She’s awfully well informed, except for one very salient point. “He doesn’t love me,” I say bitterly. “He never did.”
“Not his heart, then. His admiration. His lust, if you want to be crude. What difference does it make?”
A man arrives with my coat, and Maria waves him away. For some reason, I let her. Perhaps because I’m still trying to figure out why admiration and lust can equal love, and be just as acceptable. I’m certain they can’t.
Maria continues where she left off. “The point is, you’ve done something to the man. He’s utterlybesotted with you.”
Now she’s just talking nonsense. “Are we discussing the same Alex?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “How many other fingers has he put a ring on?”
I’m suddenly very conscious of my left hand, and surreptitiously lower it to my side. “I’ve never asked him.”
Maria gives a delighted chuckle. “Well, my dear, unless you want the number to grow, get back out there and show him who you are.”
I glance past her to the room full of people and those on the dance floor. Then I take a breath, lift my shoulders, straighten my spine.
Maria’s right, but not in the way she thinks.
Iwillshow Alex who I am. Not for his benefit, but for mine.
I’m going to walk straight back into that room, and I’m going to find Lukas Van Wyk. I’m going to do what I came here to do, and then I’m going to leave.
Alexander goddamn Reyes doesn’t define who I am.
I’m not here for him. I’m here for Lucy.
And I’m here for me.
Thirteen
Alex
Ibreak the kiss as soon as it’s politic to do so.
“Don’t overstep yourself,” I hiss, ignoring the taste of her lips.
“I’m so sorry,” Rita responds. She reaches up and wipes a trace of her lipstick off my mouth with the ball of her thumb. It’s all I can do to not jerk my head back, especially when I know people are watching. “I lost myself in the moment. You truly are a superb dancer.”
“I’m getting a drink,” I say, walking off the dance floor and not waiting for her.
But she catches me up in two strides, hooking her arm through mine. “Play the role, Alex,” she murmurs as we walk. “Everyone else here is a couple, aren’t they?”
Irritatingly, she has a point.
The Metropolitan Club has several rooms, and for tonight, the Company has the use of all of them. Despite DeLuca’s claims, I could’ve come here andnotdanced; there’s enough going on in the other spaces. Yet everyone has brought their wives or husbands. In that, he’s not wrong.
In the bar, some men talk business over drinks and small tables in the corners, their wives notably absent, mingling elsewhere. Here and there, a couple sits by themselves or with friends. It looks like any other gathering, yet each and every one of these men—and some of the women—are employed by the Company. They watched a man chop his own fingers off twelve nights ago.
I wonder if Dubois is here somewhere.
Fournier was on the dance floor; I recognized him because his was a face I took pains to remember. Van Wyk too, and his face is indelibly etched into my mind. A very dangerous man. DeLuca’s here, of course, and his charming wife Maria, who I quite like. She took pains to come and find me as soon as the evening began, though she didn’t seem to care for Rita.
A few of the other wives have made themselves known to me, some of them with a touch that lingered in invitation. Perhaps there’s some swinging or sharing going around, but that is one thing I have zero interest in. Even if it was my kink, that strikes me as insanity beneath Fournier’s philosophy of married stability and Van Wyk’s karambit knife.
Rita leans against the bar, back arched, ass jutting out just enough to be suggestive. Everything she does is so deliberate, right down to the complete lack of underwear breaking the lines of her dress. She orders a champagne for herself and a whisky for me, without asking and with a degree of familiarity that raises no eyebrows from those that hear. It’s another smooth move on her part.
DeLuca wanders over with a man I don’t know, and I turn when I see them coming. “Alexander, this is Edward Haynes, your opposite number in Sentinel Risk.”
