violence, more bloodshed. The day he’d overheard his uncle bragging about the unexpected bonus the slave trade had granted him by taking care of Hunter’s parents had unleashed a rage he hadn’t known he was capable of. Rage that had cauterized his fear and made him turn on his uncle as surely as the slaves had turned on their manager. It was the last time he’d ever truly lost control, and he learned exactly how dangerous emotion could be—the good and the bad.
Delilah’s green eyes hadn’t left his face. “You killed him, didn’t you? It’s not just pure buzz.”
“No, it’s not.” Something so sweet it was painful sliced through him. He’d never confessed this to anyone in his life. The police had called it self-defense, the board of directors hadn’t wanted a scandal for Avery Industries, and they made all of it disappear. Only Delilah knew the truth from his own lips. “He beat me, stole from me, and was responsible for my parents’ deaths.”
She nodded, and there wasn’t a hint of recrimination in her eyes. Perhaps a woman from the Vermilion, a criminal herself, was one of the few who could truly understand. “You feel guilty for living when your parents didn’t. It’s why you work so hard.”
It wasn’t a question, but he answered it anyway.
“Yes.” He swallowed, rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, and tried to suppress the guilt of surviving, of not doing enough while his family died. “I emancipated myself and took over the business. I was sixteen.”
“It doesn’t sound like it was your fault. A riot, a bent uncle. Nothing you could do about any of that.”
“Does it matter? I’m still alive, and they’re not.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “My uncle, I don’t regret. He had it coming.” A bitter smile twisted his lips. “Even in the wealthiest of families, there are a few bad apples.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I know firsthand.” The bitterness he’d come to expect when she spoke of the wealthy was barely discernable. She sighed. “That’s rough. I’m just saying maybe you should let up on yourself a little, get out of this ivory tower a little more often.” She slipped her hand into his and squeezed. He stared down at it, wondering when the last time was that someone touched him as a show of support, affection. He couldn’t remember. Perhaps his mother was the last one to do so.
He brushed his thumb over her knuckles and let her lead him to his bed. They lay curled on their sides facing each other before he spoke again. “I can’t imagine your childhood was any easier.”
“Yes and no.” She swallowed and looked away. “I didn’t have any of the money or the privilege, but I always had my sister to look out for me, and I always looked out for her.”
Curling his finger under her chin, he urged her to look at him again. “She needed you to look out for her?”
“She’s a mink-shifter. A lot of predators out there could take her in a fair fight.” The ghost of a smile danced across her mouth. “Not that she ever plays fair.”
He chuckled. “Smart girl.”
“She is, at that.” The smile bloomed more fully, and he could see the love Delilah had for her sister reflected in her gaze. Something wrenched deep inside him. He remembered that kind of affection for family, but more than that, he wanted her to look at him that way, to feel that way for him. Not as a sibling, but as a woman loves a man.
He swallowed, cold sweat breaking on his forehead. This was foolish. He shouldn’t crave her love and devotion. He’d already told her too much, let her in too deep. No matter how good and right it felt to do so, it would have to stop. Immediately.
The next day, Hunter seemed distant, more distant than he normally did. Delilah had woken to another round of explosive sex, but he’d left her gasping in bed, made an offhand excuse of work, and closeted himself in his office. She hadn’t seen him again until dinner. She hated to admit that it bothered her.
After dinner, she wandered into the main space of Hunter’s penthouse and watched him settle onto his big kleather couch with more work scrolling down the screen of his palmtop computer. During the hours that he’d left her by herself, she’d retrieved her own palmtop from her bag and left Lorelei a vid message that her latest job was taking longer than expected and not to worry.
She sighed, tilted her head, and squinted at the whorls of mercurite mounted to the wall next to Hunter’s office door. They seemed to form a spiral leading to a centerpiece that…wasn’t there. “Something is missing from that sculpture.”
Glancing up, he froze, grunted, and looked away.
She narrowed her gaze at him, then stared at the sculpture for another moment. The size and dimensions for the missing piece was just right for—“The ruby.”
“Considering why you came here, you can understand why I removed it and put it in a safe.” He gave her a sour smile and the way it curved his mouth made the scar on his face stand out. Her heart twisted as she remembered where’d he’d got it, but that didn’t dissipate her annoyance at him for ignoring her today. He was the one who’d insisted on her staying a whole week. He was the rich man who always got his way, and if he thought she would cater to his moods because of who and what he was, he could kiss her ass.
She propped her hands on her hips. “No, I don’t think so. For you, everything seems to have its place, and you like things to stay in their place. There has to be another reason you took the ruby down.”
His mouth worked for a moment before he gritted out, “My mother loved it. It was her favorite piece.”
“Why not take the whole sculpture down, then?”
He shrugged and went back to reading his palmtop screen.
Her gaze swept the whole room. Everything here reflected an older taste, and considering he still reserved his parents’ room for them when they would never sleep there again, she had a sad suspicion about whose taste the room reflected. “You never moved anything after your parents died, did you?”
“I liked it the way it was.”
She doubted that. Every piece of furniture was arranged to face the incomplete sculpture. She could understand why his mother might have laid the room out that way—the ruby encased in gleaming coils of mercurite would have been breathtaking. Now, it was just heartbreaking.
She swallowed and shook her head. It didn’t matter. He didn’t matter. She shouldn’t get involved in his problems. After this week was over, she would never see him again. And she was going to steal something his mother had loved.
He would hate her for it. Forever.
The whole flat was a museum, a way to showcase his many collections. It went beyond that, though. The way the furniture was arranged, the way everything was exactly as his parents had left it. His entire home was another piece in a collection of things he’d frozen in time when he’d lost his family. A reminder of the past with no hope of a better future.
Hell, that was depressing. Even in the worst moments of her life, in the shittiest gutter of the city, she’d always had a glimmer of hope that things could change and get better. Hunter didn’t even have that.
How had he lived this way without suffocating?
The one thing she’d
