Page 38 of Save Me
Aaron is clearly not used to being dismissed so easily though. “Vogue?—“
“No,” I cut him off sharply. There’s nothing he can say that will fix this. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Do you want me to get her back here?”
That stops me dead in my tracks. “You can do that?”
“Not much I can’t do.”
“Then why haven’t you done it already?”
“It’s not my decision to make. Also, if I lay eyes on that woman again, Iwillkill her. Is that what you want?”
His gaze has gone hard, his entire attitude is scary as fuck, and I gulp. “Is that what I want?” I repeat.
The question echoes in the massive, ornate room, bouncing off the gold-gilded frames and the cold marble floors. The air feels too thick to breathe, and I can feel the guys tensing up around me. They can sense how close Aaron is to breaking point, how his barely contained fury is a wild animal on a short leash.
“No,” I say, finally, my voice steadier than I feel. “I don’t want her dead.”
Aaron’s expression doesn’t change; he just stares at me with those piercing eyes that see through all the bullshit. “Then what do you want?”
“I...” My brain is a whirl of emotion and adrenaline. Why does he keep asking me that? What do I want? To run? To hide? To confront her? Each possibility seems more frightening and impossible than the last.
“I just need to think,” I finally say. I need to think about how things could have been so different if she hadn’t been a selfish bitch.
Thayer nods and steps closer, his body language protective. “We’ll take care of her,” he tells Aaron, his voice laced with a warning. It’s clear: they’re standing with me, no matter what.
Aaron looks as if he wants to argue, his jaw set stubbornly. But instead, he exhales harshly and waves a dismissive hand. “Fine. Go.”
We don’t need to be told twice. We leave the mansion’s cold power and step into the comforting dawn.
“No, wait.” I frown and turn back around, striding back through the mansion to the study where Dad is gathering up the pieces of paper strewn all over his desk. When he hears me, he looks up. His expression is haggard for a moment before he adjusts his features into the usual mask.
“Teach me,” I state.
“Teach you what?”
“To never,everbe taken advantage of again. I want to know everything, every way to make this life work for me, not against me. I’mdonebeing its bitch.”
“Are you saying you will leave Crestmont, live here with me, train with me by my side every fucking day until you feel like you can’t learn anything more, only to be surprised that you’ve only just scratched the surface of the underworld?”
“Fuck,” I mutter. When he puts it like that… “Yes. Fuck, yes.”
His eyes flicker with respect or maybe satisfaction, but there is definitely monstrous fatherly pride glaring in the smugness of his sinister smile.
“Alright,” he says with steel in his voice. The kind of steel that has built empires and toppled kingdoms. “You’ll learn at my side. But be warned, Vogue, the oath you took is binding. Once you walk this path, there’s no turning back.”
I nod, because I’ve come to the same conclusion. “I’m all in.”
13
VOGUE
No one talksas we leave Aaron’s place. Dad’s place. My place. Fuck. Everything is moving in rapid motion, making me feel slightly ill with the tilt of each passing second. How did I go from blaming and hating a father I never even knew, to trusting him and hating my mother? It’s a flip-flop of events, but somehow, in this fucked up little world, it has to be this way.
I won’t be hurt again. I don’t think I can take another hit, not after this one that has pulled my entire childhood out from under me.
It’s like moving through water as I climb back into the SUV to go to the penthouse to pack, only to come back here and move in with the father I’ve known only a couple of weeks.
