“And Twinston wants his daughter…”
“To marry the man who can bail him out while pretending he’s still maintaining. But he’s making his debt payments to the bank.”
“With what money?” I ask, confused.
“Not sure.”
With a deep inhale, I formulate my final plan. “That’swhat I need to know. Where the money’s coming from. Who’s backing him?”
Of course, I could kill them. But look what happened when my sister killed the last president… It only got worse.
“I’ll keep at it and contact you when I find out.”
As soon as I uncover that piece of information, I can use it against the dean to get rid of my appointment to Hailey.
I falter. The thoughts surge before I can stop them.
Ashlyn doesn’t fit anywhere in this plan. The problem isn’t that she betrayed me. I can live with betrayal. I’ve done worse.
It’s that if I take her now, if I let myself have her the way my soul demands, then I’m saying it didn’t matter.
That her cheating on me the whole time I told her I loved her didn’t carve something out of me that I never got back. That the nights I tore myself apart wondering where she was were just noise. That the child she carried, the life she chose without me, was nothing.
And I won’t lie to myself like that.
She won’t apologize. She wouldn’t even know how. Ashlyn never begs. Never softens. She doesn’t want forgiveness, and she sure as hell doesn’t want me the way I need to be wanted by her.
She wants fire. A fight. The collision.
And I want…everything else.
I want her wrecked and shaking and looking at me like I’mthe only thing keeping her upright. The way she used to… But it was all a fucking lie.
I want her to hurt the way I did. Which means I can’t just take her. Taking her would be mercy. So I’ll do what I’m good at.
I’ll break the world around her until she has nowhere left to stand but beside me. Caged. Collared. Leashed.
I’ll make wanting me her only option for survival.
If that makes me a monster,so be it.
I was never going to survive loving her cleanly anyway.
My hands curl into fists.
I’m feeling like I need to hit someone…and make a gamble.
twenty-six
Friday night fightsat the Lodge are a blood sport with two tiers.
Upstairs, the sanctioned matches fill the seats, and the bar slings overpriced drinks. That’s for the tourists.
Down here in the warehouse basement? The air’s damp, the floor’s sticky, the walls are concrete, and the fighters aren’t playing for belts.
They’re playing for things worth bleeding for.
Ashlyn’s supposed to be preoccupied back inThetaManor with a few of my initiates making sure she doesn’t go anywhere. And I’m tryingnotto think about this being our last night together. If I don’t say anything, maybe she’ll just…