Page 69 of Beautiful Sinners

Aleksander addressed me as Aoife. He asked if I remembered him. Even the guys didn’t recognize me at first. Aleksander surely didn’t in the elevator or when I went to confront him at the bell tower. The damaged woman I grew into looks nothing like the blonde girl of my youth.

Constantine frowns at Hendrix and Tristan, apparently coming to the same conclusion I do.

“Youtold him?”

Hendrix is fast to refute. “Don’t look at me.”

“Thanks, asshole,” Tristan tells him.

“That would’ve been useful information to know before I was ambushed in the restroom and Alana got a gun pointed at her!” I yell, incensed.

Those seeds Aleksander sowed begin to sprout.

“Everyone lies to me.”

“I won’t. But you’ll figure that out soon enough.”

Tristan comes around the island and without warning, lifts me onto the countertop and pushes himself between the vee of my thighs.

“I did it to save your life.”

My recollection of what happened in the garden is disjointed, a jumbled assembly of blood-soaked screams and the weight of a gun in my hand.

“She saved herself. She saved us,” Constantine intervenes, and I want to leap across the kitchen and kiss the hell out of him.

I try again to get through to Tristan. “Aleksander promised a truce.”

“Aleksander can go fuck himself.”

His anger isn’t about me. It’s frustration. He wants to protect me. I get it. I really do, and I love him even more for it. But it’s my choice, regardless of whether he agrees with me or not.

And if truth be told, I’d rather deal with Aleksander than with Francesco Amato, Patrick Knight, and Gabriel Ferreira. If there is karma, I hope that bitch comes for the three of them.

Then again, what Aleksander said in the hallway makes me think he has other plans.

“Oh, they’re still very much alive. I wouldn’t want to spoil your fun.”

“I’m going back to Darlington.”

I feel like I’m on repeat, hoping the more I say it, it’ll finally sink in how important this is to me.

“Not a fucking chance.”

Internally, I let out the scream I’ve been holding. Reasoning with Tristan is like banging my head against a wall made of steel, not brick. But he’s not the only stubborn person in the room.

Running my hands down the front of his shirt, I ask, “Do you remember telling me that you were my reason to stay?”

The night of the rainstorm was a turning point between us. It opened the door for what came after. Losing my heart to three dangerous men. Falling in love. Intimacy. Orgasms.So many orgasms.And rediscovery. Of them and of me.

“I do.”

“Then please don’t be the reason I go back alone. You promised you would help me find who murdered my parents. Don’t prove Aleksander right.”

With a provocative touch of his finger, he tips my face up until I’m staring directly into his golden eyes. “Right about what, exactly?”

“That I can’t trust any of you.”

If silence was a bomb, I just tossed a live grenade into the room.

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