Page 16 of Broken Souls
I can practically hear her sarcasm, and my lips twitch as I slide my phone back into my pocket. She arrives less than a minute after I enter, closing the door behind her as I prick my finger with a needle.
“You want a quickie?” she asks hopefully.
My cock jerks up, saying yes despite the pain (although I have now wrapped it), but I shake my head. “Come here.”
Her smile falling a bit, she crosses the room as I squeeze out a large drop of blood onto my fingertip.
“Who do you think is blackmailing you?” I ask, knowing she has been trying to figure it out.
She stops on the other side of the desk. There is a flash in her eyes, a look of guilt that causes my paranoia to rise. “I don’t –”
“Don’t lie to me,” I say, catching her gaze for a heartbeat before turning away to smear my blood onto the keypad of the safe behind me. The painting that normally hangs over it leans up against the wall below it. My blood is eaten by the magic protecting the metal safe as I key in the access code, then the ward grants me access. I open the door and pull out the leather notebook inside. Turning to Micha, I drop it on my desk.
She stares at me, a wariness in her eyes.
“Tell the blackmailer you have the ledger,” I say.
“And how would I have gotten it?”
“You think he’ll want to know how?”
“You think it’s a guy?” she asks, just as sharp.
I smile. My cock jumps, turned on by her brain. “Do you not?”
She hesitates, studying me. A flash of pain darts across her eyes before she buries it. I keep my face completely free of my thoughts even as my blood freezes in my veins. What is she worried about? What is she hiding?
“The blackmailer texted me when the house was empty,” she says slowly. “Your brothers –”
“All know where the safe is,” I say, my eyes narrowing slightly. “As well as how to get into it.”
“I didn’t know that,” Micha says, but she doesn’t sound convinced it isn’t one of them.
My fingers itch with the need to clench into fists and go a couple rounds with the bag – or an opponent I can make bleed.
“Who do you think it is?” I ask. I don’t want to believe her, but nor do I want to believe that she’s trying to get me to turn on them. To divide us so her Family or someone else who might have hired her can come in and fuck us over as we fight among ourselves.
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “But whoever it was knew the house was empty when they texted me.”
“So you think it’s one of my brothers?” I ask flatly. And then it clicks. Her question about the blackmailer being a male. “Or my mother?”
“Who else could’ve known?” she says.
You.
The blackmailer had ‘conveniently’ deleted all evidence of their existence from her phone. She claimed they were using Dayne, her best friend, to manipulate her, but I had a guy watching him for months, knowing that the easiest way to get to Micha (and, in turn, to me) was through her best friend. No one had threatened him at all.
Is she lying about the whole thing?
I hate that I am having these thoughts. That even though we’ve bonded, I still can’t trust her.
I search inside myself, looking for the first tether of that bond, for any sort of emotional connection at all.
But there is nothing.
Did she even really start it?Or was that just a lie to get me to lower my guard?
My blood runs cold, but now that I’ve had that thought, I can’t shake it. I should be able to feelsomethingeven with the mere few drops of blood we supposedly exchanged, and yet there is nothing.
