“Valid,” Maddox quips with a flick of his butterfly knife.
Cash throws up his hands in surrender. “I made five hundred grand with a few text messages to Papa Axe, so I’m going with gift.”
“Two fifty,” Maddox corrects him with a menacing glower.
Ryker casts them a stern warning while shuffling his dice in his palm. But when Jax starts to squabble about how he should get a cut, I know we’re going to spiral quickly into jackass territory. It’s likely by design. Their way of cushioning all of this in warmth, but we need to proceed. Zara deduces that, too, her lips warring with her glee over their antics, but she knows precisely how to quiet them.
“So, you’re crazy.” She’s all fierce green eyes and wild mahogany hair with that proclamation, utter exhaustion and unwavering fortitude.
Even defeated, she’s so radiant. Regal. It almost hurts to look at her.
My brothers laugh and sling some quippy barbs about her assessment, but it all fades into a cacophony of background hubbub, sound effects for the lines that will mold our story. And that is how it will always be. I’m doing this in front of them because she’s accustomed to clinging to shadows, but if she is to be mine, she’ll need to exude her darkness in the spotlight. So, I don’t hold back.
“When it comes to you, my little Thorn, it would seem I’m a fucking lunatic.” I hold up the coin between my fingers—her safe word. Her out. “You should take any chance you have to leave this all behind.”
She stares at it, her chest heaving, her racing thoughts skulking around her—like a thief in the night, prepared to steal everything I never believed I deserved, but can’t fathom surviving without. And the conference room, the resort, the whole goddamn earth waits on bated breath through her silent deliberation.
I like that she’s giving this serious consideration, but I’m impatient, so that doesn’t prevent me from taunting. “It’s rare. A 1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle. It was never released into circulation because President Roosevelt recalled gold. Most were melted. Some escaped, becoming the object of legal battles. And now? This one is worth about thirty-six of Cash’s text messages—eighteen million, last I checked. Enough to provide a great escape.”
Tossing it in the air, I catch it in my palm, letting it capture the diffused light from the dreary skyline and tempt the greediness inside all of us. “Would you like to use it, Zara? All you have to do is ask.”
Ryker doesn’t understand the safe-word correlation, but he does grasp that I’m assessing where her head is at, that this is asnecessary as all the other steps I’ll be taking to guide us through this harrowing nightmare.
So, he sweetens the deal. “If there were ever a time to take that offer, it would be now. While the exit in the South Tower, near the overflow parking lot, is unmanned and the best eraser we know will be waiting there in thirty minutes.”
None of that is planned, but it is doable with a few simple texts. And while a part of me hates him for giving her such a complete road map out of here, the rest of me knows it’s vital. We have to conduct our own tests to evaluate whether there’s any chance of her passing more wretched ones. Not that this comes close to what she could expect with KORT.
Jax stares at her with an expression that is composed of compassion but borders on maniacal. “Staying provides a greater return.”
Since he understands our need to test her, it’s unclear why he added that. Maybe for my benefit or Zara’s or his. We’d all suffer if she chose to brave an ill-fated future on her own rather than facing it with us as her army.
Either way, she fights for her life. Since she’s been abandoned by her family, we are the only thing she’ll give up by assuming a new identity.
Her shallow breaths rip through me, rougher than the breeze that expedited the flames on my childhood home, when I realized that by killing a monster, I robbed the world of light—a beautiful, flawed, yet angelic light, who sang and danced and smiled for the souls she loved, even when it hurt.
So, while there is a ceaseless urge to outfit Zara with a collar and leash—to chain her to me for all time—I won’t do it unless she offers that power to me. Even knowing that if she chooses to snatch the coin, that unused leash will become my noose.
My brothers recognize this. Their typical, flippant humor is yoked to our simpler exchanges. They see what I tried sohard to overlook—that she came to conquer something at La Lune Noire, and whether or not I was her intended mark, she succeeded. I’m utterly entranced.
She licks her bottom lip, relaxes her shoulders, and exhales tranquility—which washes over me from the other side of the room. “No thank you, Mr. Noire. I would have no use for it.”
Thank fuck.
“Leave us,” I order my brothers, and all of them stand and chuckle and hug Zara on their way out.
Until we’re finally alone.
And it isn’t red or black or green or a lucky number that will determine the trajectory of our path.
It’s three harried heartbeats.
Three tattered breaths.
Three seconds when all the unspoken between us becomes more than I can bear.
AXEL
In a move that isn’t at all my style, I rise and dash toward her, plopping into a chair and pulling her into my lap. For just a minute, I allow myself to breathe her in, to ignore all the chaos and carnage waiting for us, to relish her filling the Zara-shaped hole I’ve been wrecked by. She toys with the hair at my nape, nuzzles her lips against my neck, and stifles the anguish threatening to spill out of her, though I can feel it flooding us.
