“And I’m telling you,” he voice lowers, gravelly serious, “it’s not worth it.”
“What don’t you want me to know? You don’t trust me?”
My heart drops.I trust him.I trust him to protect me, to be careful with me. I trust him with a piece of my soul no other person sees.
My infatuation cracks, morphing into something that feels like a white hot poker. If he doesn’t trust me, then what I feel for him is one-sided.
He laughs, a strangled noise that catches in his throat. “I trust you. In a way I’ve never trusted anyone else.” He holds up my palm, his hand just out of reach. “Let’s start with a small truth: I trust you enough to let you touch me.”
Touch him?
“I don’t understand.”
He swallows thickly. “I don’t let people touch me, Collins. Not since you.”
My heart soars while my mind malfunctions. It doesn’t compute. Emboldened, I push further. “What else do you let me do that you haven’t with others?” Knowing I’m the first is a drug, something I’m quickly becoming addicted to.
“Ride on the back of my bike,” he says. “You’re the first to. Wear my mother’s ring, is another.”
We both glance at it and he sighs.
“It’s the last piece I have of her.”
I hold my breath. He’s opening up and I don’t want to break the spell. At this point, I’d sew my mouth shut if it meant he’d give me all his secrets.
It’s so much easier to focus on him than Roman.
“Roman mentioned seeing the ring.” My mind flashes to his words and I nod, inhaling deeply. “Because it was last in his family’s safe.”
I tilt my head. “But that would mean?—”
“That my mother was connected to the Bruno Family.” He looks up at me. “I’m a Bruno, Collins. My mother was Senior’s favorite.”
Breath rushes past my lips and I deflate, shoulders dropping. Hayes is aBruno. He’s the brother of the man who is trying to take me—steal me away. His family runs and abuses women.
I study him now. His large blue eyes, the rough beard over a sharp jaw. His thick brown and dark hair. He’s too tall to be a Bruno. He’s too wide. His skin is tan whereas Bruno’s is pale, like the sun abandoned him.
“There’s no way,” I murmur, my finger tracing his chin. “You don’t look like Roman.” Even Julian resembled his brother. But Hayes? No one would know.
“That’s worked in my favor,” he jokes. “No one sees the family resemblance. It’s allowed me to stay undetected.”
“So, when Bruno said your mother’s ring was in the safe, he wasn’t lying.”
Shaking his head, Hayes shrugs. “No. It was there. I stole it the night I ran away.”
My heart clenches in my chest at the simple words full of pain and hurt. Hayes was in the compound—he saw what his family did. He lived with it.
“I understand if you don’t want to talk about it,” I say hesitantly. Gripping his hand, I turn it over in my lap, tracing the lines and scars on his palm. “But I’d like to listen. I assume you were never in the running to inherit the throne?”
He scoffs. “The only way I’d have the throne, is if Senior ever claimed me. Hard to do, when no one knew I existed.”
I watch him, the feelings, the pain flash over his face. It’s brutal and steals my breath.
“I wasn’t Senior’s kid, Collins.” He rakes his hand through his locks, distracting himself. “I was just another commodity in that basement of terror.”
“But only his women go there?” The basement was furnished like a brothel, only the women could never leave. Some of the women at the club mentioned chains and that’s all I heard before I shut the images out.
“They have red rooms,” he describes. “About twelve of them. A woman in each room. Attached to the floor by a heavy chain.Each room has a bathroom, but it’s not much. Just enough to keep the product sanitary.” His lips twist into a disgusted frown. “But at the end of the hall, is a blue room.Myroom.”
