Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 455

"Bullets do not depreciate, Commodore. They only become more expensive to everyone who is not holding them."

Remy stepped in, all swagger and bad cologne. "Here is where we land. We give you two hundred, and you throw in the next shipment free, the launchers and the ammunition, and we call it square and keep doing business like gentlemen."

I looked at him for a long moment, then at Farr, then at the crates. Eight hundred million in hardware for two hundred and a handshake. That was not a negotiation. That was a robbery with extra steps, and we both knew it. The intel I had paid for had said they were planning exactly this, that they had made a side deal with a buyer who would take the guns off their hands the moment I was out of the picture, and that the only thing they needed was to see me dead in a way that could not be traced back to them.

So I gave them their rope and watched them measure it. "That is not what we agreed," I said, keeping my voice even.

Remy laughed, and it was the laugh of a man who had already spent the money. "You are not listening, Sparrow. There is no next quarter. Two hundred, the free shipment, and you walk out of here alive. That is the offer."

"And if I decline?"

"Then we are done discussing." He glanced at the door where Scarlett had walked out through, and his smile turned ugly. "You should be more concerned with giving us what we want. Otherwise the woman you love is going to die."

I frowned. My brows lifted, and I laughed, a short sound with no humor in it, because the idea was so absurd it had to be a bluff. "The woman I love. Is that what you think she is?"

'The woman you love.'

Back in the shower, with the water going cold against my back, I could not shake those words. I did not do love. I had never done love. Love was a leash, and I had spent my whole life learning to slip leashes, and I was not about to hand mine to a woman who could break a man's heart and his jaw in the same evening.

But there was something about Scarlett and I was honest enough with myself to admit it even if I hated it. She drew me in a way that unsettled me, the way a flame draws a hand that knows better. She made my heart beat faster when she was in the room and faster still when she was not, and she was the only person alive who had ever made me feel like I was the one being watched.

I could not let that stand. I could not let her have that kind of power over me, because a woman like Scarlett, strong and dangerous and carrying nothing she would not burn to get what she wanted, would take that power and use it to file me down to nothing.