Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 464

I had never killed anyone directly. I had left men broken and bleeding, and I had always given them a chance to walk away, and if they did not take it, or no one came for them in time, that was their problem, not mine.

I did not know if I would ever cross that line someday. But I knew, with a certainty that sat cold in my stomach, that if I ever stood face to face with Big Bryan and I had the chance, I would not hesitate to kill him. Not for a second. Not if that was what it took for Tasha to live a normal life.

The hotel Sparrow drove me to was the kind of place that did not announce itself, all dark stone and brass and doormen who appeared from nowhere. He pulled up to the entrance and handed me a key card from the glove compartment.

"Room 1408. Go up, clean yourself up. I will wait here."

"You're not coming in?"

"Are you giving me an invitation?"

I opened my mouth, caught his meaning a second too late, and closed it. "No. Forget I said anything. I'll be right out."

He chuckled, low and satisfied, and I got out of the car and fled into the hotel before he could say another word.

I went straight to the bathroom, stripped out of the clothes I had just bought, and stepped under the hottest water I could stand. I stood there for a long time with my face lifted, letting the heat work the dirt and the fear out of my skin, scrubbing the red dust of that hill out of my hair until the water ran clean.

I cleaned the scrapes on my shoulder, dried off, and dressed in the new clothes, and when I looked at my reflection in the mirror I had to admit I looked sharp. Not a woman who had been shot at, kidnapped, and rolled down a hill. Just a woman in a blue shirt and black jeans, ready for whatever came next.

I was back at the car before the valet had finished pretending not to stare.

He did not argue. He just smiled.

The rest of the afternoon was spent going from one bar to another, one club to the next, until the city blurred into a string of neon signs and dark doors and men in suits who stepped aside when Sparrow walked through.

He did not go for fun. Each time we stopped, men gathered around him like iron filings to a magnet, and he held meetings and gave orders, took notes, dealt out punishments in that flat, quiet voice that made grown men go pale.

I sat to the side and watched, and I learned more about him in one afternoon than I had in all my months of digging. He owned almost every club and bar in the city. The thought should have frightened me. Instead it only made me more curious about everything he had not shown me yet.

And every time he finished with one place, he took my hand and led me out, his fingers laced through mine like it was the most natural thing in the world, and every set of eyes in the room followed us until the door closed behind us. When we reached the car, he opened my door and waited for me to get in before he walked around to his own side.