"I'm staying," Woody said.
The senator regarded him. "Woodrow Taylor-Francis. Wolfgang's son. Very interesting." He stroked his neat beard. "What interest would you have for your former stepmother?" He drew out the last couple of words, emphasizing them while looking amused.
"Bitch killed my father," Woody snarled. "I want to watch her suffer. I've tried to kill her a couple of times already. It didn't stick." He gave me a nasty smile. "This will be so much fucking better."
Chill crept up my spine like cold fingers. I thought we were past that. Wewerepast that, weren't we? I couldn't tell. His eyes were cold. Calculating.
"Normally I don't like an audience but I'll make an exception," the senator said. "It seems to me you'll get closure from taking part."
His gaze slid over to me, anticipation in his eyes. Desire, not sexual, predatory like he wanted to strip the skin off my bones, tear me to shreds. Leave me so broken I had no fight left in me. Then he'd toss me away without a thought.
I might throw up the champagne on his shoes. I swallowed down the reflex. If I did that I'd regret it. He'd make sure of that.
"Yeah, I will," Woody said with a grunt. "She's going to hate the day she was born."
Forrest pressed his mouth together in a brief moment of irritation before finally nodding. "It looks like we have a deal." He actually offered his hand to the senator. They shook before he and Leif headed toward the door.
"Finally," Leif said, without looking back. "We can get back to the real fun. Remind me never to let you drag me into anything like this again." He sounded cheerful as he stepped out the door. Forrest right behind him.
The door closed with a tinkle of bells and a light final thud.
"Let's take this party somewhere more private," the senator said. He nodded to his thugs who surrounded me, guiding me out the back door, past an intimate lounge at direct odds with the tattoo parlor, out toward a waiting car.
CHAPTER 13
SABLE
"This is much nicer, wouldn't you say?" the senator said, sweeping his hand to gesture at the expansive view of the city visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
"Much more private for the things we have to do here." He undid his tie and let it drape around his neck.
While his thugs arrayed themselves around the door, he walked over to a bar beside an enormous kitchen and poured himself a glass of whiskey. The three fingers of alcohol glittered in the light of an enormous chandelier that probably cost the equivalent of a family home.
I didn't need Leif to tell me there was a fine line between decadent and ostentatious. This was the latter. Money spent to impress, not for beauty or function.
Naturally, it wasn't us he wanted to impress. That dubious honor went to the other people who frequented this place. An expensive penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side. The neighbors probably thought he was a nice, powerful man from out of state, who frequented the city when convenient or necessary.
If only they knew.
Did those windows open? I didn't think so. Otherwise someone might have pushed him out.
The senator sipped and jerked his head toward a doorway which led into an enormous bedroom. A king-size bed dominated the space.
I glanced towards Woody. His standard scowl was on his face. His eyes guarded. Subtly alert. Watching me. Watching the senator. Watching the thugs. Looking, I hoped, for a way out.
He stepped into the bedroom behind me and turned so his back was to the wall. Me directly in front of him. Everything within his view.
"I'm not going to let you kill her," the senator said. "Not yet."
Woody shrugged, his heavy shoulders rising and slumping. "I don't want to kill her. Not yet." He echoed the other man's words. "Like I said, this will be better."
"I agree completely." The senator pulled a chair over from where it sat under a table to the side of the room. "You hate her so much?" He leaned back and crossed his legs. "Fuck her."
Woody stared at him. "What?" He glanced over at me, a dark heat in his eyes.
I took a step back, partly because of his expression. He looked like a lion and I was a tiny mouse.
I took another step back because of where we were.