Audrey crosses her arms tightly over her chest, the defensive posture failing to hide the slight tremor in her hands.
"I know how you operate, Malcolm," she says, her voice dropping, the anger replaced by a desperate, frantic energy. "I know you fix things by breaking the people who cause the problem. But if you walk into a motel room and beat a private investigator half to death because of me, Simon will use it. He will go to the police. He will ruin you, and he will use the scandal to destroy the security firm."
She takes a shaky breath, her eyes searching my face.
"I couldn't let you do it," she whispers. "I couldn't let you cross a line for me."
I look down at her.
The wind whips a loose strand of hair across her cheek. Her nose is red from the cold. She is standing in a filthy parking lot, shivering in a winter coat, because she thought she had to save me from myself.
She didn't come here to protect her secrets. She came here to protect me.
A dark, overwhelming possessiveness crashes over me, so intense it actually hurts to breathe.
I have spent my entire life standing between my family and the consequences of their actions. I have taken the hits. I have buried the bodies. No one has ever looked at me and decided I was the one who needed saving.
"I didn't touch him," I say, my voice rough.
Audrey blinks. "What?"
"I didn't touch Russo." I reach out, my hand wrapping around her upper arm. I pull her a half-step closer, needing the physical contact to anchor the chaos in my head. "I bought his laptop. I paid him twenty thousand dollars to delete the files and lie to Simon. It was a financial transaction. I didn't break a single law."
She stares at me, the tension slowly draining out of her shoulders. "You bought him off?"
"Yes."
"Oh." She lets out a short, breathless laugh, looking down at the asphalt. "Right. You’re a billionaire. I forgot you can just throw money at problems."
"Audrey."
I slide my hand from her arm down to her wrist, my fingers wrapping around the cold metal of the vintage ring.
She looks back up at me.
"You lied to my security team," I say, my voice dropping to a low, dangerous murmur. "You broke the transparency rule. You left the penthouse."
"I had a good reason," she argues, though her voice lacks its usual bite.
"There is no good reason." I step closer. The tips of my shoes touch the toes of her boots. "If you ever do that again—if you ever walk out of a secure location without me—I will fire the entire security staff, and I will lock the doors of the penthouse myself."
It is a threat. It is a completely irrational, controlling threat, and I expect her to fight back. I expect her to use her sarcasm as a shield and tell me to go to hell.
Instead, she looks up at me, her eyes dark and incredibly aware.
She feels the shift in the air. She feels the absolute, terrifying weight of what she just did to me by showing up here.
"You're angry," she whispers.
"I am furious."
I don't let go of her wrist. I pull her toward the black SUV that Grant has already pulled up next to the sedan.
"Get in the car," I order.
She doesn't argue. She slides into the back seat. I get in after her, slamming the door shut with enough force to make the heavy frame of the vehicle shake.
The privacy partition is already up. The car pulls out of the parking lot, leaving the motel behind.
