I couldn’t believe I had any tears left inside my body, but I felt more pooling in my bloodshot eyes.
Hudson’s face fell.
“You’re right,” I said. “Thank you for the pizza and coming back home early for me.”
“Always.”
43
WES
Istayed outside on the front steps for another half hour after I watched Nova leave. It was funny to me that they’d let Marty come all the way up the driveway this time, as if they couldn’t keep track of their own arbitrary rules.
I’d fucked everything up, just like I feared I would from the very beginning. Why the fuck hadn’t I just told Nova the truth from the start?
My initial reasoning—that because my family was dead to me, it didn’t matter—sounded stupid now. Itwasstupid. Of course, it mattered, if only becauseNovamattered, and Nova had deserved to hear the truth from me instead of in the worst way imaginable.
Roman had touched her. He’d had his psychopathic hands all over her.
Something was terribly wrong with him—I’d known it for a long time. It was why I’d cut him out the same as my father. Because Roman wasn’t like me. He was aGraves, through and through.
He didn’t feel empathy. He delighted in others’ suffering. He felt no remorse, and the only language he spoke was that of power.
He hated me because he thought we were in competition, but my spot as my father’s first born and golden boy had only ever been a ruse. I’d only pretended to want to take my father’s place one day to gain enough access to destroy his legacy altogether.
Before I got sober, I blew up my own revenge plot and ceded my place to the son who actually wanted it, who might’ve even killed me for it. I thought it would end our one-sided war, but it seemed Roman had never stopped seeing me as the enemy, no matter how much time had passed. Perhaps he saw my involvement with data privacy startups as an act of aggression. It was a cause I strongly believed in after spending a decade cozying up to the profit-hungry evil masterminds who controlled our digital worlds.
Or maybe he had inherited the same obsessive streak I had, and I was caught in the crossfires of his relentless climb to the top.
Before my new car arrived, I finally stood and re-entered Roman’s web of sex, power, and secrecy.
A grand dining room was being set by quiet, dutiful workers dressed in all black. Dahlias and white pillar candles lined the center. A woman was already tied to one of the chairs.
I found Roman in one of the main drawing rooms, watching two older men torture a woman with increasingly harsh implements. She wore a purple bracelet, her mouth was duct taped, and her arms were restrained by zip ties. They held her on the floor, caning her already bruised and red thighs.
“Do something else. I’m bored. She’s not screaming anymore.” Roman’s voice was flat.
I quickly searched the woman’s eyes, every part of my body tense and on high alert. I hated this place and what it did to me. Ididn’t trust people like Roman to engage with kink safely, to take care of the people they toyed with. In every woman here, I saw Kallie, no matter how hard I tried not to.
The thought reminded me Nova and I had done our first impact scene, which meant she was now dealing with subdrop—the physiological and psychological comedown that followed an intense scene—completely alone. The urge to text her to remind her to stay hydrated, to eat well, to get rest was so strong, but she’d told me she never wanted to hear from me again.
Addicts are fucking liars. Liars who destroy anyone who dares to get close to them.
The words played in my mind in a constant loop, confirming I’d been right all along. I was unworthy of redemption. I’d never deserved Nova. Not after what I let happen to Kallie.
“Roman,” I said.
I had to let Nova go. It was what was best for her. Roman had targeted her because ofme.And I couldn’t let that happen ever again.
When Roman finally turned to me, his features revealed only the slightest tinge of wrath beneath his impenetrable mask of boredom.
“I thought you’d leave with her,” he said. “Or could she still not stand to look at you?”
“We’re done,” I said. “I want nothing to do with her after you touched her.”
Roman’s brow lifted. “Is that so?”
I wanted to punch the smirk right off of his face. His eyes were still frighteningly opaque. Roman was a hunter, and his hunting was not a game to him.
