Page 87 of Devious Madness

“I don’t want to do that. I want to find one man, get married and have lots of babies.” She blushes with her confession.

“And you don’t think I’m that man.” That’s all right;there’s plenty of time for her to come around to my way of thinking.

I’m nothing if not patient.

Her shoulders drop a fraction. “I can’t be trusted, Rurik. That’s what I’m saying. My brain doesn’t work right.”

She taps her temple with two fingers.

I grab her wrist and pull it down to her lap.

“I trust you.” Three words have never been truer in my life.

“Why would you do that? I’ve been nothing but a pain in the ass since we met.”

“It’s true.” I nod. “You have. But tonight, when you saw Max was about to be hurt because of your actions, you stepped in.”

“It was my fault, not his.”

“And you owned it.”

She sighs and rests her head on my shoulder again. “This conversation has gotten too depressing for this late at night.”

“You’re hiding heavy secrets.” I run the tip of my fingers over her bare shoulder.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

She’s right, we all have skeletons buried deep in our closets. Some are worse than others. Hers are crushing her, even if she won’t admit it.

“I can carry them for you; you only need to tell me.”

A flash of relief crosses her features, but she buries. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“How do you know?”

“Because even you can’t turn back time.” Pain hides behind her forced smile.

Whatever monster she’s trying to slay on her own won’t win. I’ll hunt it down for her.

My phone rings, giving her a reason to climb off my lap. “You have things to do.”

“I’ll be only a second.” I grab my phone, seeing Alexander’s number on the screen.

He’s going to need an accounting of what’s happened with the storage building. All of his units were destroyed.

She pads across the room in her bare feet. When the door shuts behind her, I answer the call. Alexander’s voice sounds in my ear without preamble.

“Marco DeAngelo left a message.”

I’m half asleep when the bedroom door creeps open. A beam of light from the hallway swishes across the room as he shuts the door.

Immediately the room becomes darker, and it has nothing to do with the lack of lighting. The tension I felt in him downstairs in his office has gotten worse. Anger and frustration radiate from him as he makes his way across the room to the closet.

He’d said he’d only be a second on the phone, but the time on the clock tells me it’s been two hours since I left him in his office. Silently, he shucks out of his clothes, tosses them into the hamper in the closet and makes his way to the bathroom.

If he’s noticed I’m awake, he’s not showing it.

I’m sitting up in bed when he comes back out of the bathroom. He stands in the doorway. The bathroom light bright behind him shrouds his features in darkness.

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