Page 161 of Tempting Little Thief

I have to work hard not to react. As I said, my father had to have a meeting with the rest of the union families, explaining to Bronx’s father and Delta’s grandfather why I wasn’t with the girls and why he didn’t feel they were at risk as he does me. The Henshaws aren’t exactly in the know, but it’s no secret I haven’t been involved physically in any of the schemeswe’ve been running. I haven’t been seen at The Enterprise or anywhere else for that matter.

That doesn’t make it any less humiliating.

“What did you do, anyway?” His eyes are locked on mine, and he does nothing to hide the humorless glint within them.

“Just get to the point already,” I tell him. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Oh, but you have all the time in the world, don’t you?” His tone is teasing, but he’s mocking me, and we both know it.

I stare at him in silence, and he gives a small nod.

“Your father will let you go with me. All you have to do is agree.”

“You clearly underestimate my father.”

“And you clearly underestimate the dealings of his and my father’s relationship.” There’s an edge to his voice that I don’t like, but I don’t call him on it. “Agree to come and you’ll have a night out.”

“I don’t want a night out.”

“Of course you do.” He grins.

Okay, correction. “I don’t want a night out with you.”

His eyes narrow. Very slowly, Oliver licks his lips, stepping toward me, so I straighten my spine and do the same, beating him to the punch.

“Before you decide to say something you will regret, and you will regret it one way or another, I suggest you back the fuck up.”

“And I suggest,” he whispers, “that you get on board a little faster because, eventually, you will be …one way or another.” He throws my words right back at me, a shadow building over his brow.

“How is your foot feeling?”

“Better than your heart, I would guess.”

My brows snap together before I can stop them and he chuckles in my face, leaning even closer until I can smell the mint on his breath.

“There are a lot of ways that I could bring you to your knees, sweet Greyson, but I’m trying to give you a chance tostay on your feet. I might not be able to force your hand, but your father can, and he will.”

“My father thinks your family is beneath us because they are.”

He nods, not denying the common fact. “We might be, yes, but not so low he was against coming to my father for a little help way back when. The kind my father specializes in.”

I’m not exactly shocked. My father uses all resources available to him. Who wouldn’t? But the way Oliver says this, as if using the information to get me in line, isn’t missed. “What good is a lackey if he can’t be used from time to time?”

“You have firsthand experience with that now, don’t you? How is your little lackey boy, hmm? Or did Daddy run him off too? Or maybe, just maybe, he got exactly what he wanted from the littlerich girland he has no use for her anymore.”

Rage bubbles inside me. How dare he speak of him or mutter that nickname, but I channel the rage.

Forcing a low laugh, I shift the smallest bit, stepping closer until my chest is pressing to his and his pupils dilate, the pathetic boy he is. And he is a boy. He might be strong and smart, we wouldn’t have pulled him into the Greyson Society if he wasn’t, but he’s no wicked man worth running from.

His gaze holds hard on mine, waiting for me to relent, to give him exactly what he came for. Me.

I do give him me, but the version I choose.

I grip his biceps, giving a small squeeze, and his lips twitch as if he’s won, but then I’m throwing us both into the water, his shout cut off by a mouthful of water.

He grabs my waist as I kick him beneath it, spinning quickly to put him in a headlock and wrap my legs around his middle until my feet lock into his inner thighs, preventing him from meeting the pool’s bottom.

We begin to sink, and he struggles, his stubby fingernails digging into my forearm until the water grows discolored with little bits of blood, but I don’t feel it and I can hold my breath for a really, really long time.

---