They didn’t know what they were missing when it came to what he could do.
“He’s from a different time,” Uilleam muttered without inflection as he undid the cufflink on his shirt sleeve and rolled the material up. “When men were only allowed a seat after they’d reached the age of fifty. Only then, in his opinion, has a man really lived.”
Uilleam was nearly three decades short of that
At his age, Karina thought, he should have been working for someone else as a recruit, or an underling at best, yet his playing field was vastly different.
He was vastly different.
Not only was he his own boss, but he commanded others.
Whatever rules had been in place before Uilleam came along, before he became a fixer—a Kingmaker, as she had dubbed him—they had no place here now.
“Sounds very backward.”
“Because of the age limit? I agree.”
“Because there are no women. Why is it that men tend to forget women can be just as ruthless?”
She expected him to protest, to try to make an argument to excuse it, but he merely laughed.
“Of that, I have no doubt.”
Her smile grew by an inch as she turned to better face him, enjoying the look on his face far too much. The way he seemed to be trying to erase the bubbles surrounding her with his mind alone.
It was only right that she help him.
Placing her hands on the edge of the clawfoot tub, she moved to her knees, watching the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
Not even a minute passed before he was reaching for her.
His gaze stayed on hers even as his hand descended down her stomach. “Such beautiful, dangerous creatures,” he said with a minute shake of his head. “You never see the danger until you’re already wrapped around their finger.”
“Oh?” she asked, her voice a little shaky as she inched closer to him, parting her thighs in the process. “Is that how you feel? Do you think you’re wrapped around my finger?”
He blew out a breath, his thumb pressing down on her clit before rubbing in achingly slow circles. “More than you could ever know.”
“Uilleam—”
“Say my name like that again.” His voice took on that low, smoky quality that made her arch into him, spiking the heat coursing through her. “I love to hear you say it.”
His name spilled from her again when he curled two fingers inside her, a curse following when he cupped her jaw and forced her to look at him.
“I’m not going to let you come until I’m ready,” he said a moment later. “If you have me wrapped around your finger, it’s only fair I have you around mine, hmm?”
She didn’t have words.
Not that any of them would be good enough.
Because he had her, and there was no denying that.
He owned her right down to her very marrow, and she was done denying that fact to herself.
28
Dearest Isla
It didn’t matter if she was back home or, as it were, enjoying her time in a different country, If there was one person Karina always answered the phone for, it was her sister.
“You know,” Isla said once the call connected, “if you took Mum’s calls, she wouldn’t require me to do her dirty work.”
Karina smiled despite herself. “Is that the only reason you’re calling?”
“Of course not,” Isla returned flippantly. She rarely did anything she didn’t want to do. “Tell me about you. What have you been up to besides having murderers put behind bars? Did you love the dress you needed?”
Karina smiled before she even meant to, remembering the night of the dinner very well. It had been the first time she’d ever seen Uilleam’s face.
In many ways, that had felt like the beginning of this strange, wondrous thing between them.
She told her of the fundraiser and the many nights that followed. About the joy she had felt once Paxton had been arrested.
“Mother used that to her advantage.”
Karina’s smile froze in place at those words. “How do you mean?”
“Just a few well traded stocks is all,” Isla said glibly.
As if it meant nothing.
And really, it should have. She should have been glad that someone else had reaped the benefits of Paxton’s incarceration—especially her own family—but while she wanted to see it that way, she also couldn’t help but think it wasn’t Paxton’s misfortune that Katherine had garnered riches from, but rather off the back of Miranda.
The thought made her pluck at the string on her shirt.
“But that’s a story for when you finally join the business. Which will be … ?”
“Oh, not you too,” Karina said on a sigh, rubbing her brow. Any mention of her time ending in New York and her going back home always brought on the beginnings of a headache.
“I’m only asking the question we’re all thinking. When are you coming home? We miss you.”
Home.
The very thought of it should have made her smile, or at the very least, she should have felt a longing in her heart for a place she hadn’t returned to in over a year now, yet … she didn’t miss it.
Sure, there were times when she wished she could venture outside and smell the cherry blossom trees that stood tall in front of Ashworth Hall, but the home, itself, she didn’t think about, let alone miss.
She thought she would have by now because that was what her relocating had been about in the first place.
Moving to the States had been her way of getting away, spreading her wings.
Learning what she was made of without the security, or pressure, of her family.
She’d wanted to explore her passions and decide for herself what she wanted out of life. She’d wanted the chance to experience what she thought it meant to be normal before she committed to venturing into the family business as her sister had done.
“I can’t say I’ve made a decision just yet.”
“Why not? What’s there left to think about?”
She wished it was that easy for her. That she could fall in line with what Mother expected of her children the way Isla did. In many ways, her sister was the better daughter. There hadn’t been any hesitation on Isla’s part when it came to the family business.
She had gleefully and quite eagerly joined the ranks without a single hesitation.
She hadn’t had the same sort of doubts that whispered in the back of Karina’s mind. She didn’t wonder what else the world had to offer.
Except Karina had.
She had wanted to exhaust every option before she came to a decision.
“You’ve not met a man at that paper, have you? Someone you fancy?”
A lie sat heavy on the tip of her tongue. “Not someone from the paper, no.”
“But you have met a man? Or woman?” Isla added with the sort of tone that told her she wouldn’t mind the possibility.
Her smile was rueful. “A man, yes.”
“You’ve clearly been holding out on me,” Isla said, sounding scandalized. “Who is he? What does he do? Where did he go to university?”
Karina was almost sure if she did give just a name and a significant enough occupation, Isla might very well know who she would be talking about.
Isla knew of most powerful men.
“His name is Uilleam. He’s a …” She stumbled only for a moment before remembering this was her sister, and that she always told Isla the truth. “Uh, fixer.”
She waited for the questions she knew would eventually come, but as she anticipated them, Isla stayed quiet.
Too quiet.
No questions about the man or how she knew him. Not even how they had met.
Which could only mean one thing.
She knew of him.
“I’m afraid to even ask what you’re thinking,” she said a moment later when Isla still hadn’t spoken.
Some part of her had known this day would come, that she would have to expl
ain her relationship with a man like him. Not because he was a criminal—her mother and sister would probably applaud that fact—but someone who used his name as a weapon and made his presence felt while her family tended to stick to the shadows.
The Ashworths had a tendency to know everyone, yet no one knew them.
“This isn’t … Mother’s doing?” Isla asked, her voice trailing off at the end as if she already had an answer but was hoping for another.
“Of course not,” Karina said quickly. “She doesn’t know about him … or us, rather.”
“He was the one you wrote about then—the one people are starting to call the Kingmaker?”
She hadn’t known when she wrote that little piece that the moniker would stick—that it would become something of a title. “I didn’t know you kept up with my work.”
“I didn’t know you were keeping these sort of secrets from me.”
While some might have possessed a great poker face, Isla also had a tone about her voice that made one wonder what she was truly thinking.
Karina had witnessed her using it on more than one occasion.
Yet now, she could hear the strain behind those words.
There was more to this than she realized, and that thought was enough to make her heart stutter.
“What is it, Iz? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Let’s meet.”
“What? I’m in Paris,” she reminded her. She didn’t bother mentioning that she hadn’t gotten around to telling Uilleam about her.
“I can have the jet there within a couple of hours—I had business in Brussels,” she tacked on, sounding distracted. “This is a conversation better had in person.”
“But—”
Isla didn’t give her a chance to protest before ending the call, the click in her ear enough to make her curse.
Isla was coming, whether she liked it or not.
And more than that, she was coming with information she probably wouldn’t like.
It was one thing to sneak out of her apartment in the middle of the night when she was back home. It was something else entirely slipping out in an entirely different country.
Of course, she could explain it away easy enough. She could just say she was going to the shops or maybe the market to cook a meal for dinner as opposed to going out, but that didn’t stop her nerves from racing as she left their temporary home.
She walked nearly a mile up the street before hailing a taxi and giving the man behind the wheel the name of the hotel where Isla was waiting for her.
It wasn’t that she was nervous—at least not entirely. Truthfully, she was a bit ecstatic at the idea of seeing her sister after so long. Fourteen months might have passed in the blink of an eye, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t felt homesick.
She missed seeing her best friend in all the world.
That was the thing about them. The three years that separated them in age meant nothing to Isla.
For as long as Karina could remember, it had always been the two of them against the world. They had confided secrets they would never tell a single soul. They had learned and grown together, so much so that their bond was unbreakable.
But even as she was confident in their relationship, she still didn’t know what to expect from this meetup. The unmistakable silence that had stretched on for what seemed like ages had already made her worry, even before she heard the way her sister reacted to Uilleam’s name.
It was almost funny now, ironic really, how emboldened she had felt at others’ fear of Uilleam when they spoke his name, but she had never considered her reaction to someone she knew remaining mute on him.
Not for long, anyway.
Karina checked her phone again, reading the address Isla had texted her twenty minutes ago before looking back out the window at the buildings she passed in the back seat of the taxi, reading the street numbers.
For once, she was glad Uilleam was at a business meeting that he didn’t want her privy to—it would make it easier for her to see her sister without having to tell him anything about it.
It wouldn’t be a lie, not really. If he asked, she would tell him she went to the market or sightseeing, maybe both. She would just fail to mention one of the stops she made.
Just a little white lie.
But even as the thought of lying to him didn’t sit well with her, she knew she didn’t have a choice.
She didn’t know if she ever would.
The hotel she arrived at was tucked well enough into the city proper that it was easy for her to slip into the middle of a crowd and disappear. She took the elevator up to the eighteenth floor, finding the key under the flower pot as Isla had told her.
As she entered the room, the floral scent of her sister’s favorite perfume hit her.
At first glance, no one would have thought she and her sister were related. They might have shared the same mink-colored hair and stood the same height, but that was where the similarities ended.
Isla had the sort of model good looks that could have landed her on the cover of a fashion magazine or gracing a runway in Milan, while Karina believed she resembled their father more.
And she considered herself more of a practical dresser, only putting in more effort when it was absolutely needed, but Isla was different. From the way her hair was always curled and groomed to the subtle but glamorous makeup she wore daily, her outfits, as much as her personality, made a bold statement.
But beneath the glamour of it all, Isla was a woman that no one wanted to mess with. It was often too late by the time someone realized this little fact about her, though.
A pair of crystal encrusted Louboutins rested in front of the couch, one of the first signs that her sister was there, even before she heard the rattle of ice cubes hitting glasses. Isla rounded the corner a moment later carrying a chilled bottle in one hand and the glasses in the other.
There was a moment when she saw the relief on Isla’s face, knowing it was probably reflected on her own too. They were just sisters then who hadn’t seen each other in far too long.
The way she had been years ago when Isla was away at school and wouldn’t return until the winter holidays or summer break. Or when she had finally come home only for Karina to be the one to attend school far across the country.
But as quickly as that relief had settled over the both of them, it only took one glance around at where they were to remind them why they were here together.
“This is the part,” Isla said as she sat gracefully, pouring a drink from the tumbler into both glasses, “where you tell me everything.”
She wished she could say there was nothing to tell really—the relationship, if it could truly be called that, was still new—if only so that Uilleam could remain solely hers for a little while longer, but she had already said too much already.
And a large part of her wanted to know what her sister knew about him … while a smaller part wanted to know what she thought of him.
For a moment—just a moment—she tried to imagine what this conversation would be like if Uilleam hadn’t been who he was. If he had been an ordinary man who did honest work, would she still feel the same amount of trepidation she felt now?
But the answer to that question didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because whether he was or wasn’t wouldn’t matter because she was still the same person.
“I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Anywhere,” Isla replied with dainty shrug, lifting her drink to her lips. “The beginning is always helpful.”
But what she didn’t understand was that the beginning was subjective. It could have been the moment they crossed paths that very first time at the dinner, or even when she had guessed his involvement in Miranda’s death.
Or even the story that had alerted her to his existence entirely.
She didn’t know where to start.
So it all came pouring out of her before she could stop and form coherent thoughts. Everything.
&nbs
p; From the middle to the beginning to the end and around again, purging everything she possibly could until she finally had to pause long enough to take a breath.
She hadn’t realized in the midst of her word vomit that Isla hadn’t actually taken a sip of her drink yet but merely held it in one jeweled hand. There wasn’t judgment in her expression, that much she could see, but the silence stretching on again worried her all the same.
“Now will you tell me?” Karina asked as she reached for her own glass, needing the sharp bite of the alcohol to dull her nerves.
“Tell you what?”
“Why the very mention of his name prompted this visit.”
She could tell just from the expression on her face that she wished she didn’t have to, but the pact between them always demanded that they stay honest with each other if no one else.
“He’s, well … of course, I’ve heard of him,” she said, switching from whatever she had been about to say. “Even before you dubbed him the Kingmaker.”
“How have you heard of him?” she asked. As hard as it had been for her to find anything on the man with the way people were so nervous to talk about him, she found it almost impossible to believe.
“His family is notorious.” When Karina remained silent and continued to stare at her, Isla went on. “His father, Alexander Runehart, was something of a criminal mastermind. They called him the godfather of crime. It’s a mantel Uilleam has made very clear he’s trying to pick up.”
Another gulp of her drink. “And how do you know of him?”
“He’s, uh …” she hesitated again, uncertain whether she should answer.
That only made Karina’s fears worse. “Tell me.”
“He’s on the list. Rather, his father was on the list, and his name replaced his once he was dead.”
Not only was she learning that Uilleam’s father was dead from someone other than him, but she also heard the last thing she wanted to hear.
“Not Mother’s list.”
Isla’s expression was grave. “I’m afraid so.”
Mother’s list was the most precious thing she owned, if anyone asked Katherine. A little black book with a number of names written in delicate cursive. Each one as important as the last. Some had been crossed out over the years—usually accompanying a great scandal, or if it came to it, death—but others still remained.
White Rabbit: The Rise (The Kingmaker Saga Book 1) Page 24
