For a beat, he let the cigar rest motionless in his fingers, smoke spiraling upward. “You want him dead,” he said, making it conversational, as if I’d just asked him to fetch me a coat from the closet.
My fingers gripped the back of the chair in front of me. “Yes. I don’t want to live with this fear anymore. I can’t do it.”
He leaned back in his leather chair, the movement making it creak softly in the quiet room, and regarded me with the cool assessment of a man deciding the precise worth of a high-stakes gamble. “Consider it done,” he said at last.
Relief flushed hot through my chest, then immediately turned ice-cold as reality caught up. I couldn’t let myself relax. Not yet. Thiswas the part of the negotiation I was dreading. “And the price?” What was I willing to offer him? “Money? You know how much my parents left me. Name it. You can deduct it from my inheritance at eighteen as you promised.”
His mouth curved. Not a smile, not exactly, but the suggestion of one. “So, my son does share details with you. And what if my price is more than you can pay?”
I swallowed. “Why don’t you let me decide just how steep of a deal I want to make with the devil.”
“If I do this for you,” he began, “your involvement with my son ends completely. You graduate from high school quietly without drama. I’ll arrange for you to finish your remaining classes remotely so there’s no scene. I’ll place you in a furnished apartment in whichever city you choose, and I’ll personally grease every wheel to get you into the university of your choice.” He paused, letting it sink in. “A clean cut. You leave Elmwood, and you don’t come back. Ever.”
I could taste it; exile wrapped in gold paper and tied with ribbon. “You mean you’ll buy me out of my own life.”
“Do we have a deal?”
I sucked in a breath. Of all the payments Donovan could have asked for, forbidding me to see Kreed hadn’t even made the list. “Why? What does it matter to you whether Kreed and I date?”
“It’s bad for business,” he said, nonchalantly.
“You care more about your empire than you do your son,” I replied, disgusted but not surprised.
“They’re intertwined.”
This was a bad fucking idea. Could I do what Donovan asked? Could I end things with Kreed? Could I resist the urge to kiss him, to be in his arms, to sleep with him, to be near him?
“It’s simply the way the world works, Kaylor. Transactions and consequences.” He leaned forward slightly.
For a second, I let myself imagine what leaving would actually look like in practice: a single suitcase packed with essentials, a one-way plane ticket clutched in my hand, unfamiliar streets with nopainful history to trip over. I imagined Kreed’s face when he learned I left, how his jaw would set, how fury might pour from him. I imagined the physical distance between us stretching and hardening into something I might never be able to cross again, a gulf too wide to bridge.
It wouldn’t be just Kreed I would lose. My friends. The life I had here. The last ties to my parents. Donovan was asking me to give it all up.
But what Donovan didn’t factor in was how strong Kreed’s feelings were for me. He wouldn’t just let me disappear. Kreed would track me down. He wouldn’t stop looking until he found me, no matter how much his father paid.
“You want me gone so you can maintain complete control over him,” I said, softer now, the accusation laid bare and useless in the dim light.
“I want my sons involved in their legacy,” Donovan acknowledged simply, no shame in the admission. “I didn’t spend my life hustling and building what I have for them to throw it away. They are as much a part of the crew as I am.”
“Regardless of whether it is what they want?” I tossed back at him.
“They are young and still have much to learn.”
It should have been easy to say no. To declare I’d rather burn his whole fucking empire to the ground than bargain away my future, that I’d find another way. But I thought of Kreed half-conscious on his bed, breathing ragged, skin too pale, bandaged and bleeding because of me. I thought of nights like the one we’d just shared when he had a hand on my waist and the world felt like it could shrink to something small and safe for just a breath. I thought of Kenny and the empty, screaming hole her kidnapping had left. The auction house. The way my hands still shook sometimes when I imagined what would have happened if Kreed had been even one second later.
I closed my eyes and let the image of him sleeping peacefully for once steady my resolve. “If you do this,” I said slowly. “I’ll go. I’llleave Elmwood. I’ll graduate somewhere else. I won’t be in his life anymore.”
Donovan’s fingers drummed once against the desktop, a single decisive tap. “You don’t get to keep both your heart and your life. Not in this world.”
I heard a clock ticking somewhere in the house, counting down my remaining time. My throat clicked when I swallowed. “We have a deal,” I agreed, bartering away my heart and shattering all in the same breath. “But I need to see it finished. I won’t leave until I have visual confirmation he’s dead.”
His smile widened fractionally, a contract signed in expression. “Smart girl. You have your father’s grit, his backbone. You’ll have your proof, and when it’s over, your new path will be set and waiting.”
I stepped out into the hallway, leaving the study door open as I dashed back upstairs. I didn’t go to Kreed’s room. Not yet. I needed a few minutes alone.
My knees buckled as soon as I was safely behind my closed bedroom door, and with my next shaking inhale, the hot tears came, streaming down my cheeks.
How fucking unfair was it that as soon as I got a semblance of my life back, Donovan wanted to strip it away from me? I was sick of men ruling my life. It felt like giving away a piece of myself I didn’t know how to survive without, like amputating my own heart.
