Page 95 of Tempting Little Thief

“—but I couldn’t expect my girls to do the same. We’re a unit. Three against the world, that’s how it has to be.”

“Tell me what you know,” I repeat myself.

She clamps her mouth shut, and my palms start to sweat, wondering if, just maybe, she found what I couldn’t. If she knows something I don’t.

If my little rich girl has the answer I’ve been looking for, but as I stare into her big green eyes, I realize something.

While the gleam within them is hard, it’s not from anger. Or it is, but that little bit of rage isn’t for me. At least, not yet.

All she’s trying to do is see if she trusts a man she shouldn’t, someone she had no intentions of having any faith in, and maybe she shouldn’t. Only time will tell if that was a mistake she never meant to make. Regardless, she trusts me. She never would have dropped the veil for me tonight if she didn’t. But she did.

She let me in. Showed me who she wants to be when the world’s not looking, a secret insight to the socialite no one has ever earned the privilege of seeing.

She gave me something I had no idea I wanted.

Now, she’s looking for a little reassurance, wants me to add a bit of fuel to the little flame that’s sparked in her belly, the one with my name written in the vapors, damn close to the combustion zone, where I’d brand her from the inside out.

Branding her. Now that’s an idea …

Moving her legs, I wrap my arms around her once more and fall back, taking her with me.

“You know what happens when you shoot a man in the skull, Rich Girl?” I cock my head. “He dies, yet he’s not dead. His body’s still alive, heart still pumping, lungs still fighting, holding on to a bit of hope, but the motherfucker’s already gone. Nothing but flesh and bone and a slowing heart. And then … nothing.”

She nods, understanding. “Punishment or mercy?”

“I’d call it mercy. I hate guns. Guns are too kind. Mercy is for the weak.”

“You sound like my father.”

“Smart man.”

“And you killed yours?”

“Smart woman.” I hold her gaze, watching for a sign of disapproval or fright.

Instead, her palms flatten on my chest, gliding up and around my neck.

My pulse settles, and I realize that’s why she did it. To reassure me. Comfort me.

I just told her I murdered my old man, and instead of running, she wants to wash my worries away.

Will she be my ride or die?

“My mother ain’t dead,” I tell her what she already knows, adding what she doesn’t. “But she is to me and definitely deserves to be. I’ve been looking for her a while now, but she disappeared the day I did.”

She nods. “There is no record of you. How is that not on file?”

“A man in a monkey suit came to me. Dropped me somewhere that offered me a job, and I took it. I’m every bit the poor punk I look. I’ve got nothing of my own and I live in a group home with half a dozen others like me.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen.” I kiss her left cheek, then the right. “I got into that little club, ma, ’cause my pops beat silence into me, andthose beatings taught me how to be invisible. You can’t touch what you can’t see and you can’t find what you can’t hear. I was inside before they knew I’d arrived, and the silent alarm that was triggered wasn’t them catching on. It was Hayze, and it was on purpose.”

“To draw the attention to you.”

“That’s right.”

“The guy we came here with, the one who was behind me at the fight, that was Hayze?”

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