Page 50 of Steel's Secret
THIRTEEN
THE LIE BETWEEN US
STEEL
The hallway outside Aria’s ruined office feels too bright. Too Clean. Too quiet for the blood drying on my knuckles.
I shut the door behind me because if I look at her for another second, curled on the floor, fingers trembling where she touched my face, I’ll do something stupid. Something selfish. Something that’ll get her killed.
Her fear gutted me. Not because she was afraid of me, because she never is, but because she was afraid of the storm circling my life. I saw it in her eyes, that shaking understanding that she’s in this now. That my war has swallowed hers.
Shame hits first. Sharp, metallic, crawling under my ribs. Rage follows, vicious and hungry, begging for something to break. And under all of it is the part of me I hate most, the urge to pull her into my arms and promise she’ll never hurt again. But promises like that buried my father. Promises like that turn men into tyrants. Promises like that make monsters out of kings. I can’t keep her close, but I can’t let her go. And that’s the part that scares me most.
The cold from the alley still clings to my clothes. The Syndicate’s blood still stains my cut. And my heartbeat still hasn’t slowed.
I walk until the fluorescent lights hum. Until her scent finally fades from my shirt. Until I can pretend that the violence still clawing under my skin is something I can bury instead of unleashing again.
I make it ten steps down the hallway before my hands start shaking. Not from the fight. From her. From the way she looked at me like I wasn’t a monster, even with blood dripping onto her floor.
I brace a hand against the wall, forehead dropping to the cold plaster. My breath fogs in front of me, sharp, uneven.
I should stay away from her. I know that. I’ve always known that. But when she whispered my name, the whole damn world narrowed to one point.
Her.
If they ever use her against me… I shove the thought away before it can finish.
Quick controlled footsteps echo from down the hall. Rock.
Of course.
He stops a few feet away, gaze dropping to my hands, then to the blood smeared along my jaw.
“You didn’t go soft,” he murmurs, voice low and dangerous. “Good.”
I don’t look at him. If I do, the rage buzzing in my bones might detonate.
“What did you hear?” I ask.
“Enough.” Rock crosses his arms. “Syndicate scouts?”
“Three.”
His eyebrow lifts. “Alive?”
“Didn’t check,” I mutter.
Rock’s mouth twitches. Approval or concern, hard to tell. “Then we’ve got a problem.”
No shit.
He steps closer. “You tell her the truth?”
My jaw clenches hard. The truth would rip her life apart. The truth would stain her hands the way mine are stained right now. The truth would make her look at me the way everyone else does.
So I lie the only way I know how. “No.”
Rock exhales slowly, watching me like a man studying a grenade with a loose pin. “Good,” he says quietly. “Some things she doesn’t need to carry.”
