The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(95)

“About what happened when you left,” Calum said quietly.

She stiffened, and blinked down at the page. He wished her to speak about her time outside of these walls. A spasm wracked her heart. She didn’t wish to relive those days and the regret she’d now carry in leaving Robert. “We don’t—”

“Speak of personal matters,” he cut in. “I know the rules.”

Did her brother simply send Calum for further questioning to disprove her place here? Helena steeled her jaw. “You may assure Ryker that—”

“He did not send me to speak on it.” At the wry twist of his words she looked up. “In fact, he asked I not put questions to you about it. He said to leave you to the books.”

And they had. Every one of her brothers and the employees at the club had allowed her to seek out her office, and slip back into the old, familiar routine of bookkeeping. The task of going over reports and books had proven a distraction. A temporary one.

“Is this about Lord Westfield?” he asked bluntly.

Her eyes misted over and she blinked wildly at her page, willing the drops away, willing them gone so Calum wouldn’t see those signs of her weakness and know that her heart had never been further from this club.

The floorboards groaned, and she stiffened as her brother sank to his haunches beside her chair.

“You love him.”

She managed a jerky nod. With all she was, and all she would ever be. Unable to take his silence, Helena forced her blurry gaze to his. Even through the sheen, the bitter twist of her brother’s lips shone bright. Of course, hardened and jaded as he’d always been, as they’d always been, he would never see love as anything but a mark against her character. A short while ago, she’d not been unlike them. “I thought I would be losing myself if I loved him,” she said, willing him to see. “But I’ve found there is nothing weakening about loving someone. It does not make you frail, or incapable of successfully keeping books, or running a business. It makes you stronger.”

Calum gave a discreet cough, and shifted. “Uh, yes.” He patted her awkwardly on the back, and she sighed. Being with Robert, free in her thoughts and emotions, she’d forgotten the stifling oppressiveness of this constraint. “You should return to your books,” he said gruffly, and she nodded. Once, she’d been like him and her other brothers, unwilling to talk of anything that truly mattered, beyond the clubs.

Helena returned her attention to her ledgers.

He started for the door, and then called her name.

She glanced questioningly over her shoulder.

“I am glad you are back,” he said, with uncharacteristic emotion lighting his eyes.

Helena smiled, incapable of giving him that same lie. “Oh, Calum,” she called when he pressed the handle. He stared quizzically back. “Someday, you are going to find yourself hopelessly in love, and not be able to tell up from down, and I’m quite going to revel in that moment, Calum Dabney.”

He snorted. “There is no fear of that.” His lips turned up at one corner, full of so much male arrogance, she rolled her eyes.

A moment later, he closed the door, and she looked back at her books. With a sigh, Helena pulled free her spectacles, folded them, and set them down on her ledger.

For the first time in the whole of her life, there was no calm in her numbers. Or peace. Or joy. Just this peculiar emptiness.

She rubbed at the sharp ache in her chest. When she had sat beside Robert in the street, as he was pale and drawn, feverish from a bullet he’d taken for her, small pieces of her soul had died, leaving in their place this jagged coldness, a forever reminder of what she’d brought to him.

In those moments, his ragged groans and moans had sucked at her sanity, and ultimately left in place a realization—she could not marry him.

She had no place being with a man such as him. Her world was one of violence and danger, and in simply being in it, he was at risk. As were his sister and his father. For even though there was no longer any threat of Diggory, there would always be rival club owners who knew the heart of Ryker’s weakness—his family.

Helena clamped her lower lip between her teeth. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth, and the horror trickled in.

Robert’s blood staining her fingers, spilling onto the dirty London street, his raspy breath as his eyes rolled to the back of his head—

“The nightmare?”

The gravelly voice of Ryker Black cut across the terror and she spun about so quickly she wrenched the muscles of her neck. The nightmare—only this time, a new one that defied her own horrors at Mac Diggory’s hands. “Ryker.” She set the pen down and slowly stood.

Her brother stood several paces away, the harsh planes of his scarred face familiarly blank and unmoving.

They stood, their eyes locked in a silent battle.

“It isn’t time for my weekly meeting,” Helena said at last, shattering the tension.

Ryker folded his arms across his broad chest, and winged a frosty black eyebrow upwards. “I asked a question.”

No, he’d stated two words. What accounted for his silence? What demons were his? She was his sister, and had known him the better part of her life, and still knew next to nothing about who he was. She tipped her chin up. “We do not speak about the past, Ryker. The rules.” Those same ones that had gotten her sent away.