“This is one way to start Thanksgiving,” Sarah said. “I almost don’t want to go back to Phoenix. I mean, I do, I need to see my dad, but this is about as close as you can come to making me change my plans.”
I chortled.
“As long as Dante, Adrian, or Lucas haven’t claimed this property for a time, we can come here whenever.”
I felt my phone buzz. I pulled it out and looked down at it. It was Dante, telling me that someone had committed an act of vandalism against theRuby.Nothing serious; the graffiti on the side of the building had been cleaned before sunrise, making it highly unlikely that any paying customers had noticed.
But it was his question at the end that worried me.
“Should I try again with the Reapers?”
I glanced up at Sarah, then back down at my phone. This question was becoming thornier by the day; I had wanted them under my grasp simply for reasons of control and power before. But now, if Sarah was going to be a part of my life… and if she and the Reapers had, to put it gently, an antagonistic relationship…
Fuck. Things were really coming to a head, not just emotionally but practically.
Why the fuck had I put myself in this spot in the first place? Why couldn’t I have just turned the cold shoulder to Sarah when I first saw “Sasha Carter” on the guest list? Why?
Because what you really want may not be what you really want?
“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked.
I looked up, the smile gone from my face. I sighed. I could hide this from her, keep up this song and dance as long as I could, and eventually crack. Or, with a flight for us to hash things out, I could discuss the truth, hammer out any issues, and go from there.
“We’re trying to figure out if we should bring the Reapers into the fold, help us with some crime stuff.”
The look on Sarah’s face immediately told me I’d made a huge mistake. A massive fucking mistake. She didn’t just look worried. She didn’t just look angry.
She looked furious.
“The Reapers?” she said, seething. “As in, the Black Reapers? The Black fucking Reapers, the ones that drove my father out of town and almost ruined my family’s life?”
I took in a breath. The plane’s engines were roaring to life. A part of me almost wondered if I needed to slow this conversation down; I did not want Sarah to ask off this flight in the middle of a private runway in Wyoming.
“It’s not something we are likely to do,” I said. “It’s something Dante really wants to pull the trigger on. And if we have them under our control?—”
“Under your control,” Sarah repeated, the words dripping with venom. “Do you know who the Black Reapers are?”
“Yes, Sarah, I know who the fucking Black Reapers are. I was in Vegas when shit came to a head with the King’s Men.”
I took in a breath. This was not helping anyone, and the last thing I needed to do with Sarah was become the cold, domineering asshole. I mean, I could do it very well, but I thought I’d found something worth being a gentler version of that for.
Maybe I’d jumped the gun. Fuck. I knew I had reason to be worried about this. Fucking stupid!
“I am aware,” I said slowly, adapting the level-headed, neutral businessman tone I knew so well, “of what I am getting myself into. I willnotlet anyone I am associated with, you included, be tainted by them or touched by them.”
“Are you telling me the whole truth, Cassius? Seems to me you’ve been pursuing the Reapers for a long time. I’m not sure I believe you.”
Oh.
Oh, that was how things were going, was it?
Suddenly, I could not be fuckingtrusted?
The plane lifted off, and it was a fucking good thing that it did. I might have stepped off myself and told the pilot to take Sarah home so I’d never have to see her again. There were few things that truly got under my skin, and having my word questioned was one of them.Especially by someone who knows better.
“You don’t believe me,” I growled. “You want to know the whole truth, Sarah? I want the Black Reapers. I want them under my hand and in my control. But I’m also not a fucking idiot. I don’t pursue what will never work out. I’ve gotten the cold shoulder from them for the last four years. It’s something I’ve entirely outsourced to Dante now, because he’s a harder dumb fuck who thinks it’s worth trying.”
“You let him keep going.”
