Page 29 of Hayes
I grin at her. “I know you don’t need my help. You clearly have the skills and motivation to let every man bid on you and then slowly pick us all off. I know you’re capable of continuing your plan, but you don’t have to. I can help you.”
She shakes her head.
“I make a great number two; just ask my friend Lennox or Titus.”
She scoffs. “Lennox, the mafia Corsi leader? And Titus, the new current Retribution Kings leader? You work for them, and yet I’m supposed to believe that you could cross them?”
“I didn’t say I would cross them, just that I would help you.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I pause, trying to decide how much to bend the truth. As she squats on the floor next to me, wrapped in nothing but a towel, her red hair growing larger by the second on top of her head, and the truth that she stabbed me only to injure, the only words I can speak are the truth.
“Because I’m in love with you, murderous one. I fell in love the second I saw you. And then I fell even harder when your lips landed on mine. My pulse raced when your first began to be sold off. My blood boiled when Daniel kissed you. Fear overtook me when I heard the gunfire and thought you were dead. And when you stabbed me but didn’t kill me, my heart fell completely in love with you.” My grin creeps up my face.
“I know it’s crazy. I barely know you and you me. And I don’t expect you to share any of the feelings that I have, but I can’t not help you. You, Lilith Hart, are the person for me. I know it deep in my soul.”
She pauses for a long time. I don’t know how she’ll respond to my confession of love, seemingly out of nowhere. She works her jaw—possibly to keep from smiling herself. Finally, she says, “Prove it. Prove that you love me. That you’re on my side and against the Retribution Kings. Prove that you’re loyal to me above everyone else, then we can talk about your confession.”
My eyes blaze. “Deal.”
I want to put Lilith above everyone—Titus, Lennox, Gage…the list goes on. Hopefully, I’ll never have to choose between them. I can be on her side, protecting her and helping her, while doing what I came here to do for Titus and for the others. I’m the most loyal friend, and that’s not going to stop now, even for love.
Chapter 14
Lilith
Hayes’s confession of love takes me back. It takes everything in me to keep my mouth from falling open at his words.
He loves me.
Who confesses that when they haven’t even gone on a date? When they don’t even know what my favorite food is or how I like to fuck in bed? Or how we are at all compatible?
We’re not—we’re not fucking compatible. He’s a ray of sunshine, and I’m a dark raincloud about to strike lightning.
Murderous one—I smirk at his nickname for me. I like it.
And yet his confession doesn’t do anything to melt my cold heart. It doesn’t convince me that he even actually loves me. Hayes seems like the kind of guy that has said I love you to every woman he sinks his cock into or wants to sink his cock into.
Hayes grabs my forearm.
My instinct is to immediately twist out of his hold and stab him again for daring to touch me. But there is also an electric charge where he touches me, and it makes me wish I had stayed in that hotel room to see where things took us.
“Trust me,” he says, his crooked grin growing larger until his dimple strikes in his cheek, and my core warms at the sight of it.
“If you betray me, I’ll kill you,” I respond.
Hayes chuckles. “Many men have said the same to me, but the words falling from your lips are the first time I actually believe them.”
“Good, you should.” At yet, for some reason, when given the chance, I didn’t actually kill him. Strange. Maybe I do think there is hope for Hayes, that he’s not a monster like everyone else here.
Hayes leads me back into the penthouse, and a hush instantly falls over everyone as we step into the living room. I’m standing in only a towel. Hayes is in only his pants with his shirt wrapped around his chest wound. We look like hell.
My eyes scan the room to find the men don’t look much better. I bounce from man to man, taking it all in. The wide stares, tense jawlines, furrowed brows, dripping sweat, blood-stained shirts…and then I see the bodies. Three bodies lying on the floor, covered in thin white sheets.
I only killed two of them. Someone else killed the third.
It takes everything in me not to smirk at the carnage and fear I created. That these brawny men who kill every day like death means nothing are actually afraid of me. They don’t even yet know I was the one that caused this, but they will soon enough.
