“Then don’t treat me like one.” My voice hardens. “I’m twenty-three years old. I’ve been taking care of myself since I was eighteen. I watched my father get murdered and I survived it. I’m not some naive little girl who doesn’t understand what she’s asking for.”
Blue is quiet for a moment, studying my face. “No, you’re not,” he says finally. “But you’re young enough to think revenge is simple.”
“And you’re old enough to know it isn’t?”
“I’m old enough to know it changes you in ways you can’t undo.”
“Good. I want to be changed.”
Blue runs a hand through his hair, suddenly looking every one of his years. “Saylor, you have no idea what you’re asking me to become again. What you’re asking yourself to become.”
“I know exactly what I’m asking for.”
“Do you? Because once you cross that line, once you take a life with your own hands, you can’t go back to being the girl who sang jazz in nightclubs and worried about rent money. That person dies the moment you become a killer.”
“That person already died. The night they killed my father.”
“No, she didn’t. She’s sitting right across from me, asking me to help her commit suicide.”
“That’s not what this is.”
Blue sighs, the sound heavy with exhaustion. “It’s been a long day. A very long day.” He rubs his temples. “I’ll think about it.”
“When will you decide?”
“Tomorrow.” He stands, offering me his arm. “After I’ve had time to think about what you’re really asking for.”
Chapter Ten
Saylor
Wren appears again, beginning to clear the plates. The meal has ended, and I still have so many questions. And Blue isn’t going to agree to what I want... at least not now.
“This place,” I say, gesturing around the dining room and needing a change of conversation. I don’t want to end the meal with “oh hey, will you teach me how to kill people” and then turn in for the night. “This isn’t exactly a normal house. And Grimlock—where exactly are we?”
“About twenty minutes from Grimlock,” Blue says. “Maison Rouge is... private. Isolated.” He pauses, considering his words. “But Grimlock itself—Grimlock is where people go when the regular world has no place for them. It’s a sanctuary for the beautifully broken, the elegantly damned. A place where the villains of everyone else’s stories come to write their own.”
“Sounds charming.”
“Oh, it is. Old money built on blood, older secrets buried in silk-lined coffins, and an atmosphere that welcomes anyone too dark, too twisted, or too hungry for revenge to fit anywhere else.” His eyes meet mine. “It’s a town full of misunderstood outcasts who refuse to apologize for who they are. You’ll love it.”
There’s pride when he says it, genuine affection for this place and its people.
“Tomorrow, if you’d like, I can show you around. Let you get a feel for the place.”
“You’d let me leave the estate?”
“With proper supervision, yes.”
I stand on my own, but his offered arm from moments before still hangs in the air between us. “Proper supervision meaning you.”
“Meaning me.”
The gesture—formal, old-fashioned, gentlemanly—waits for mydecision. Every rational part of my brain screams that I shouldn’t trust this man, shouldn’t let him touch me, shouldn’t ask for his help—and yet I did. But he was Dad’s friend. Dad trusted him enough to ask him to protect me.
That has to count for something.
I take his arm, trying to ignore the way my skin burns where our bodies connect through the fabric of his suit jacket. The contact is electric—the second my fingers curl around his bicep, I’m transported back to that dressing room. His hands on my skin, the way he made me feel like I was coming apart at the seams, the way he tasted like whiskey when he kissed me.
