Page 35 of Sweet Rule
She’s pissed. I can see it in the way she’s moving. Body held tense and tight like a watch spring ready to snap. Then there’s the way she’s looking at me like she wants to stab me. I’ve never had my girl look at me any other way than adoring, which makes the murderous look on her face all the more noticeable.
She looks beautiful, even if I wouldn’t put it past her to shoot me with the gun I’ve got on me. It’s difficult not to look at her, not because I haven’t seen her in a week, but because it’s what she wants. I can tell by the way she’s angling her body to me, by the way she’s intentionally bratting to make me react.
Little shit, rubbing her hand after touching me, like her hand was dirty. That dismissive little tut she gave after we were “introduced” has my palm ready to turn her ass red.
I can’t watch her because then Zeus will know how much I want her. No, not want. Need. He knows I want Honey. That was made plain to him the night he took her from me. What he doesn’t know is that I need her. I’m like a fucking dying man without her. Dying of thirst in the desert. My head feels like it’s spinning but I keep it cool and calm, which only pisses my princess off more.
She’s practically spitting fire at me by the time the group has settled into the room Zeus brought us to. It’s got old style paneling along the walls and a roaring fireplace with leather backed chairs and gold framed paintings on the walls. It looks like something you see when people mention royalty and shit like that. It’s the exact opposite of the club we just walked out of, but I know it’s for a reason. This is who Zeus wants us to see him as. A man as powerful as a king. For some of the others it works.
Not me.
I know how he made his money. Charlaine made sure of that. He might have come out of nowhere, but he got his start in freight and shipping. Respectable. Then he made the switch to the club and grew it out of nothing. But before that is where it gets murky. Charlaine can’t find much on him, but she knows he started poor from the first residence she found for him in Queens.
I grew up in Queens and it seems all three of us got our start there, with Honey living there before she started it with me. We’ve come a long way from Queens. Maybe Zeus wants to do his best to scrub the evidence of it off, but I don’t particularly want to. Not if it turns me into one of the pieces of shit that was chatting up Honey on the way here.
I heard every word they said to her. I heard the words they didn’t say to her.
“I’m going to fuck her ass.”
“Mouth like that, you know what it’s good for.”
The urge to put a bullet in the men sits heavy on me but I don’t move. I have to play nice enough that Zeus lets me get close. That he considers me for this fucked up plan he has for Honey. I scan the room, picking out the ones that had talked the most.
Some older fuck from Uptown with silvery blond hair and an Ivy League type that said he’d cum on Honey’s tits as a wedding gift. When the Ivy Leaguer looks in my direction I meet his stare. I let him look his fill, because I want him to remember my face when I track him down after this.
When I smile at him, he looks away. Fucking pussy.
“I am thankful so many of the city’s finest have turned out to vie for my daughter’s hand. You do the Vlahos name honor by making your interests known,” Zeus says and I grit my teeth. How can he say that with how the men are talking about Honey? Like she’s a whore they’re all too eager to use. Then again, Zeus is the kind of man that wouldn't care so long as his plans go the way he wants.
He doesn’t know Honey. How can he love her? She’s just something for him to use to get ahead. He wouldn’t care what plans these fuckers have for her.
“I know this is unconventional, but I am an unconventional man,” he says with a chuckle. The men gathered smile and laugh like they’re meant to. I stay quiet and watch Honey. She’s thinking hard. Wrestling with a decision. I can see it plain as day on her, but no one else does. She’s doing a good job of keeping her emotions locked down and I feel pride. I don’t like that she’s doing it, but I know why. She’s trying to survive.
I respect that even if I want to rage at her having to do it. Her life was supposed to be easy with me. The only way I wanted her was soft and willing, eager for the ease I promised to bring her. She is anything but while she goes over her options with Zeus distracted. I don’t care how she tries to play it, when she shook my hand I knew she hadn’t known he was doing this. At least, she hadn’t known he was going to do this tonight. Not if the sick and panicked look on her face when she’d been on the dais was anything to go by.
Zeus opens his mouth to go on another bullshit long-winded speech, but Honey reaches out and catches his arm. He stops and looks her way before she moves close to him. He bends his head and listens when she starts to speak. We all fall silent as they talk and whatever it is, it’s big, because Zeus starts to shake his head no, but Honey doesn’t give up. She grabs onto his arm with her other hand and starts to speak faster. A tense minute falls with only the whisper of my girl’s words reaching me before Zeus relents to her.
He holds up a hand and nods to her. He steps aside, giving her the floor and Honey wastes no time coming forward. She looks so unlike the woman that I love that I have to concentrate to make sense of it. She’s confident now as she stands in front of the room. There’s no shyness to her or fidgeting, not like when I met her in the coffee shop and she was so stunned she almost lost her job. And that was in front of a screaming woman that Honey nearly buckled. Now she stands in front of the city’s most illustrious and wealthy men and there’s no give to her.
She’s changed. It’s obvious, but what I don’t know is how much has she changed?
How much of the woman I love is still there?
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
HONEY
I don’t know what I’m doing, but the second Zeus steps back and gives me the floor, I know I can’t stop.
I clear my throat and look out at the room. All eyes are on me, but I don’t back down. My life hangs in the balance if I do. I have to take what I want.
“There will be no need to drag this out. I’ve made my choice on who I’ll marry.”
Shock greets me and I drink it up greedily. I like that I surprised them. I especially like that the men who walked with me down the hall look like I just kicked them in the balls. Good. Fuck them.
“I’ve chosen Lawson Sokolov to marry. That is all. Thank you for coming.”
There’s a deafening silence in the room for a split second before people start talking. Not to me, of course, but to Zeus. They don’t agree with what I’ve said and want to change his mind, but I’m not paying attention as they swarm him. I’m looking at Law.
