“How long will that take?” I ask.
Alex smiles. “I’ll have solid information for you in an hour.”
She turns to Ryder then, and he gives her a quick nod. “Go ahead. Get started on this.”
“On it.” She packs up her computer and leaves the meeting room.
“Is what you do even legal?” I ask Ryder after the door shuts behind Alex.
“Well…” He smirks. “We’re kinda sitting in that gray area.”
“But leaning more toward the getting arrested area?” I offer.
“Nah.” He pushes off the glass wall, approaching me. “We do too much good to ever be a threat to anyone. Besides, we give the police chief leads so they can make the bust on certain cases, and we have a few government contracts. As long as they come out of this looking good, then we live on a what-you-don’t-see-can’t-hurt-you line of thinking.”
I snort, donning my jacket. “So, you’re a vigilante?”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“And what’s the other way of looking at it?”
Ryder grins, slapping a hand onto my shoulder. “Pretending this place doesn’t exist at all.”
Taylor
The sound of crickets singing in the flower beds leads me along the path from the condo and into the small park across the street. I find Darius sitting on the bench near the big oak tree, beneath the light post. His eyes are following me in the way they always used to, looking right through me, like he knows all my secrets and can strip me bare with a single look.
I can’t stop the way my stomach dips when I’m around him. Darius just has that power over me. At twenty-nine, he was hot. But now, at thirty-five, he’s striking. Gorgeous beyond what I could’ve imagined. So confident, so controlled, so calm; it’s all a little overwhelming, if I’m honest. His stylish brown hair, his sexy tailored suit, his chiseled face; he’s quite a piece of eye candy.
“Hi,” I say when I reach him.
His long legs are stretched out before him, his warm, chocolate-brown eyes squinting. “Why am I not seeing your bruises?”
“It’s called really good makeup.” Expensive makeup that I’ll need for job interviews. I can’t imagine anyone hiring someone who looks like a truck hit them in the face. So, it’s money well spent.
“It does the job.” He pats the empty spot on the bench next to him, his warm smile greeting me. “This spot is for you.”
I can’t tell by his expression why he asked me to meet him here tonight, but that’s not much of a surprise. He’s an expert at locking up his emotions tight. And I’m an expert at knowing that’s exactly what he’s doing.
When I take a seat next to him, the scent of the street meat from the vendor on the corner carries across the warm breeze. Even if he’s quiet, I can still feel his pulsating energy vibrating off him, though that always seemed to be his superpower.
Some guys could make you laugh. Some guys you could have serious fun with. Darius possesses so much strength it oozes out of him. The feeling is warm and welcoming and yet also carefully guarded. It’s not offered to everyone, but I know it’s available if I need to lean on him.
I force myself not to get too lost in how good it feels being next to him. “So,” I say, breaking the silence, turning in my seat to face him. “What’s up?”
He turns his head slightly, showing off the smooth line of his cheekbone. “I want to know the truth.”
“You already know the truth,” I tell him.
“I know what you told me.” His warm eyes go hard, unyielding. “I want to know how you ended up in the arms of someone who has a history of violence.”
“Jesus, Darius. Why can’t you ever listen to me?” I lurch to my feet and throw up my hands. “I told you to stay out of this and let me deal with it. You are honestly unbelievable.” I spin on my heels, taking one step forward.
“Stop.” The fierceness in his voice keeps my feet glued to the cement. I turn back to him, catching sight of his blazing eyes as he coolly adds, “You’re not running from me tonight. Sit down.”
I fold my arms, staying put.
The staring contest continues for many long seconds before he sighs, shaking his head. “I don’t want to fight about this. But, earlier today I found out you have been dating a violent man. Help me understand why that is, because the woman I know wouldn’t go anywhere near a guy like that.”
I still don’t move.
His entire posture goes lax, voice softens. “This is about my concern for you, Taylor, nothing else. I need to know you’re still you in all this.”
I see the raging emotion blazing across his face and the love that he shows me sometimes. I see the worry. I see the history we have together. I see that Darius’s world isn’t right if mine isn’t. I also see my protector. “It’s not as bad as you think,” I eventually admit, taking a seat next to him.
“Then please explain,” he implores, “because right now all I see is every bruise on your face, every minute of pain he caused you.”
The torment crossing his face guts me. It’s so real that I want to fall into the sensation because it’s so safe. But Darius’s love comes with conditions, and that isn’t any better than the love Shawn offered me.
In fact, it might be worse.
At least I knew what to expect with Shawn. Sometimes the way Darius hurt me blindsided me. “At first, I didn’t know all the stuff going on in his life that would eventually lead to…this.”
“You didn’t know he had been violent before?” Darius asks gently.
I shake my head. A car honking its horn snaps my attention to the busy street ahead, and I hesitate to answer. “No, I didn’t know, and none of the friends I met through him knew either.”
“How did you meet him?”
I glance at Darius again. “At a bar.”
“Hrmph,” is all he says.
I don’t reply. I don’t need his judgment.
The muscle in his jaw clenches twice, making what he says next even more surprising. “And by the time you knew more about Shawn, you cared for him, making it harder to give up on him?”
I can only stare at him. Darius gets me in ways no one else does. It’s for those reasons I fell in love with him. In a world that always seemed so big, so scary, so unstable, he always seemed to be my center. It’s like he can read my soul. No one else can do that, not even Allie. “I just…”
“You felt bad for him,” Darius finishes for me.
I half shrug. “I know how weak that makes me look.”
“No, it’s not weakness,” he corrects, staring out at the road now. “It’s the way you care. You want to fix. You want to help. You want to love the people no one else wants to love.”
I know he’s talking about himself, because as much as he knows me, I know him, too. I see the shadows in his eyes. Darkness that he hides well, but can’t hide from me.
Shawn isn’t the only man to show me the darkest parts of his soul. Darius has his own demons, too. While I could comment on them, I don’t. “Maybe that’s true, but he didn’t break me, so you don’t need to worry.”
Darius watches me for a long moment and his emotions are being expertly controlled when he slides his finger under my right eye. “If this is all true, then how did this happen?”
A slow shiver descends my body. I know how that touch feels and the power it holds. I know how Darius takes a woman; how he owns her body as if it belongs to him. I can’t forget that on a physical level, he is everything.
I lean away, attempting to stop the way my body pulls to him. “I kicked Shawn in the balls.”
Darius lowers his hand and begins to smile. “You kicked him in the balls?”
“Well, yeah, he called me a bitch, so I kicked him in the balls, which led to him smacking me in the face.”
“Then what did you do?”
I smile. “I put my self-defense class to good use and I think I broke his nose.”
“Attagirl,” Darius says proudly.
A group of drunken women pass by, spilling laughter into the night before I notice the furrow of Darius’s brow.
“Tell me this, then,” he adds, watching me carefully, “when I asked you if you felt safe, why did you lie to me?”
It’s really annoying that he can read me so well, and even more irritating that he calls me out on it. “I do feel safe, sort of. Like, I don’t feel like I’m in danger or anything.”
“Then what doesn’t feel safe?”
“Life,” I admit.
“What about life?”
“Everything,” I say with a snort. “I’m back here with no job, no house of my own, and I guess everything is really uncertain for me. It’s not the plan I had for myself.”
“It’s not the plan I had for you either,” he says dryly.
I drop my head into my hands, running my fingers over my tired eyes. “Right now it feels like I’m standing still and the world is spinning around me. You want to know how I got here…” I lower my hands and glance at Darius, who hasn’t taken his eyes off me. “I honestly don’t even have an answer because I’m not sure how I got here either. I’m not sure why every guy I ended up with turned out to be entirely wrong for me when they seemed right in the beginning. I’m not sure why I’m feeling like I’m floating instead of finding my roots in the ground. But that’s why I’m home. I’m not running from Shawn. I’m not running from my life there. I’m not running from giving you answers. All I know is, right now, I’m back in the one place where I was me, hoping that life starts to make sense again.”
He watches me intently, then nods. “Okay.”
I raise my brows. “Okay?”
“Yes.” His mouth curves. “Okay.”
I roll my eyes and smirk at him. “So, now all of a sudden you’re being all easygoing?”
“Now you’re being honest.” He wraps his arm around me, tugging me close against him, then rests his chin on the top of my head. “I already told you, I’m worried about you. But you’re still you, and that’s all I care about.”
I shut my eyes, hearing what he’s telling me now, but my mind is spinning. His touch feels so good and feels so normal. His arms are safe. It’s like five years have gone by in the blink of an eye, but I haven’t been awake for any of them. It feels like life got away from me. But right here, right now, I’m finally home. It’s as confusing as it is wonderful. Because as much as it’s perfect, it’s oh-so-deadly.
No one can hurt me more than Darius.
Just as I realize I need to move away, a flash of light snaps open my eyes. “Did you see that?” I gasp.
Darius releases me. “See what?”
I glance from left to right, but see nothing but the busy street in front of us. “Never mind. It’s nothing.” I turn to Darius and find his eyes locked on me. “Thanks for checking in on me tonight.”
“Please don’t thank me for caring about you,” he says gruffly.
Despite my not wanting to, I rise from the bench, knowing I need to get away. I can’t stay with Darius, no matter how good it feels, because I’ll be in the same circle I’ve always been in with him. A dangerous circle that ends with me heartbroken. Love isn’t good, unless you can love someone right.
He watches me closely, staying statue-still on the bench. “You’ll contact me if you need anything?”
“You know I will.” Then with my heart screaming at me to stay and my body physically aching without his touch, I walk away.
With each step I take, I remind myself that no matter how safe he feels or how much I want to stay, his final words to me five years ago echo in my ears: I fiercely love you, but that love will ultimately destroy you. Don’t walk away from me, Taylor. Run and never look back.
Chapter 3
Darius
Hug her madly. Kiss her wildly.
On Monday morning, I’m sitting in my office, behind my desk, staring at the glass-clad skyscrapers in the Financial District. Taylor weighs heavy on my mind. I’ve always been the guy who enjoys sex. The dirtier, the better. I’ve lusted after money, making me into the billionaire I am today. I’ve hungered for power. That’s the guy I am, and that’s not the guy Taylor needs in her life. But the barriers she’s keeping between us, and the pain I know she’s hiding, are ripping me apart. I can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened to her if I never let her go. I thought I’d been saving her from a lifetime in my shadow. But all I’d done was cause her misery.
Most times I have a plan. A well-thought-out idea that sets me on the right path. I never doubt myself. I don’t accept failure as an option. This time, though, I don’t have a plan. I have no idea how to handle Taylor now. All I know is I want to make this better for her, any way that I can.
A knock on the door drags me from my thoughts. I spin in my chair, finding Bennett, Inc.’s CFO, Greg Hopkins, standing in the doorway. “Good morning, Greg,” I welcome him.
Greg gives a bright grin, holding up a file folder in his arms. “Mornin’. Got some time for a couple updates?”
“Of course.” I force Taylor and my culpability for her situation from my mind, and wave him inside. “Come in.” While Greg opens his blazer and settles into the brown leather wingback chair in front of my desk, I continue, “What have you got?”
“We’re wrapping things up at Richardson’s over the next week or so,” he reports.
“Ah, good news.” Richardson Real Estate is the company that Allie worked for as a real estate agent before moving over to Micah’s company, Holt Enterprises, after he bought out Richardson’s. My team came into play when Micah decided not to swallow up Richardson’s, but to turn the company into Holt’s Homes, a division of Holt that focuses on real estate targeting families. Seeing that my company, Bennett, Inc., excels in giving smaller companies a lift to compete in today’s market, we’ve been with Holt now for over a month. “Things are forging ahead there, then?”
“Indeed.” Greg nods, handing me the file folder. “Sales are on a good upward trajectory.”
“Perfect.” I open the file, noting that sales have increased 200 percent since my team came in and that the marketing plans in place are seeing a good return. I’m not surprised. I have one hell of an outstanding team working for me, and that’s why Bennett, Inc. is a billion-dollar company. “Anything else to report?” I ask, handing him back the file.
“At this point,” Greg replies, placing the file on his lap, “it seems unnecessary to stay on there. We’ve hired upper management to take over control and they’ll do fine on their own now. To stay on would simply cost Holt’s Homes money that they need to keep themselves afloat.”
“Schedule a meeting, then, so we can close their file.”
“Will do.” He rises from his seat, redoing the buttons on his jacket. “Any travel plans this week?”
“No.” Even if I had any, I would cancel them. I need to be close to Taylor now. I need to ensure she’s safe. “I’ll be staying in the city for the rest of the month.”
“Good to know.” Greg moves to leave my office. “I’ll arrange the meeting around your schedule.” At the doorway, he spins back to me. “Sound good?”
“That’ll work.”
“All right…” His mouth snaps shut and his eyes widen at whatever he sees in the hallway.
I nearly ask what’s wrong, but then I don’t need to because I see that what’s captured his eye is the tall, brooding figure stepping into my office. Coldness seeps into the space and an edginess invades every muscle, making my body tense, ready to act if I need to, as black eyes, belonging to a dead soul, lock onto mine.
Then my father, Frank Bennett, breaks the silence. “Darius.”
I recoil as that icy tone rolls over me, and all I can do is glare into a face that I haven’t seen in ten years. A face that reminds me of my harsh past.
“I forbid you to do this, Darius.”
I’m staring out the window on the sixty-second floor of the largest office building in the Financial District, The Bennett Group.
The sound of my father’s voice is like nails on a chalkboard, shivering down my spine. Knowing I must face this fight, I turn away from the window. “What other choice do I have?”
Frank’s dark eyes narrow. “You can send Allison into foster care.”
The thought sickens me, even if I hardly know my half-sister, Allison. In fact, I hadn’t even known she existed until our mother died in a plane crash yesterday, along with Allison’s father. One phone conversation with the police later, I’d come face-to-face with an angel missing her wings. “That’s what you would have me do, put her in the foster system? You cannot be serious?”
“I’m dead serious.” My father takes a seat on the couch near my desk, folding his arms. “That’s what you must do. This girl is not like us.”
No, she’s not as privileged. That’s something I still don’t understand. Throughout the years I grew up at boarding school, I’d never had the opportunity to ask my father properly why my mother left me after she divorced him when I was four years old. Now it seems too late to ask him why she never came back for me, choosing to start a brand-new life.
I can’t wrap my head around why she’d given up all the money entitled to her from her marriage to my father. For reasons totally unknown to me, she walked away from upper class to live a middle-class life with a new husband. I don’t know anything about my mother. I can’t remember her. She simply wasn’t a factor in my life. “But is that enough of a reason not to take Allison in?” I ask my father.
“You know, and I know, that of course it is,” my father shoots back at me. “She won’t fit in. What will happen once the press gets ahold of this? Is that what you want, a scandal about your terrible mother who walked out when you were a child?”
I let the jab roll off me. I’d heard it many times growing up. My father hated my mother presumably for what she did to him. My father never lost or failed at anything. Failure was simply something he never accepted. And I could accept that, but this, with Allison, showed the ruthlessness only his enemies must see. “Again, is that enough of a reason to ignore that she is family?”
Tied to His Betrayal Page 3
