Page 91 of Queen of Diamonds

Ace had a half-smile on his face. “You proved more elusive than I imagined.”

I kept my mouth shut, stifling the wave of sickness as I considered that even my freedom had been something he’d planned for.

Ace rested his chin on his fist, still watching me unblinkingly. “Ask, Omega. It’s not a secret that you care about them.”

Goosebumps lit my skin at the mention of my mates. I swallowed. My voice was rough. “They were not protecting me.”

He smiled, and like everything else about him, it was slow and calculated as if he were discovering more reasons for it along the way. “That’s not the question,” he taunted.

I bit my tongue, breath still caught in my chest.

He rolled his eyes as the silence dragged on. “The answer to your question is no. The only thing I touched in that miserable warehouse was already mine.”

My mates were safe?

He… hadn’t taken them?

Why?

A thousand wound coils loosened in my chest, and it took more to keep my expression neutral than anything before it.

“You’re rusty,” he murmured. “You used to be smarter with what to keep and what to give.”

It was one of his old mantras. Hide behind lies I know are lies, and you won’t have any tells left that I haven’t found.

It’s why I never lied unless I could be completely sure he’d never know. I’d never met a person more fascinated with learning to read people than Ace.

“I like a fair game and good players, more than I like claiming secrets. Don’t disappoint me after all this time.”

I didn’t answer for a long time, breaking that down. He lived in his own little mind palace, speaking in ways that barely made sense half the time, and yet never was it meaningless to him.

This one didn’t take me long to decipher.

Play the game better, or I’ll get bored.

And there was nothing more frightening in this world than that.

“I brought you a dress.” He lifted the red fabric on his arm. Of course, he had, with his compulsion to control every detail. “I can’t wait to see you in it.”

He draped the red, floral-patterned silk across the bed at his side, and tilted his head minutely toward it. It might as well have been an Alpha command for the amount of choice it left me.

Nausea turned my stomach, and I tried to bury it as I steeled myself. I had to find out what was going on, and I wouldn’t get that by fighting. I would get that by stepping into the next game he wanted to play, in the hopes I could survive it long enough to get what I needed.

Ace was so… everywhere that a memory as simple as this, choosing my dress, at times, caused night-long battles with insomnia. I would relive it again and again: he would bring me an outfit and take a seat as I dressed, his gaze never drifting as he watched me turn myself into a creature to please him.

But this was not the hill to die on.

I took the dress, swallowed pride and fear, and slipped from the bed, facing him as I shrugged the shoulder of my shirt off.

As I tugged off my leggings, I tried to find the person I’d been before. The one with armour built for this. But she’d died a death at the High Roller, and then been buried six feet under when I’d met my mates again. There was a tremor in my hand as I lifted the gown. No longer the old me who would have been made of stone right now.

I hated the feel of his eyes across my bare skin.

The cool silk of the fabric brushed up my legs as I drew it up, knowing before it slipped into place upon my body, what kind of dress it would be.

The back was low, dipping to my tailbone and leaving on display the scars I desperately wanted to hide.

“Do you like it?” he asked as I adjusted the sleeve and it all fell into place.

---