“Yes,” I responded, starting the short walk to my own car.
He nodded then walked confidently by my side. “You have been unpredictably bashful for our first date.”
In a very deep corner of my mind, I knew this was his way of lightening the mood. But he was relentless. And the things he was saying... Certainly, he was that persistent and that audacious because my embarrassment amused him. I wondered if I was just another woman on a long list of conquests.
“This hasn’t been a date,” I growled, a horrid sound even to my own ears. “God—”
Back there in the movie theater, I had fallen under his spell. I had played his game. But now, back outside in the blaring city night, back in the vortex of people passing by, back to real life, the real me returned, and guardedness prevailed. I could see it in his eyes that he had spotted the precise moment when walls rocketed up around me like armor.
“It was to me,” he said. The smile he had on his face suddenly didn’t seem as genuine or cheeky as before.
“You were very funny in there, but we should stop pretending.”
“I wasn’t pretending, Charlotte. I wanted to know you,” he cut in, almost sternly. His laidback demeanor was gone. Instead, the brilliant, intimidating man I had seen Friday night walked unbendingly beside me.
I was both grateful and sorry that we were about to permanently part ways. I pretended that I was focused on fishing the car keys out of my purse, but I was completely aware of him standing next to me. I also knew that as soon as I looked up, he would say something else in that deep, sensual voice of his, forcing me to reply rudely just to make sure I would get rid of him.
But did I want to get rid of him? Couldn’t I persist under his spell for a little while longer? Couldn’t I try to be that daring woman he had told me about?
“Charlotte, I’d like—” he started the instant I pulled the door open, blocking my escape with a firm hand pressing the door shut.
When his voice died down, and he removed his hand from the door without me having to tell him anything, I looked up to find him once more frowning. His eyes were directed to the passenger seat where I had forgotten a folder with the logo of my father’s firm and my name at the top.
“Charlotte Burton—Burton & Associates? Are you a secretary or something?”
“No. I am a lawyer. And I could have you arrested for assault and stalking.”
I hadn’t meant a word of what I said, but the words dripped maliciously off my tongue anyway. If Marcus had known me, he would have recognized my defense mechanism. He would have known that I was rude only to push the temptation away and make sure I wouldn’t be hurt. He would have known this was the coward me operating. But he did not know me, and I was too scared to let a stranger in.
His face fell, and the frown I had found between his brows when I looked up disappeared too. Instead, his expression settled into a placid mask that seemed out of place on his face. His blue eyes were meant to sparkle with mischief and amusement. His lips were supposed to be tilted up into a smile. And I had made the amusement disappear and the smile wither. I couldn’t keep him at arm’s length and pleased all at the same time.
“Actually, no, Miss, you can’t. To accuse me of assault, I should have caused bodily harm to you, and I—I haven’t caused you a scratch.”
His voice had sounded purposefully harsh, lacking in the calm tone I was accustomed to him using with me. He even took a step backward, looking at me as one looked at a mistake he regretted having made. I shouldn’t have felt so deeply ashamed of my attitude, but I did. And I honestly wanted to apologize, but my tongue spoke completely different words.
“It suffices that you intentionally or knowingly caused me to fear imminent bodily injury.”
My voice was smug as the lawyer took over, but my cheeks burned with remorse when I saw him flinch and roll his jaw. I should have simply told him to leave me alone. Maybe we would have parted ways politely.
“Careful, sugar. Defamation is also punishable by law.”
Chapter 6
Marcus
I had a foul taste in my mouth as if I had eaten something rotten, but food was not the cause of my sickness. It was the taste Charlotte Burton had left me. It was the very same taste my father left me each time we met.
I kept walking as fast and as far away as possible from the woman who now had a name, a profession, and a life that had nothing to do with me. I had asked her if she was a secretary because the alternative was too abhorrent to consider. But of course, she was not a secretary. She was a Burton—James Burton’s daughter.
Marching through the night, I laughed bitterly. My father had constantly praised the bright and hard-working daughter of his partner. He had always resented me that I wasn’t more like her, more compliant, more sharp-sighted. I had known about her ever since I was a boy, and yet, I had to meet her by accident while my stupid friends were attacking her.
Life had an ironic way of defying me, of haunting me. Who would have imagined that the first woman who held my interest in such a long while, who intrigued me to such extent that I had been unable not to pursue her, was nothing else but a lawyer and the daughter of my father’s business associate?
As I walked, I clenched my fists so hard that the skin covering my knuckles grew thin. Automatically, I checked my phone. It was almost midnight, and I had twelve missed calls and four messages. The calls were from Bryson and Kai, and the messages were from different women who attended the races, telling me how much they missed me. By now, the race must have been over, and I had no other way to uproot the anger that was tightening around me like a vice.
“I could have you arrested...” she had sneered. In my mind, her voice merged with my father’s—the same coolness, the same superiority, the same detachment.
The brutal way in which we had parted should have sufficed to get her out of my mind. In fact, it should have awakened in me at least a feeble desire to avenge my trampled pride. But it didn’t. It was her calm expression from the movie theater and the blush adorning her cheeks that popped in my head.
She hadn’t known that she was striking precisely where it hurt the most. She hadn’t known she was touching insecurities I strived to keep hidden, insecurities that my own father had created. And she definitely couldn’t have known that her words had rubbed salt in old festering wounds.
I had allowed myself one night with her, escaping my dark world to step into a world where I was a simple stranger talking to a beautiful mystery. The night was over, and so was our acquaintance. Tomorrow she was going to forget me, and I was going to do the same.
Despite her coldness, her spitefulness even, I couldn’t bring myself to regret my spontaneous decision to follow her inside that movie theater. Because this was how I was—I lived on the edge, I sought danger, and I took chances. Sometimes I failed, sometimes I got broken by those exact decisions that I had made, and sometimes I defeated all odds and succeeded. Charlotte Burton was that kind of memory that I locked in a corner of my mind to stop it from haunting me. She was in the past now.
I knew as soon as I unlocked the door to my flat that something was wrong. Kinga’s usual bark didn’t greet me. In fact, the silence that reigned over my apartment was disconcerting. If I had paid attention to the movie, and if I had been a white-livered man, I might have been scared. I turned the lights on, about to call out Kinga’s name, when my eyes landed on the loveseat in my living room. And there was Isaac King with his linked hands resting in his lap.
“Have you finished your little race, Son?”
As if my night wasn’t already bad enough, my father effortlessly made it worse. I clenched my fists again, and my father’s hawk eyes caught the tension-loaded gesture with a smirk. Arching an eyebrow, he glanced at my balled hands and challenged me to act on my frustrations.
Despite everything he was keen on doing to me, I had never considered raising a hand against my own father. I wasn’t so stupid as to give him the perfect excuse to press charg
es against me. The thought made me groan, made me remember a delightful pair of brown eyes that had held for me nothing but contempt.
“I have no idea what you are talking about, Isaac,” I replied icily. “To what do I owe the displeasure of having you in my apartment?”
“Visiting my son was not a crime last time I checked.”
To my utmost irritation, his response was calm and aloof. As he always was. The blue eyes I had unfortunately inherited from him checked steadily every twist of my emotions. Where he was poker-faced, I must have been a volcano on the brink of erupting.
“You should know everything about crimes,” I muttered under my breath, so low that I doubted he had heard me. “Let’s drop the pretenses, Isaac. Because you have donated your semen, doesn’t make me your son, or you my father.”
“You lost the race, I assume?” he queried as if he hadn’t even heard me. “I would show my regret, but that would not be genuine. I am glad you did. The more you lose, the more you’ll realize that is not your place.”
“Get to the point and get out of here.”
It didn’t matter how sternly, how coldly, or how disdainfully I talked to him. He was always going to treat me as if I were a little child throwing a tantrum.
Isaac rose to his feet and fastened his suit jacket. His height dominated the room, and I felt like a child before I remembered that I was a man on my own two feet now, that I should never cower before him again. The fact that he refused to accept it was his problem.
“You are not in the position to throw me out of my own house, are you?” he demanded, a victorious smirk taking over his features. “I am here because it’s time for you to know the truth.”
“What truth are we talking about?”
Suddenly, my palms grew clammy, and an unwelcome lump rose in my throat. The last time Isaac King had told me that I should know the truth, said truth had devastated me. The short-lived glimpse of sympathy I caught in his eyes told me he was thinking the same thing I was.
My frown deepened, and my jaw clenched as my father hesitated for the briefest of seconds. His chin twitched, then pride sharpened his features.
“I am not just a lawyer, with common ambitions,” he started.
“What are you then?”
“I am an agent. An undercover FBI agent.”
At first, the shocking news hardly touched me, then numbness morphed into lethal fury. I strained to remain calm but knew I would fail.
The man I had known my whole life, the man my mother had married, was suddenly a complete stranger. I spun around and fisted my fingers in the hair at the nape of my neck, concentrating on my breathing, struggling to reduce the chaos inside me to a quiet unrest. When I sneered and slammed my fist against a wall, both Isaac and I were startled.
“I knew you were a despicable man, but I never imagined you’d turn out to be a fraud.”
Isaac King didn’t welcome insults, not even when he deserved them. His blue eyes chilled, and his full lips thinned into a line that whitened at the ends. Then his firmly controlled expression turned into raw emotion. Was it frustration I saw in his stare?
“I’m undercover for a reason. I couldn’t parade with that information for everyone to know. It would have been dangerous for me as well as for you.”
“Is King even my last name?” I burst, ignoring his attempts to reason with me. He only rolled his eyes.
“Of course, it is.”
I couldn’t even look at him. I feared if I did, the night would turn out much more terrible than it had already been. I feared the man’s mere stare would push me over the brink.
“My intention has never been to put you behind bars or make of you an ordinary lawyer at the mercy of petulant clients,” Isaac went on, almost conciliatory. “But you were always too rebellious and too stubborn to abide by any rules. You still are. So I will use any leverage I have, any threat I can hold against you.”
“I will never be your puppet.”
“I want you to become a man who controls the world around him, not a failure who is wasting his time,” he growled and stepped closer, a menacing stance that failed to intimidate me.
I scoffed and struggled not to let his words affect me. But how could they not, when for once, I agreed with him. I was a failure, not because I refused to comply with his wishes but because everything I had ever touched eventually turned to dust.
“I only want what’s best for you. And I can give you the best, Marcus, as long as you give me what I need in exchange. Put your influence with these questionable circles you frequent to good use. Find the information and evidence I need. Become more than just a criminal. Become an...”
“You want me to become an agent?” I shouted.
My skin crawled and my blood boiled in my veins. Isaac wanted me to become a man with a ruined life, just like his. He saw me as a failure, but he was not far from being one himself. If anger was still profoundly locked inside me, contempt oozed freely.
“That’s priceless. You have worked so hard to keep me from racing, and now, you’re asking me to do that exact same thing?”
Isaac nodded, his eyes shining for the shortest of moments with something akin to human emotion, then his cool, commanding mask slipped masterfully into place.
“You know what I want and that I will get it by any means necessary. I am tired of fighting, so ultimately, the decision is yours. You have a week to decide, but make no mistake, this time I will not tolerate rebellion.”
“No need to give me a week,” I snapped. “My decision is already made. I am not becoming a damn agent, and I have no intention of cajoling your ego.”
My mouth pursed, the skin whitened around my knuckles, and my heart beat violently in my chest. I needed an outlet for my growing anger before it consumed me from the inside out.
“It is beyond my imagination how you can be so stubborn,” Isaac all but growled. The only thing betraying his own rage was the fire burning quietly in his eyes. “But let me remind you. This house belongs to me and so does your inheritance unless you get married, which we both know is unlikely. How would you live, if you were to be denied all of these?”
“You forget I have a very well-paid job, Father.”
“Do you?”
He smirked, wordlessly reminding me of his power, of how little he had to do to make my life a living hell. It was definitely the worst possible time to taunt me, but he drew pleasure from poking and prodding at my sanity. The smirk turned into a full sneer, and I finally exploded.
“Get out!”
I didn’t care if he took away the money or the apartment, and he knew it. He also knew that the only thing that would truly affect me was losing everything I had invested in my career. I hadn’t become an engineer to defy him. It was one of the few things I did naturally and better than most.
“One week, Marcus.”
He dismissed me and strode to the door. His hand was already on the doorknob when he looked over his shoulder and spoke in a measured voice.
“Losing your money and your miserable job is only the beginning. I can take everything, including your freedom, until you come begging for a deal. I truly hope you will not force me to take such actions.”
With that, he finally left.
To say that I was angry wouldn’t have been just an understatement but a lie. What I felt was too much and too hard to put into words. If it was anger, it was so intense that it bordered on madness.
I felt my skull about to explode from an invisible pressure. I was a ticking time bomb. I was about to do something really, really stupid. I wanted to—I wanted to do something, anything, just to dismantle the burden pressing on me.
My phone rang, and I answered before thinking twice. Maybe if I picked an argument with whoever was calling, I would feel better in the end. Perhaps it was Kai calling to tell me that Brayden had picked another fight and that they needed me to stop him. I was ready to throw some punches myself, both at Brayden and at whoever he might have been fighting with.
But the voice that greeted me was not Kai’s.
“Marcus? Marcus, are you alright?”
“Liv...” I mumbled instead of hello. My voice sounded beaten even to my own ears.
“Are you alright?” she repeated, almost shouting. There was an edge to her voice that made her sound panicky. From the noise playing in the background, I could tell she was outside and moving. Why was she out at this hour?
“Yes, I am. Is something wrong? Liv, where are you?”
Now she was starting to worry me. And tonight, I really didn’t want to be worried on top of everything else. I needed something to help me forget, even if for a little while. I didn’t usually get drunk, but all of a sudden, the idea carried a unique appeal.
“Of course, something is wrong. You haven’t been answering your phone, and I got worried and—Open the damn door already.”
I turned toward the door at the same time Kinga came out of nowhere and started barking. Then, a fraction of a second later, the door handle was forced, and a sharp banging echoed. Liv was here.
She almost never came to me but always called me to her whenever she needed me. I opened the door, and she flung herself into my arms, her hands going around my neck like they used to do so long ago.
“You are alright,” she murmured, caressing my shoulders, my head, whatever she reached. “You had me so worried. I thought—I knew tonight was a race night—and I thought—”
“Liv, sweetheart, I am alright,” I told her, taking her face in my hands. She looked as if she wanted to cry but couldn’t. “I haven’t been at the race.”
“No?” she demanded incredulously and frowned with suspicion. “Why not? And argh, keep that dog away from me.”
Liv had never liked Kinga much. In fact, she couldn’t stand being too close to live animals. They scared her, she always told me, and since I had developed the habit of keeping away from her anything that might have upset her, I did as she demanded.
“Kinga, sit,” I snapped a little harsher than necessary. Kinga whined, looked at me pleadingly, but in the end, she sat by the closed door with her head on her paws.
Darkside Love Affair Page 6
