Page 127 of Filthy Elites

“No, you’re right.”

His hands move up the arms of the chair, the backs of his knuckles brushing against me as he presses down. I look up and Viks’ head touches me, his forehead against mine. He sighs, and the smell of mint on his breath makes me have to resist the urge to lean into him.

“I’ll finish my shift tonight,” I remind him.

“Alright,” he says. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Thank you.”

His lips twitch. “I know a way you can thank me,” he says suggestively.

I shove him back. “Perv.”

He arches a brow. “For you? Fuck yeah. All the time, baby. Anytime.”

I roll my eyes and push up from the chair, moving across the room to the door. I’m almost home free when he calls my name, stopping me.

“This weekend,” he says, sobering—his amusement fading, “I need you to come with me somewhere.”

“Where?” I ask.

“A new club is opening in the city,” he says, eyes sliding away as he rounds his desk and takes a seat. “I need a date.”

His words from earlier come back to me, the phone call I’d overheard. “Okay…” With my hand on the doorknob, I don’t turn it, waiting. There’s more to this, I can tell. I can also tell that he doesn’t want to elaborate. I release the knob and turn back, striding across the room until I’m standing in front of him and there is no running away. “What’s going on?”

Viks’ jaw clenches and unclenches. “There’s a chance the dealer could be at this new club.”

My spine stiffens. “I just told you that I—”

“I know,” he snaps, cursing under his breath before jerking his head up. Gray eyes meet mine, full of anger and resolution and something else that’s equally as untamable and yet impossible for me to read. “I don’t have a choice in this, Haley. You have to come with me. I swear to you, though, nothing will happen to you. I will keep you safe. There will be security—”

“There was security here,” I point out. And they hadn’t known, hadn’t been able to do shit. How many other women out there in the world had experienced the same helplessness with others so close and yet so far away? I shake my head and try to rid myself of those thoughts, but it’s hard to forget.

Viks stands up and reaches for my hand. He presses it down against the surface of his desk—his much larger palm over mine. Encompassing mine, but not holding it down. His voice drops into something sinister and dark. “He will not get away with it,” Viks tells me, sounding every bit the monster Josh accused him of being. “No more nightmares, Haley. I’ll fucking kill him for touching you.”

That should terrify me even more. What’s worse? Rape or murder? The answer is different per person, but for me, the almost of what happened is ten times worse than making sure that the man who would have done it is gone from this world. It doesn’t just protect me, but all the other women in the world.

So, when Viks swears a killing oath, though it should bother me, it doesn’t. It doesn’t even phase me. I pull my hand out from beneath his and despite myself, I raise it to his face along with my other one.

My hands touch his cheeks, skim down the prickly beard growth against his jawline. “Okay,” I say the word more to myself than to him. “Okay, yes. I’ll go with you.” I can guess what’s going on. My eyes meet his. “I’m bait, aren’t I?”

His gaze hardens. “He won’t touch you,” he promises. The non-answer is an answer within itself.

I close my eyes and slowly release a breath.I can do this. I know Nicholas Carter wants Patrick Kennedy gone for his own agenda—the drugs. But Kennedy needs to be dealt with for other reasons. My skin practically crawls with the memories that surface at my thoughts, but I forcibly shake them off.

“Then I’m coming,” I inform Viks, reopening my eyes and knowing he’s not going to like my next words. “And I’m not coming as a prop, but as an ally.” He frowns. “I want a gun.”

EIGHTEEN

Haley

Viks does not take kindlyto my ultimatum, and I’m not trying to sugar coat it—that’s what it is. If I’m going to put myself right back in the path of the man who tried to rape me, I’m not doing so without a weapon to help me. And though he tried to argue that a gun in my hand will only make me appear as a threat, by the time Friday arrives and we’re preparing for the night out in his apartment, he still reluctantly hands me the smallest pistol I’ve ever seen in my life.

I take it and glance up at him. “Where the fuck did you get this? A toy shop?”

Viks cuts a glare my way as he walks back into the closet and snatches a black t-shirt off the hanger and yanks it on over his head, covering up all the tan male flesh that is fresh out of the shower. “That’s all you’re getting,” he tells me. “You wanted a gun. There’s your fucking gun.”

“I said a gun, meaning a real one, not a BB shooter,” I snap.

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