Page 33 of Brutal
He rolls his eyes. “I am annoyed.”
“Because a woman had dinner with me?”
“Because you know better than to invite uncertainty into your lap.”
“For Christ’s sake, Nate, at the risk of repeating myself, you’re the one who told me to pay attention.”
A muscle shifts in his jaw. Nate doesn’t lose patience often. When he does, it shows in small ways first. A change in stillness. A slight hardening around the mouth.
“She’s after something.”
“I don’t disagree.”
“You say that like it doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t,” I say. “Everyone is after something.”
“That’s a convenient philosophy when you’re the one holding the knife.”
I tighten my fingers around the glass. Like I said, Nate notices everything.
The bourbon sits heavy on my tongue. I set the glass down before I decide to throw it at the wall. Even so, my harsh action makes a bit of it spill. Liquid gold worth more than what most guys make in a month seeps into the carpet.
My brother isn’t wrong. That’s the irritating part.
Delaney is after something.
But I can still see her at the table, candlelight moving over her face, all that cool composure with a live current humming underneath it. She didn’t flutter. She didn’t perform. She looked at me as if she understood I was dangerous and she chose to stay anyway.
I wanted to touch her. God, I still do. That, more than anything, should tell me to keep my distance.
Instead, it makes me want to know how long she can hold out before she stops pretending my presence doesn’t affect her.
Nate shifts his weight. “What did she ask?”
“Nothing direct.”
His lips thin. “That’s not reassuring.”
“I’m not here to reassure you.”
He looks away for a second, toward the closed door. Then, “You know what Father would say.”
I’m about to retort that I don’t give two damns what our father would say when a memory crashes through my mind.
I’m nineteen. I stand in my father’s study with blood drying in a split over my left brow and my right hand swelling under torn skin across the knuckles.
I don’t remember the other guy’s face. Only the dull satisfaction of having put him on the floor after he made the mistake of testing me twice in one night. My father doesn’t ask if I started it. He doesn’t ask if I finished it. Those questions don’t matter to him.
His study smells like paper and the rustic scent of Cuban cigars. Floor-to-ceiling shelves line the walls. Rain taps at the windows.
Arthur Vexley sits behind the desk in a dark suit and white shirt. His tie isn’t loosened even at this hour. His prominent jaw, along with his eyes—dark brown, almost black— make him look almost like the devil himself.
He looks at my hand first.
Then at my face.
“You won,” he says.
