Page 34 of Duke of Ruin

“What if I can get Gianni’s laptop?”

Noah narrows his eyes at me, but doesn’t speak.

“Everything the FBI needs to bring down everyone involved would be on his laptop. Most of my family believe I’m dead, so if I can get the laptop I can disappear and yourfriendcan make her arrests,” I say. Noah flinches with the emphasis I put on the word “friend.”

“We can trust her,” Noah says softly, putting a hand on my knee.

“Maybe you can,” I snap.

“Do you trust me?” Noah turns toward me. I try to fight it, but my face morphs into an expression of incredulity.

“No,” I bark at him. “I don’t trust you, and you haven’t exactly given me many reasons to do that. It’s probably the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever done just to be sitting in this goddamn room with you!”

Noah’s face crumples, but he doesn’t react or argue. He knows I’m right, and it hurts. “Do you…do you want me to go?” he asks, his voice breaking.

“No,” I say quickly. “No…I…I don’t know.”

His face falls even more, and I get up and start pacing the room.

“I want to believe you, Noah,” I say. My hands are wildly gesticulating, but I can’t seem to hold any of this back. Five minutes ago while he was on the phone I managed to convince myself that we would be okay, that we could be together, but as soon as I try to trust him, everything in me just gets…angry. “Damn do I want to believe you, but you lied to me!” Tears start to prickle at my eyes. “You lied to me. You made me believe things that weren’t true. I trusted you, but you weren’t the person you claimed to be. How the fuck am I supposed to believe you now?”

“I don’t know, Eli,” Noah says to the floor. “I wish there was something I could say or do to prove how I feel about you, but all I can think of is making sure you aren’t hurt again, and that takes time, which is something we don’t have.”

“Look at me and say that!” I shout. I don’t even know why. Maybe I just want him to hurt as badly as I do.

He raises his dark eyes to mine, captivating me with their intensity. “I love you, Eli.”

A sob escapes my throat, and I’m torn between rushing into his arms and knocking his fucking teeth out.

“I know my words don’t mean shit right now, but you can trust me. I will never hurt you again. Ican’t,” Noah says. Every cell in my body is screaming at me to trust him, but maybe that’s just my desperate mind trying to cling to a false hope.

“Fuck you, Noah,” I say through strained vocal cords. “Fuck you.” I collapse into the uncomfortable chair in the corner and bury my face in my hands. The tears start streaming freely, but there’s nothing I can do about them now.

Someone pounds on the door, and we both freeze. I glare at Noah, but he looks more confused than I feel.

“Eli, open up! I know you’re in there,” a familiar voice yells. Noah grabs his gun from the table and I grab my .45 from the nightstand. He moves against the wall, just out of sight of the door as I walk up to it. I glance through the peephole and see Reese on the other side. I shake my head. Reese disappeared after my encounter with him. He should be dead, so what the fuck is he doing here?

“What do you want?” I say through the door, moving to the side in case he tries to force his way through.

“I just want to talk,” Reese says. “I have a proposition for you that I think you’ll be interested in.”

“Bullshit. How’d you know I was here?”

“Your father had me put a tracker in your holster,” he says in a slightly lower voice. Noah immediately grabs my holster from the table and starts examining it. He must find what he’s looking for, because after a few seconds he slams it against the table and some tiny bits of metal go flying through the air.

“Come on, Eli, just open the door. I don’t want to shout through it all night,” he says. “Your father doesn’t know I’m here, and he doesn’t know you’re here, either.”

“My fucking father is dead,” I growl back.

“Shit, really?”

“What the fuck is going on?” I bark.

“Just open the damn door, Eli,” he says. I look over at Noah, who shakes his head. It doesn’t look like I have much of a choice, though. Keeping my pistol low, I pull open the door. Noah immediately steps back from his position, his gun trained on Reese as he walks through the door. “Whoa, whoa,” he says, lifting his hands. I can see a pistol on his hip, but he doesn’t go for it. “I just want to talk.”

“What do you want?” I say, moving to his side and allowing Noah plenty of room to shoot him if necessary.

“The same thing you do,” Reese says as he sits down in the chair and throws his arms over the backrest. “Freedom.”

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