Page 58 of Reckless Hearts

And where precisely were these precious boundaries of yours yesterday, when you were moaning like a whore while your greedy little pussy came all over my fingers.

Goodlord.

Deimos Drakos:

This is a useless discussion, because this is neither a discussion nor a negotiation. I need those documents immediately. I’m making it your literal job to go back to the office to get them and then bring them here. Now.

I squeeze my eyes shut and then jam my middle finger up in the direction of the screen.

“You fuckingprick,” I mutter out loud.

This is ridiculous. But then, I think of my mom. I think of what she’d do in this position. I know for certain she’d just go get the damn papers. Not because she’d be scared of Deimos. Not because she’s a pushover, either. But because she knows how to pick her battles.

Running menial errands for Deimos is almost as obnoxious as putting together office furniture. But the goal is still the same: play ball, and get my mom’s companies back under our control.

I groan as I text Victoria with a scowl on my face.

Me:

Hey, I’m so sorry. I need to take a rain check on notes and cocktails. I feel awful doing this after we just made plans, but my internship boss is a giant asshole and needs something.

Victoria:

No problem! Totally get it! Let me know when you’re free!

Well, at least there are stillsomegood, normal people in this world.

Twenty minutes in a cab later, that I most certainly will be expensing—if Deimos’ fake company evendoesbusiness expenses, that is—I’m walking in the front door of the building. The single security guard waves me through when I show my ID badge, and I punch the button for the office’s floor in the elevator.

What an asshole. What a total fucking asshole bastard.

The doors open to the darkened offices, and I step out.

…and instantly go stone-still, my blood turning to ice, my heart dropping through the floor. My eyes stab across the main floor, to where a redheaded woman is currently bent over Deimos’ desk.

She’s facing away from me, but it’s not really her I’m looking at. It’s the shirtless man with dark hair, his back to me, giving me a full view of his large dragon tattoo—the Drakos family crest that Deimos already sported even when we were in Knightsblood—who’s currentlyfuckingthat woman across the desk.

Bile rises in my gut. I stare in horror as he rams into her over and over, his arm muscles rippling and his pounding hips making her thighs shake as she moans in pure ecstasy.

There really isn’t a limit to Deimos’ ability and eagerness to be a complete. Fucking. Asshole.

I whirl, lurching back into the elevator and slamming on the lobby button with the heel of my hand. The doors close just before I throw up.

13

DEIMOS

The fingersof my right hand wander slowly over the black and white keys. The taut strings inside the Steinway baby grand tinkle like broken ice as I toy with the melody. Then my eyes drop to the back of the hand, and my jaw tenses.

There’s tattoo ink covering it now. But you can still see the scar—the mark left behind from the night it all shattered and went up in smoke.

The night I lost my gift.

A gift. That’s what Ya-ya always called it. We all took lessons on various instruments when we were kids, my siblings and I. Clarinet, piano, whatever. Ares fancied himself a heavy metal guitarist when he was obsessed with Metallica at some point. But none of them stuck with it.

But I did. Because I saw the piano as a puzzle to be deciphered. A code to be cracked. Also, it came absurdly easily to me, to the point that by the time I was seven, they were tossing around words like “virtuoso” or “savant”.

There was even a moment in my teens when I considered leaving all of this behind—all the violence and the darkness that come with the family I was born into and the blood I was born with. To drop all that and truly see how good I could be with my gift.

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