Page 116 of Brutal
Mine.
Something brutal and possessive stirs in me at the sight of it, but that isn’t the feeling that sits deepest.
That one is worse.
Because somewhere in the middle of her pushing into me instead of away from me, somewhere between the fight in her and the surrender in her and the way she said my name like it meant something other than a warning, I had one monstrous thought.
I would burn everything for her.
Not a room. Not a deal. Not one expendable man or one disposable structure.
Everything.
The club. The houses. The accounts. The carefully sealed doors of the empire my father built with blood and obedience and fear. The machine Nate keeps polished and precise. The whole dark kingdom of it.
I would put a torch to every last inch if it meant keeping her.
The thought should disgust me.
It should sound like weakness. Madness. Treason written in the language of desire.
Instead it settles into me like a vow.
Nate was right.
She is a weakness.
The realization doesn’t make me softer. It makes me colder. Sharper. More dangerous. Because weakness is only fatal when you refuse to see it for what it is.
I look down at the ring on my finger.
My father put it on my hand and told me some things are opened only once.
He meant power.
He meant loyalty.
He meant doors that should stay shut unless a Vexley chooses otherwise.
But lying here with Delaney breathing against me, the ring feels less like power and more like prophecy.
The key.
And beside me?—
The lock.
Beauty sleeping next to the beast.
The image should almost be laughable. A child’s story, dressed up for little girls who think monsters can be loved into gentleness.
That isn’t this.
I am not gentle.
And if there’s any magic in this room, it’s not the kind that saves. It’s the kind that ruins. The kind that turns men inside out and leaves them staring at things they were raised to kill in themselves.
Desire.
