Page 10 of Ambition

ISADORA

We only make it half a foot from the door before Cain Bonavich reacts to the departure.The one he more or less ordered.If not in so many words.

Casually, Cain holds up a hand, the sign to stop. I feel Von’s strong and calloused fingers tighten around my wrist. I don’t appreciate being led like a child to the exit, but my apprehension toward the Unsaint ensures I say nothing about Von’s ridiculous behavior.

As if I can’t kill a man as easily as he can. As if I haven’t.

But the Unsaints are a different sort of human, so maybe Von’s protectiveness is warranted. Just this once.

Bonavich’s eyes are as dark as mine, and it’smehe’s looking at when he lowers his hand by his side and slips both into his pockets. I have the fleeting impression that he does not look like a person come to exercise—what, with his deep green slacks and black cashmere shirt—but I can see the outline of each muscle in his arm, veins running under brown skin. A shade lighter than mine; I know that his dad, Callum, is white, but his mother must not be, I just assume. It’s the same for me. My mother is Black, and my dad is white.

I glance at Von’s pale fingers latched onto my wrist. Dad isn’t that shade of white, though. He’s more olive. Von is very fair, with red hair, and for only the briefest moment with the comparison in my mind, I want to smile.

I forget last night with Theo Sancte, the fear down my spine as I walked through the corridors of his home, heavily guarded by men with guns nearly as long as my arm. The trepidation that crawled through my stomach as Theo himself shut the door to his palatial bedroom, decorated in varying blue tones. He clicked the lock too.

There was no escape, which was a good thing because otherwise I might have bolted through that bullet-proof door.

But what came next was easy, in some ways. We both knew what I was there for; the daughter of a neighboring crime syndicate, pawned off in exchange for potential future favor for Writhe. It sounds horrible but sex sells and sometimes it pays in something more than money. So the arrangement wasn’t that crazy; it’s just Theo Sancte has no idea what I’m really there for because he doesn’t know what Writhereallydoes. Act as the vassal of the 6 and the Unsaints.

But despite Von’s puppy dog eyes when I walked in here and his later fury, I don’t hate what I did last night. Not the act itself. His reputation aside, it wasn’t as if Theo had ever done anything horrible tome,and the things he did do, well, they were brutal, but I set the pace and he just happened to be that type of sadistic. Maybe if I wasn’t this sort of person it would feel like an assault, but everything was consensual, which I know Von finds some twisted relief in, but he hates it too. The girl he loves whoring herself out. He does the same though, putting his body in danger for kills, he just looks at it differently, because men do love to skew everything.

My pulse jumps now as Cain’s dark brows lift, almost as if he is reading my mind while he continues to stare at me. Impossible, of course, but I quickly school my expression all the same to the mask of indifference I actually learned so well from Von. Naturally, I’m unable to hide my feelings from my face. But Von does it all the time, every day, and I caught on from him.

I don’t look away from the Unsaint. He is my employer, so to speak. While as far as I know he’s not directly involved in my work with Theo, he is part of the Unsaints and they rank above Writhe.

Von’s fingertips circle tighter around my wrist, but he does not otherwise react to Cain’s assessment of me, thankfully. They are as tall as each other, and while Cain is thicker than Von, my best friend is muscular, too, with broad shoulders, large hands, and an ability to compartmentalize his pain and keep fighting through it.

Unless it comes to me,but I try not to think of that now. Anything between us was doomed from the start and I won’t give up my career in much the same way I won’t break his heart again and again, so I make sure he knows we are not actually together. Any sex between us, any kissing or passion, was the result of alcohol or marijuana, combined with my own high sex drive and tendency to become reckless when I haven’t fucked someone in too long. I often feel like an obligation to him then, and I usually leave his room before morning comes to dissolve him of it. I feel more like a whore those nights than I did last, and I’m not even sure why.

“Do you mind if I speak to you alone for a moment?” Cain asks, his eyes on me. It’s a question, but from the rumble of his voice and the twitch of his full lips after he speaks, I know it’s more of a statement. Crime lords can be oddly polite that way. Might smile after they shoot you between the eyes, too, so it’s not anything genuinely kind.

“She just got off work and she needs to—”

“No. I don’t mind.” I twist my arm and free myself from Von’s protective grip, at the same time I dart my gaze toward him.Shut the hell up.

But his eyes… They meet mine andugh.They’re a deep gray, completely void of color. Spears of paler silver dart toward his pupils and I’ve always found if I study the lack of color too long, it feels as if I’m falling.

I blink, tracing the thick scatter of freckles along his white skin instead. The pinched look to his expression, his upturned nose drawn slightly. “Wait for me. I’ll be right there.” I glance at Cain. “Correct?”

His expression is unreadable, a mask, but he nods once, giving nothing else.

I glance back to Von to find him watching me carefully, making sure I’m really okay for him to leave me in here alone. A heartbeat of time passes, and I see his coldness lock itself back into place. His smooth lips press together, chin tilts upward, and he lifts a brow in condescension. He pretends he doesn’t care.

“Sure,” he says coolly. And without another word to either of us, he leaves through the open door into the darkened corridor of Nox. Other rooms for sparring, weights, meditation, and meetings exist along the halls and I wonder if he will find one of those while he waits, or simply exit the building, get into his Bentley, and leave me here. I kind of hope he doesn’t because I’m nervous; the way one gets when a higher-up criminal and known fighter wants to talk to you alone in a room.

Cain smoothly steps away from the open door, letting it softly close, the latch clicking into place when it does, sealing us inside.

He still has his hands in his pockets and he assesses me in silence, his dark gaze starting at my feet—white sneakers—and trailing up my burgundy sweats, the sliver of my waist, white shirt, the column of my throat, when a wry smile twists his lips. I kind of feel calmer when he does that, to be honest, before he rests his gaze on my face.

Despite the few feet between us, he is still looking down on me and my pulse flutters for a moment at his physicality. The dip of muscle in his shoulders is visible even through his shirt. His dark hair is buzzed, and there’s stubble along his defined jaw. Everything about him is so incredibly masculine and for half a second I imagine him shoving me against the wall like Theo did last night—loved it—and fucking me so hard, Von hears my moans and comes back in this room to do something about it.

I shouldn’t want to play with his obsessive crush, but I do want to, because I love him, too. I’m just more pragmatic about it.

“Are you done?” Cain asks softly, like he’s seen the movie zipping through my brain, his dark, thick brow arched.

I don’t blush. Unlike with Von, I don’t particularly care what Cain thinks of me aside from respecting me enough to know I can be good at my job.

“What do you want to discuss?” I counter, voice even.

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