Page 2 of Cruel Deception
He doesn’t.
Instead, his hands find my waist, pulling me tighter against him. His lips are firm, warm, and he kisses me back with an intensity that steals my breath. He smells clean, like cedar and something sharper, expensive.
My head spins, not just from the danger but from him—this stranger who’s supposed to be repelled by my sweaty, chaotic self but is kissing me like he means it.
For a split second, I forgot I was running for my life.
Then he deepened the kiss. Just a little.
God.
This man wasn’t clean. He wasn’t innocent. He was dangerous. Just not to me—yet.
I catch a glimpse of the goons out of the corner of my eye. They’re scanning the room, but they don’t linger on us. We’re just another couple in the haze of the club.
They move past, and I let out a shaky breath, pulling back from the kiss. His hands linger a moment longer before I step away, my lips tingling, my heart still racing from his scent, his touch, his everything. I meet his gaze, those piercing blue eyes set against a face shadowed with something dark, unreadable.
“Thanks for playing along, Mr. Hot,” I say, forcing a smirk despite the way my pulse is still hammering. I turn and slip into the crowd before he can say a word, hoping to God I never see him again. I don’t need to know who he is. I don’t want to.
What he doesn’t know is that my fingers are quick. Quicker than most. In that brief, heated moment, I lifted a key from his pocket. Old habits die hard.
I slip out of the club through another side exit, the cool night air hitting my skin like a slap.
The key’s a remote, sleek and heavy in my hand. I sprint to the garage, pressing the button as I go, expecting a car to beep in response. Instead, a sleek, million-dollar motorcycle hums to life, its lights flashing in the dim garage. A biker? Seriously?
I’ll return it later. Maybe. For now, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. A girl had a mother to find. I swing my leg over the bike, the engine roaring to life beneath me.
I’ve been riding since I was sixteen, dodging cops and creditors on stolen wheels. My hands are steady, my movements fluid as I weave through the garage and out into the night, the wind tearing at my hair.
The file’s still secure, my mom’s secrets tucked against my chest. The mafia’s behind me, for now, and I’ve got a head start.
It was 12:15 a.m. when I finally reached home—if I could still call this place that.
The house creaked as I approached, crouched low under the moonlight like it might collapse out of shame. An old Victorian skeleton left to rot on the edge of New York’s forgotten woods. No neighbors. No noise. Just trees, shadows, and the occasional wolf howl to remind me I was still alive.
The porch steps groaned beneath me. Paint peeled off the siding like sunburned skin. The windows were either cracked or webbed with grime, and the wind howled through the broken frames like ghosts that never left.
It used to be my grandfather’s house. Correction—his prison. The only thing my father didn’t take from him when he stripped him of everything and crowned himself Don.
The inside wasn’t much better. The wooden floors creaked in protest with every step I took. Cobwebs clung to the corners like memories that didn’t know how to die. Dust layered the old bookshelf like a shroud.
Still, it was safer than the streets. Safer than my father’s mansion.
I stepped into my bedroom and dropped the file on the table with shaking hands. I should’ve opened it immediately. Should’ve devoured every word. But I didn’t. Not yet.
Instead, I crossed the room and picked up the old portrait leaning on the windowsill.
Grandfather.
He looked stern in the photo, his eyes deep-set, shoulders squared like a man refusing to crumble, even when the world tried to grind him down. I brushed my fingers across the glass, over the lines of his weathered face.
“I made it out, old man,” I whispered. “Barely.”
A memory came uninvited.
I was eleven. It had rained for days. The roof leaked. We had no money for food, and I was curled up on the couch with a stomach that wouldn’t stop growling. He came home soaked to the bone, a cheap loaf of bread under one arm and a stupid grin on his face. He told me we were royalty and that bread was our feast. I believed him. I laughed. We split it in half, and it felt like the best meal I’d ever had.
He worked himself into the grave trying to take care of me. Double shifts. Construction jobs no one else wanted. All while my father—the almighty Don—lived in gold-plated sin and didn’t send a single cent.
