Page 10 of The Forbidden Secret

When I had planned to kill her, it had felt too much like I was becoming my father.

There was a line somewhere between what I did for a living and what he had done for his own cruel satisfaction, and though I couldn’t quite pinpoint where that line rested, I knew that killing Evelina and her sisters would have certainly crossed it.

Even if they were the daughters of a brutal, notorious leader of a crime syndicate.

“Fine,” she said with crossed arms. “But I’m not going first.”

“Fine,” I repeated.

I slid into the small laundry lift and pressed the button from the outside. There was enough room for me to crouch inside the small box as it closed and delivered me to the basement of the building. The moment it stopped, I pulled open the doors and sent it back for Evelina.

It took her longer than expected, but she followed soon after, stepping out of it as if it had caught fire.

“Don’t ever make me do something like that again,” she hissed, pointing a slim finger in my face. “Like, ever.”

I only huffed a laugh. “Whatever makes you most comfortable, Princess.”

“And stop calling me that.”

“No can do.”

I turned and began walking toward the service door of the apartment complex, where we would take the back route a few blocks and meet our driver. She hurried behind me wordlessly, following me through the service door.

“Why?”

“You act like a fucking princess,” I told her, turning to face her. I took a step forward, and her eyes went wide as she parried my step. Back and straight into a brick wall. I knew what I needed to say, but I didn’t want to say it. Being dishonest with her was the last thing I wanted, but if it would end this hot and cold act, I would take it. “You’re pissed about a one-night stand that you chose to have. I didn’t sign up for commitments, and neither did you. I’ll stop calling you a princess when you stop acting like one. I’m here because I’m being paid to keep you safe, nothing more. Stop treating me like a fucking criminal because we had sex, and I didn’t want more.”

I couldn’t place a single of the emotions that ran through her eyes before she shut them down. All of them. Her eyes went blank and glassy with an intentional lack of feeling, and it was like a fist to my gut.

“You’re right,” she replied.

I bit down on my tongue to keep from telling her what I really wanted to say.

I wanted her. I wanted to take her against this wall right now. I wanted to drag her back into the bathroom and fuck her two days ago.

If she were even half as fucked up as me and my history, I may have told her those things. But I couldn’t stop consideringwhat had happened between my sadistic father and kind-hearted mother. He had happily allowed her to fall in love with him, and then he had destroyed every spark of joy within her.

He had destroyed everything, and I wouldn’t let myself become that.

“Then let’s go.”

I took a step back, and she took a moment before pushing away from the wall. “If we’re going to be spending time together, and you want me to forget about the one-night stand, tell me something about yourself.”

I glanced back at her and slowed until she walked in stride with me. “I’m a high school dropout,” I told her, relaying the first thing that came to mind.

“Why are you interested in art?”

I paused. “I’m not.”

We rounded a building, and I looked both ways carefully, monitoring the small crowd of people walking on each side of the street. When I spotted no threats, we continued.

“Why did you buy my entire collection?”

Ihaddone that. I ran my tongue over my hoop, shifting it as I thought about the best way to answer her question. I didn’t particularly care about paintings, but hers had spoken to me in a way that I could not explain. The darkness, the hopelessness, the sadness…

So I bought them all.

I had told myself it would be a trap—have her deliver them to a house that wasn’t mine and finish the job I had been hired to do. Take her out, and then go for her sisters next.

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