“Impressive. I know,” he grumbled. “I needed to get him out of there.”
I shook my head in confusion. “If you wanted him dead, why didn’t you just let him die there?”
His body tensed, his icy walls building back up in his eyes. “Because I wanted to be the one to kill him,” he said darkly.
“You brought him back here to…?”
He waved his hand dismissively. “My pettiness only goes so far, Karina. I still needed answers from him. There were things, like the rings, I had not discovered yet.”
“Do you think his son knew about the rings?” I had never met his son, but from what Haley told me, he sounded like sleaze.
“I don’t think Tony knew anything besides the location of his dick.” He shot me a glare.Confirmed.
“Not a fan?”
“Dean Connors killing that piss-poor excuse of a man was something I could get behind,” he said firmly.
I smirked. “You and Dean have a lot in common, you know?”
He blinked. His jaw jumped. “What did you just say to me?”
“For one, both of you are cocky assholes,” I teased.
Another blink. “That’s seventy percent of the male population.”
“Dean fights for what he wants. You fight for what you want.”
“That’s another thing: I thought Connors was dead.”
What?He read the look on my face like an open book. “I never knew, Karina. For years, I thought Dean was dead. Imagine my surprise when Romano invited him over for Sunday dinner,” he sneered.
I pulled the sheet up to my chest and gave his hand a squeeze. “He lied to you a lot, huh?”
“Many of the men believed I was just an errand boy. That was the picture he painted me as, but the one thing he underestimated was me.”
I swallowed, my throat dry as he spilled his secrets out to me.Finally.
“What kinds of errands, Col?”
He pinned me with a look. “You’re smart, Karina.”
“I need to hear you say it,” I mumbled, squeezing his hand.
“I was his hitman, angel. The man who didn’t mind getting his hands bloody. While Romano was maintaining politics, I was behind the scenes enforcing it. It started small, and then within a year, I was tying politicians to chairs, not stopping until they were screaming for God. There was no God. Just the devil.”
A beat of silence, and then, “How—”
His palm covered my mouth. “Don’t ask me that.” His voice was cold and distant, like he was losing himself to the darkness that immersed his soul.
I touched his face. “Hey, it’s okay.” The softness in my voice clashed against the harshness in his.
“Baby, the only thing about me that is okay is your light.”
I kissed him, soft and quick. He kissed me back with a gentleness that knocked the breath out of me. “Do you regret killing them?”
“No.”
I leaned away from my demon. “Why?” It came out as a broken whisper filled with disbelief.
