“Oh, Delilah. Even when you are compromised, you can speak the truth. I suppose that is why you are so damn good at your job.”
A pause came. So long a pause, in fact, I almost asked if Leo was still there. But just when I was about to, he spoke up.
“You know, you just said something very interesting. ‘Truth’ is malleable. Don’t you think the so-called King of Diamonds feels the same way? Why do you think he picked that name?”
I could rattle off several reasons why, many of them far more vulnerable and personal for Adrian than even he cared to admit to himself. But I just said, “to show off his wealth.”
“Among other reasons,” Leo said darkly. “But think about it. Diamonds blind, both perhaps literally and in other ways. Adrian may be the CFO of the Vale family, but he’s really just the image person—and he has a way of making sure you see the bling and flash more than the damage done. So if I may suggest, Delilah, look past the flash. Look past the heat and the pressure. Look past the lies he feeds you, even the ones disguised as vulnerability. The real King of Diamonds has edges so sharp, they can cut a man.”
Leo drew in a breath.
“Be careful, Delilah. You’re walking a very thin line. And in Vegas, thin lines don’t tend to last very long before someone sails right past them. If you ever grow tired of being compressed, we’re more than happy to give you the real story.”
Before I could say another word, Leo hung up. I almost slammed my phone on the ground but settled for putting it down angrily.
It was one thing to get entangled in a mess of my own doing, but a private mess that few others would know of. I hated the idea of doing something so long as no one noticed—that was how unethical men like King before and Leo Morril now operated—but at least my concerns were limited in scope at that point.
But if the Morrils had eyes on me?
If Adrian’s vulnerability and uncertainty were in fact masks for a lust for sex that even I had underestimated?
What if his partnership and his admittance that he didn’t know what he wanted were not just masks, but deliberately crafted ones from the start? At least diamonds always knew they were being formed under pressure and heat. What if I didn’tknow the actual amount of pressure and heat I was under? What did that make me?
Dead meat, that’s what.
You’re no diamond to Adrian. You’re just a hot piece of meat ready to be cooked and compressed to his desire.
But every part of my instinct said that wasn’t true. I’d spent years honing my bullshit radar for subjects who pretended to be sorrowful but were just as conniving and cruel as they had been before getting caught. Adrian, truly, really, seemed genuinely conflicted.
Yet I could not pretend in the slightest that I was objective, much less that I knew there to be an objective truth.
I stared at my computer screen, the draft of an article about the Vale family half-written. On the page was the section about Aces Up and a quote from an anonymous source saying, “The Vales say they’re saving us. What they’re really doing is saving what they like of us and discarding the rest.”
I bit my lip.
Leo had, strangely, been right about one thing. He was right to latch on to my point, spoken off the cuff, about the truth being malleable. It just depended on where you were sitting and how you interpreted it.
So, I decided, I needed to do something perhaps foolish but very real.
I needed to strip away the heat. I needed to strip away the pressure. I needed to strip away diamonds, illusions, and blinding light.
And in doing so, I needed to have the real Adrian Vale revealed to me.
Only then could I figure out whether Adrian was sincere in not knowing what he wanted from me.
Only then could I figure out if I was sincere in wanting to cross the thin line that so often vanished in Vegas.
CHAPTER 19
Adrian
Night had fallen on my penthouse, and I stood a morose man over the city my family and I had conquered.
Because while my family and I might have conquered Vegas on unambiguous terms and very much would destroy the Morril family on no uncertain terms, I now felt very uncertain about how I would conquer Delilah—and if that was even the appropriate verb for everything.
Conquer. Destroy. Take over. Dominate.
Those were verbs that in days past would speak to me, enthrall me. They still did. But to do what Delilah was asking entailed something more… gentle. More personal. More… ugh, soft.
