“I need information,” he says into the silence. “On the consortium. On the conspirators.”
“We’d need some time,” my mother answers. Her voice doesn’t waver. “I wasn’t involved in the business side of things, but if there’s anything to be found, if there’s paperwork—”
Mason flips the gun over and my mother’s hand goes to her throat.
But he doesn’t shoot. He’s doing something with it. A button on the side. He slips something out of it—the bullets. They go into one of his pockets. His hands move capably over the weapon, sliding a piece at the top. A flash of light on metal, and he tips a bullet into his hand.
“I want the information,” he says again, aiming at my father this time. “That’s why I’m leaving you alive…for now. But I’m taking what you don’t deserve. I’m taking your business. Your reputation. Your money. Van Kempt Industries? That belongs to me. I hold the majority, and I’m kicking you and your daughter out. Consider this a hostile takeover.
Mason stalks out of the room. My father stays frozen at his desk. My mother is a statue in the center of the room. She and my father look at each other like the last two people on a sinking ship.
It’s all in the open now. My father’s weaknesses. His crimes. Their past failures and the ruptures that have followed us into the present. Nothing can ever be the same.
“Victoria,” my father says. It’s the last word he manages before a choked sob breaks through.
He collapses into the chair behind his desk, his hands over his face, and my mother goes to him. One hand on his shoulder and he turns into her, reaching for her. She puts her arms around him.
“I’m back,” she murmurs. “I’m here now, Cyrus.”
She’s here, and the one person with any power left at all is walking out the door.
I’m stunned for all of a second, and then I chase after him.
He’s hurrying. The front door is closing by the time I reach it. I yank it open and follow him out into the night. “Mason. Wait.” He stops on the steps of the house and looks back at me. With his eyes like that, haunted and gorgeous, I’m at a loss for words. “Thank you.”
“Thank you?” A brutal smile bares his teeth. Mason looks off to the side, into the night. Shoves his hands into his pockets. He’s beautiful, soot-stained, incredulous. “You chased me out here to thank me?”
“Yes. I—”
He charges back up the steps and my sentence falls apart under my shock. I’m against the siding of the house the next moment. Mason makes a collar of his hand on my throat. There’s a shake in his grip. It’s rage. Fear bolts through me. “For what?”
From this close, I can see him rendered in sharp, heartbreaking detail. The scrape across his cheek. Ash staining his collar. The muscles of his jaw, clenched tight, grinding his teeth together.
His eyes.
They’re a lightning storm in miniature, white heat over shadowed green. His anger embodied in his short breaths and the fist at my throat, in the way he towers over me, blocking out the rest of the world. But his eyes tell the truth. Underneath the ruthless bastard, there’s pain down to the bone. Down to his heart. I was right before. Tonight was too much. And at the end of it, he didn’t get the closure he wanted. He didn’t get to put his parents’ murders to rest.
“For not killing him.” The barest tension in his hand. Not enough to choke me, or even make it hard to breathe. “You could have killed him and you let him live.”
“I didn’t do it for you.” His eyes fall to my lips and linger there for a heartbeat.
“I know you didn’t.” Except—I don’t know that. His voice is so alive with emotion that it comes across as a lie. In the end, it doesn’t matter who he did it for. “It had to be so hard, Mason.”
“Which part?” Another mean, heartless smile.
“Giving him more time on earth. I don’t think I’d have been able to do it.”
“You sweet fucking thing. You stood in that room and you’re trying to spin this into a good deed?”
“Call it what you want.” It’s the most difficult thing, keeping my chin up when he’s holding me like this. Strangely, I don’t want to run. What I want is to bat his hand away and run into his arms. “I know you’re not like that.”
“You weren’t paying attention, then. This is a temporary reprieve, Charlotte. When I get what I want from him, I’ll finish the job.”
Harsh words. The kind a vicious bastard would say. But Mason can’t hide his eyes, and he can’t hide the devastation in his voice. I felt it in his body when we were on the street. In those last few moments. When he was mine.
I reach up and put my hand over his wrist, desperate to touch him. He goes still when I run my thumb over the back of his hand. Mason doesn’t take his eyes off mine.
“But you didn’t do it tonight.” My throat closes and tears fill my eyes. His anger is palpable, but some part of me thinks the imminent threat has passed. Some part of me knows that. Down to my soul. “So…thank you.”
He lets out a frustrated growl and leans in to kiss me. It’s hard. Quick. Searching, almost, but he doesn’t give himself the time to relax into it. He tears himself away, putting distance between us. One tear slips down onto my cheek and I wipe it away. I’ll break down once he’s gone. Not in front of him. Not when my parents are still alive, and Mason hasn’t killed anyone, and the sun will rise on another day to solve this.
Mason glances at the front door like he can see through to where my father remains in his office, alive and unharmed. His eyes come back to mine, and he smiles. It’s a bitter smile that chills the summer night and makes me think of snow. Of slick, black ice that will send your car spinning off the road. Of wind cutting through a sundress that wasn’t meant for a freeze.
“Don’t thank me yet, you sweet little thing.” Mason turns away. Goes down the last of the steps. “Our contract isn’t over. I’ll see you Friday night.”
6
MASON
Two days after I did not shoot Cyrus Van Kempt, my secretary pokes her head in the door of my office. “You have a meeting with Frank from the Parkside development in half an hour.”
“No, I don’t. I pushed that to next week.” I can’t meet Frank with a scrape on my face. I don’t know how I got the damn thing. I only discovered it in the shower after I got home.
Her eyes get a little wider. “Did you email the change? Because they called to confirm, and I said you were in.”
“Call them back and tell them I’m not in.”
“Mr. Hill—”
“I moved the damn thing on the calendar. Check the calendar first thing. Before you confirm anything.” I’m being a prick. I’ve felt like a surly mess all morning. All weekend. Four showers, and I can still smell ash on my skin. No idea how it got into all my clothes. “That’s all.”
“I wanted to check with you about the claims process for Cornerstone.”
I stare at her, silent, until it registers. A flicker of pity in her eyes. Fuck, I hate that. She nods and turns away.