“Fate brought you to me.”
“You stole my fate.”
“Perhaps, yet it doesn’t make it any less mine. Consider yesterday a one-off. I let you get the little menace out of your system. An engagement gift from yours truly, if you will. From here on out, I’m your only option. Take it or leave it.”
“I suppose the rules do not apply to you,” I arched an eyebrow, snapping the shears again. He glanced at them with an expression dripping of boredom.
“Quite clever, Miss Rossi.”
“Then, Senator Keaton, I’ll have you know they do not apply at all. I will sleep with whomever I want, whenever I want, as long as you continue to do so.”
I was arguing my freedom to sleep around, when in practice, I was more virginal than a nun. He was the only man I’d ever even kissed. This, however, wasn’t about my right to sleep my way through Chicago’s elite—but merely a principal. Equality mattered to me. Maybe because for the first time, I thought I might be able to achieve it.
“Let me be clear.” He stepped into the walk-in closet, erasing some of the distance between us. Though he was not close enough to touch me, sharing a space with him still sent a bullet of excitement and fear down my spine.
“You’re not eating, and I’m not going to back down from this arrangement, even at the cost of burying your pretty little corpse when your body finally gives in. But I can make your life comfortable. My problem is with your father, not you, and you’d be wise to keep it that way. So, Nemesis—what could I give you that your parents wouldn’t?”
“Are you trying to buy me?” I snorted.
He shrugged. “I already have you. I’m giving you a chance to make your life bearable. Take it.”
Hysterical laughter bubbled up my throat. I felt my sanity evaporating from my body like sweat. The man was unbelievable.
“The only thing I want back is my freedom.”
“You were never free with your parents to begin with. Don’t insult both our intelligence by pretending so.” His flatlined tenor whiplashed on my face. He took a step deeper into the room. I cemented my back to the drawers, their bronze handles digging into my spine.
“Think,” he enunciated. “What can I give you that your parents never will?”
“I don’t want any dresses. I don’t want a new car. I don’t even want a new horse,” I cried out, waving the shears in my hand desperately. Papa said whoever decided to marry me could buy me a horse to show his good faith. And to think I was devastated then.
“Stop pretending to care about materialistic things,” he snapped, and I twisted around and threw an Oxford shoe at him to stop him from getting any closer, but he just dodged it and laughed.
“Think.”
“I don’t have any wants!”
“We all have wants.”
“What’s yours?” I was stalling.
“Serving my country. Seeking justice and punishing those who deserve to be brought to justice. You do, too. Think back to the masquerade.”
“College!” I yelled, finally cracking. “I want to go to college. They’d never let me get a higher education and make something of myself.” It surprised me that Wolfe caught the fraction of the moment in which I had to school my face from being both embarrassed and disappointed when Bishop asked me about college. My grades were great, and my SAT scores were glorious. But my parents thought I was wasting my energy when I should be focusing on getting married, planning a wedding, and continuing the Rossi legacy by producing heirs.
He stopped his stride.
“It’s yours.”
His words shocked me into silence. My quiet inspired him to resume his steps. He smirked, and I had to admit, albeit begrudgingly, that he was always raggedly stunning—his face all sharp edges like an Origami figure—but especially when his lips were curled in an Adonis-like grin. I wondered what he looked like with a full-blown smile. I hoped I’d never stick around to find out.
“Your father has explicitly asked me not to send you to college when we get married to maintain The Outfit’s status quo in regard to women, but your father can also go fuck himself.” His words stabbed me like knives. He spoke completely different than he did in public. As if he was another person with another vocabulary. I could never imagine him dropping the F-bomb anywhere but here. “You can go to college. You can go horseback riding, visit friends, and go on shopping sprees in Paris. Hell if I care. You could live your life separately from mine, play your part and, when enough years go by, even take on a discreet lover.”
Who was this guy, and what made him so ice-cold? In all my years on Earth, and all my time spent with the ruthless men of The Outfit, I’d never met anyone quite so cynical. Even the most horrid men wanted love, and loyalty, and marriage. Even they wanted children.