make up my own mind.”

She’s right about Zale not being father material. Even for Gray growing up, it was the men from this club who raised him, who did all the shit a father was supposed to do. It was my family who fed him most days because he was always with me, even going so far to include him in holidays and look after him when he was sick.

“My mom never kept him from me. It’s not like I didn’t know about him, and she didn’t varnish the truth. I knew he was busy, that I was a surprise for both of them, and that my fatherhad a life across the country that made him far too busy to come and visit. It was the kind of life not fit for a child to rub up against. My mom told me the truth of it all, but she always made sure I knew that she loved me enough for two parents. When he came for me, he never apologized for not being there. He didn’t have to. I got it. I wasn’t resentful. I was working at an office job, hating every minute of it when he showed up. I was ready to do something else with my life. That’s why I went. Not because I thought I owed him anything. He paid off my student loans. It wasnota small debt. He found me a place to stay and took care of everything so that I had nothing to worry about.”

“I’m not trying to make- I…” I start again, gripping that folder hard in my hands. “You never thought that he was buying you off?”

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