Page 16 of In the Dark

And maybe it didn’t matter, because maybe this would just be my last moment. Callahan wanted us all dead, and what better opportunity did he have than to meet me at Midnight’s Edge? I liked to think it was my cliff because it was pretty private. No one came out this far normally.

“So, you’re either baiting me to kill you or fuck you here, then?” This time, his voice was softer, and his mouth was on the shell of my ear. His warm breath was such a contrast to the misty fog caressing my skin that I shivered. It wasn’t the closeness of him, wasn’t the way his voice reminded me of what we’d once shared.

“That why you came here without your men and your brother?” It was odd that his men weren’t with him now. We weren’t friends or fuck buddies. The one time we’d been together had been a mistake, even if I thought about it more than I should have.

It should have been a time I completely and utterly regretted. I did feel guilty for it—I also felt guilty that I still got off on the memory of it when his family had been the ones to gut my uncle.

When I didn’t answer his question directly, he growled low, and the sound vibrated all the way down to my bones. “I came alone because I figured we owed each other honesty so we don’t start a war before the end of the day. Apologize for burning down the building, Jasmina.”

“Honesty?” I shook my head and turned on my heel to glare up at him. With my back to the sea, I was in a better position to protect myself from him stabbing me in the back. Yet, seeing him this close felt even deadlier, like a punch to the gut, like he’d stolen all my breath with just the way his eyes met mine.

They held fire and fury. They weren’t really blue; they were almost a green so alive with emotion that I couldn’t look away. I remembered how deep they got the time he’d taken me against the brick wall that night, how his tattooed hands had been rough and how they’d touched me in all the right ways.

Those same hands would probably be the ones to kill me now. “Honesty between us, Callahan, would have been a heads-up about Paolo.”

“Paolo was—”

“Don’t you dare say his name.” Fury whipped through me— not because I wanted to honor my uncle, though. Truly, he deserved the grave, but I found I was furious instead at how Callahan had the audacity to do what he’d done without so much as a call.

“Fine.” He held up his hands as if surrendering. “I’ll give you grace today, Viper. But giving someone a heads-up is expecting to be killed rather than doing the killing yourself.”

I knew he was right. I just didn’t care.

“There will be no apology, Callahan. Even if I was sorry, I wouldn’t say it to you.” I said it with conviction and took a step to the side as I saw how his gaze hardened, how the charming mask he usually wore seemed to fall away.

“How about some information, then?” I knew this man. He was the same man who could fuck me without mercy in a hotel room without restraint, the same man I’d once ordered to lose control and give me all of him.

Under the facade, Callahan was more ruthless than he let people believe. I’d seen it, felt it, and now I dreamt about it in a way I shouldn’t. So I knew the information would come at a price. “What is it you need to know?”

“Is there really a trust left to you and your cousins?”

Oh, Jesus Christ. I turned to stare out at the waves again, wondering how far I could make it in a backstroke. It was the only way I’d ever be free of them now. If he believed what my uncles had believed for years and years, I could only imagine how his mind was turning. People believed in a tall tale, something my father must have told others before he died.

I knew better. There was no trust. There was no extra hidden money somewhere.

“Did Paolo tell you that?” I asked him.

“Doesn’t matter who told me. Just matters if it’s true.”

I’d had nothing to do with my uncle’s transgressions. He liked me around because I was pretty, smart, and good with a knife. He’d had me help him launder money here and there too. But not billions. Nowhere near that.

“There’s no trust, Knight. No extra money to pay for your little building either.” Paolo had been a cunning man but always terrible with money. I remember how his eyes would glaze over any time I explained any sort of accounting to him. And then he fell for Lex, a woman tied to an influential Diamond, who sank her claws into him. She was hungry for power and money and completely manipulative about getting what she wanted.

“You expect me to believe Paolo and Lex died barely scraping by?”

“You killed them both.” I choked on the words. “You think they would have chosen death over giving up their hidden treasure?”

“To save their family? Of course.”

I rolled my eyes. “If you think he would have held his tongue for us, you didn’t know my uncle very well.”

“I’m aware of the man he was. That’s why I’m surprised by you standing over a cliff looking depressed.”

His voice was so gentle for a second that I almost forgot what he’d done.

“I’m not,” I denied immediately. I had to.

I hadn’t even cried when I watched my Uncle Monte break at hearing that his brother was gone. Aunt Perla consoled him along with my cousins, but I stood by stoically. “Even if I was, people grieve for family. Or don’t you understand that?”