“Ember,” he says, even softer. “You think I like watching you sit in that chair across from him, so fucking calm, and ask him what he did to you when you were still innocent. You think I like listening to him answer you like it’s procedure. You think I like holding myself back while he talks about putting his hands on you and telling you to be quiet for the good of the corridor?”
Heat floods my face, fast.
“No,” I say through my teeth. “I think you’re addicted.” His eyes flash. “To control,” I push.
Silence splinters between us. “You want every little piece,” I say. “You want every name, every route, every number so you can build your war properly and burn it clean. I get it. I do. I even respect it. But he’s running out of pieces I care about, Rook. The longer you keep him alive for what you want, the longer I’m sitting here breathing the same air as the man who signed Owen’s death and told me to just ‘handle it’ when I was a kid.” My throat tightens around the next words. “I’mtired.”
That lands. Something in his expression fractures. Not visibly, not for most people. But I’ve learned him. I know the fine grain under the polished veneer. His shoulders drop half an inch. “Tired how,” he asks quietly.
“Inside,” I say.
He goes very, very still. He doesn’t like that answer.
“Ember,” he says then. My name comes out low. Rough. Like he’s got gravel caught in his throat. “If I give you revenge too fast and not enough leverage to hold to your chest, I’m failing you.”
“I’m not asking you to give me more leverage,” I snap. “I’m asking you to stop telling me to sit pretty while you grind this out like a business negotiation.”
“It’snota business negotiation,” he growls.
“Yes, Rook, it is. You’re playing him against himself. You’re dragging it out, and calculating optimal pressure over maximum yield.”
His mouth twitches, humorless. “And that’s a bad thing, strategy?”
“That’s not what I said,” I hiss. “Don’t twist my words just because you don’t like what you’re hearing.”
He leans back in his chair then, slow, palms flat against the desk like he needs something solid under his hands. His gaze drags over me. He’s angry, and trying not to show it. He’s also aroused. He’s trying not to show that either.
I know him well enough now to see both.
“Here’s what you’re really saying,” he murmurs. “You’re saying you want me to put a bullet in his head, drag his body out to the woods, and be done with it so you can breathe again.”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation.
We stare at each other. His eyes flare. “You expect me to tell you no,” he says, voice dropping.
“I expect you to tell me ‘not yet’ like I’m a child being told to wait my turn,” I spit. “Which is interesting, because in every other room in this house you’re happy to call me queen. But down there? Down there you turn into committee. ‘We just need a little more, Red.’ ‘He’s about to break, Red.’ ‘Give us one more day, Red.’ Meanwhile I’m the one sitting in front of him pretending I’m okay every time he opens his mouth and reminds me I was collateral when I was seventeen.”
Rook’s hands curl into fists on the desk. “Ember—”
“I am not collateral,” I snarl.
His jaw flexes once. “I know,” he grinds out.
“Say it.”
His eyes snap to mine. “You are not collateral.”
“Again.”
“You are not collateral,” he says, this time sharper and filled with anger. Not at me, at Damien and Marcus for breaking me.
My throat burns, and I swallow thickly. “And Owen was never sloppy,” I whisper. “I need you to admit that.”
For a long beat, he doesn’t speak. His voice is quiet when it finally comes. “Owen wasn’t sloppy.”
“And he wasn’t compromised.”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “He wasn’t compromised.”
