Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“I think we should speak first,” he says. “There is a lot you and I need to get into. I assume that is why you left your brothers behind, even though I requested their presence as well.”
“The family can’t be too careful about being wiped out,” I say bluntly. He laughs. It wasn’t a joke on my part, and he knows it, but it amuses him anyway.
“Come. Let’s have some afternoon tea,” he says. He leads me through to a sitting room that looks like it belongs in a museum, and makes a great show of pouring tea, providing little sandwiches on fine china plates, and doing absolutely everything and anything besides getting to the point because this is how he maintains control.
“I really would like to see Ella,” I say.
“Oh, I imagine you would,” he says. “She was the bait that got you here finally after you refused how many invitations would you say I have extended over the years?”
“Many,” I say. “I haven’t had the time…”
“Well over a hundred,” he says. “At a certain point, it’s just rude, really.”
“At a certain point, one might stop asking,” I reply. I am not here to be bullied, and he is not really here to fuck with my head either. He wants something, and the pettiness is not the end goal.
“True,” he says. “Let’s talk about Ella, then, shall we? I picked up your girl much the same way I’d pick up any stray. She was hungry, and I fed her, gave her a little kind attention, and she let me do whatever I liked with her.”
He is trying to bait me. It will not work. I know he took her at gun point, and that she settled in anyway because that is just how Ella works. She’s accustomed to being in custody. She’s lived her life under the ownership of one evil man or another. At this stage, she’s like a foster dog being moved from home to home.
She’d hate the comparison, both for how it made her feel and how accurate it is.
“Ella is immensely adaptable,” I say.
“I should say so,” he agrees. “She beds you, and earlier, your younger brother, who is killed by the man she works for…”
“Works is a strong word for someone who has been held captive most of their life,” I say. I pick through the offerings, and settle on a crumbly biscuit. Cucumber sandwiches might be the most pointless exercise in the history of pointless exercises.
“You need a lesson in etiquette,” Mr. Red notes, with a little smirk. “Why do you think I took her?”
“Same reason you launched a ham-fisted attempt to take one or both of my brothers. You want something from me.”
“I do,” Mr. Red smiles. “You’ve always been exceptional, Aiden. And you’ve never been entirely appreciated. I don’t think most people are even capable of seeing you for all that you are. Oh, they know you’re intelligent. And they know you are unique. They can see that there’s something that sets you apart. But they don’t really know what it is. They can’t describe it accurately.”
“Ella can.”
Mr. Red leans back. “Can she? She seems cute, and sweet, but I doubt she has the necessary darkness to understand what fabric you are cut from, Aiden.”
“I don’t need her to understand me.”
He smiles. “And that’s why she isn’t the right person for you. To be loved is to be known, Aiden.”
“Fuck’s sake,” I curse under my breath, pinching the bridge of my nose. “This is why you took her? Because you’re jealous?”
“You make it sound like a crush, or some kind of pedestrian attraction. I’ve wanted you for a long time, Aiden. But I don’t need you in my bed. I want you beside me in my empire. It’s an entirely different kind of partnership.”
“I run my own organization.”
“You head a family, which is almost constantly under attack, and which you have proved you cannot keep safe.”
He’s jabbing at me, using Teddy’s death as a rapier. I can’t deny that he hits with it. Mr. Red does understand me in ways other people do not, and that means he knows how to phrase things in just the sort of way that will drive me insane.
“And, so?”
“So it is time you admitted that you need my protection. Bring your family, all of them, under the Red umbrella. If you continue to stand alone, you are going to be fighting off assassins for as long as you live—which, incidentally, will not be all that long.”
He’s such a smarmy asshole. He is really enjoying his smart little quips and such.
“The villain monologue suits you,” I say. “But the Levin family is not for sale, or aggregation. We stay independent, and anybody who has any sense will stay well clear.”
“Brave words, but poor Theodore already paid the price for that attitude, and now Leo is also close to succumbing to his injuries. It just makes sense, Aiden. It won’t be all that bad, I promise. I won’t make you kiss the ring. An occasional bow will suffice.”