Beautifully Cruel (Beautifully Cruel #1)(74)

Panic flares inside my chest, burning hot. I lift up onto an elbow and stare at him with wide eyes. “I know you think I won’t be safe being around you because of your work, but we could keep it a secret. I’ll go back to my apartment and my job and we could see each other every once in a while, or—or maybe like only on the weekends or something—”

“No.”

His voice is flat and final. A knife plunged through my heart.

Glowing with shame, I collapse onto my back and cover my hands with my face, screaming at myself for being such an idiot. A pathetic, clingy, lovesick idiot.

Look at me. Begging. My mother would be horrified. I’m horrified.

I hate myself for being so weak.

I jerk upright and swing my legs over the bed, intending to run into the bathroom to pull myself together, but before I can rise, Liam grabs me.

He drags me back against his chest and pins me there so I’m sitting between his spread legs, chained by his arms.

His voice achingly raw, he says, “If there was a way, I’d find it. There’s no way out for me, you understand? This thing we’re doing…you have no idea what it’s costing me to be away, what I had to arrange—”

“What it’s costing you?” I interrupt loudly. Heat creeps up my neck. My pulse is flying. “How about what it’s costing me?”

His voice rises. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You’ve graduated law school. Soon you’ll pass the bar and become an attorney. You’ll be living your dream—”

This time it’s my harsh bark of a laugh that cuts him off. “Stop with the inspirational speeches already! That dream you’re talking about is more like a lifelong nightmare. It’s not what I aspire to be, it’s what I’m driven to be by the worst thing that ever happened to my family, by the worst thing that ever happened to me. My brother was my best friend and the best person I’ve ever known and he was fucking murdered—”

I stop abruptly, choking on a sob.

Silent, Liam holds me.

My sense of shame intensifies, because I’m not the only person in this room who’s suffered a loss. Liam has me beat in that awful category. I lost one brother, but he lost his parents and six siblings.

Shaking, I close my eyes and whisper, “I’m sorry. I’m being overly emotional. I know you’ve…that your family....” I take a steadying breath. “Let’s just forget it.”

“Your brother was murdered?”

His voice is strange. Low and devoid of emotion, except for a faint trace of darkness. Of danger. Unnerved by the quality of it, I simply say, “Yes.”

He waits, his body vibrating with tension. He wants more of an explanation, but I’m loath to get into the details, so I sum it up instead.

“That quote you told me at the restaurant, about how freedom for wolves often meant death to the sheep…” I sigh deeply, suddenly overcome by a wave of fatigue. “Michael was one of those unlucky sheep.”

Liam says slowly, “And you decided to dedicate your life to avenging him.”

His voice is getting more and more odd. It’s fervent and fevered, like he just discovered buried treasure. Like he stumbled upon a pirate’s chest overflowing with jewels and gold.

I turn my head and feel his burning gaze brand the side of my face. “What did you think I meant that time I said that when it was too late for revenge, justice had to take other directions?”

“You told your mother that you’d never let what happened to him happen to any of your clients—I took that to mean he had a drug or mental health problem, that he died by suicide or overdose, that he was an attorney and so you wanted to be one, too.”

“He wasn’t an attorney. He never even graduated from college. He was just a good ol’ boy with no money and a recreational drug problem who got on the wrong side of a very powerful man.”

Behind me, Liam is still and silent again, thinking hard. I’m not sure if that’s the end of the conversation, until he murmurs, “It’s almost like fate had this in mind all along.”

I furrow my brow in confusion. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

He pushes me forward off the edge of the bed so I’m standing, then stands himself. He turns me to face him, forcing me to look up into his face by gripping my jaw in his hand.

His eyes are the blackest I’ve ever seen them. Murderous black. Serial killer black.

Black as a bottomless pit in the darkest corner of hell.

“We’re going to get dressed. We’re going to have something to eat. Then you’re going to tell me exactly what happened to your brother, and you’re not going to leave anything out.”

He pauses, eyes glittering, then adds, “Including the name of that powerful man.”





26





Liam





Though Tru asks why I’d need to know his name, I don’t tell her. I just steer her into the closet so she can put on some clothes, then get dressed myself and wait impatiently for her in the kitchen.

She pads in, barefoot, wearing one of my white dress shirts.

It’s her uniform now. Even when she studies, she has one of them on. Sleeves rolled up her forearms, hem hanging halfway down her slender thighs. More often than not, she doesn’t wear anything underneath because she knows I’ll rip it off, anyway.