Page 17 of At Your Mercy
A few minutes later, I heard the quiet bustle of the cleaners’ arrival, their presence as efficient and clinical as my own.
We nodded at each other in acknowledgment as I slipped out the front door, heading down to the private garage. They’d scrubthe scene, take care to destroy my bloodied shirt, then discreetly dispose of the body.
A black luxury sedan waited for me in the far corner of the garage, sleek and polished, engine purring softly. Elias was in the driver’s seat, window down, one hand resting lazily on the wheel.
I opened the passenger-side door and slid in, the faint scent of his cologne wrapping around me instantly. My pulse, steady through the kill, ticked once in my throat at the shift of atmosphere.
“Have fun?” he asked without looking at me.
“A blast,” I muttered.
His lips curved in amusement as he put the car into gear and drove us out of the garage. I watched out the window, cheek pressed against the glass, as the city began to blur past us.
A few minutes into the drive, Elias broke the silence that I’d been enjoying. “You’ve proven you can still handle a blade. I wasn’t sure after your last failure.” His tone was smooth and conversational, as if we were discussing the weather.
I turned my head just enough to study his profile. “Cohen.”
He smirked in that subtle, knowing way that always made me feel like I’d been dancing to a song only he could hear. “Precisely. You need to complete the job, Ronan.”
He didn’t know about my little visit the other night. Honestly, I still wasn’t sure what compelled me to break-in, just to tease him and leave. Elias would have a field day with that.
My brows furrowed, and I shifted against the leather seat. “You really want me to try again? That’s not going to work.”
“Oh?” He finally glanced at me, eyes sharp even in the dim light of the dash.
“He’s not an idiot,” I said simply. “There’s no way I can get close enough again, not without him seeing it coming. He’ll never let me near enough.”
Elias chuckled softly, shaking his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. He’ll let you close. In fact, he’ll want you close.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And how do you figure that?”
“You’re going to make him believe you need saving,” Elias said, his voice silk over steel. “You’ll spin him a story about wanting out, about being trapped under my thumb. You’ll let him see cracks—tiny fractures that make him think he’s the only one who can rescue you.”
I scoffed, though quietly. “You want me to play the victim?”
Elias smiled, explaining, “You’ve played the seducer all your life, Ronan. Now you’ll be both. Fragile in the right places, irresistible in others. You’ll pull at his heartstrings until he can’t tell the difference between pity and desire. Then, once you’ve gained his trust, you’ll turn the knife on him.”
I let my gaze drop to my hands in my lap, fingers flexing against the leather. “And if he doesn’t fall for it?”
“Everyone falls for you eventually,” Elias murmured, eyes back on the road. “I designed you that way, my beautiful black widow.”
I wanted to say that he hadn’t—that I was designed in my mother’s womb. I didn’t; instead, I chose to stay quiet. It wasn’t worth the effort.
The city slid by in streaks of gold and neon, reflected in the glass as I went back to staring out at the passing streets. Elias’s words looped in my head, each one cutting deeper than the last.
Make him believe you need saving.
It was laughable, really. The idea of anyone saving me. I almost smirked at the thought, though the humor was bitter at best. If anyone could drag me out of this pit, wouldn’t they have done it already? It’d been two decades.
My hope had slowly dwindled over the first couple of years, barely there for my teen years, then extinguishing completely ontop of a soiled billiards table the night he’d decided I needed to learn the hard way how to be an adult. I was seventeen.
Still… there was a flicker of something tonight. A strange, treacherous part of me whispered how nice it might be—just for a moment—to be seen as worth saving. To be touched by someone who cared.
Wesley Cohen.
He seemed like the type to take care of his lovers.
I wasn’t his lover, though.
