Her eyes widen, the tears still spilling down her rosy cheeks.
“W-what?”
Slowly, I begin to loosen my grip on her, raising my hand as if I’m placating a terrified animal. I tip her chin back, forcing her to level her stare with mine.
“You belong to me Wren, you aremine.But where you are mine, I am yours. This is a two way street.”
“You act as if people are things to possess.”
“Are they not?”
She shakes her head.
I stroke my thumb across her plump bottom lip, grinning at the full body shiver it elicits, “Whether you like it or not, we are one. I’ll never let you go. We rule together and those enemies, they are my enemies and we take them down. Together.”
“This isn’t war, Lex.”
“Oh but that’s where you are wrong little bird, there’s always a war.”
“But Griffin –”
“Is on your father’s payroll,” I interrupt, “and therefore cannot be trusted.”
She shakes her head and huffs a breath, exasperated. “You need to shower.”
She isn’t done with the argument, I know she isn’t, she just doesn’t have an answer right now.
“I do.” I step away from her body, waiting and watching, expecting her to flee, when she doesn’t, I tip my head, “join me.”
She shakes her head.
“That wasn’t a request, little bird.”
Her eyes narrow and she purses her lips, “and you’re going to need to learn to takenofor an answer.”
She spins away from me, slipping from the kitchen. I hear her take the stairs two at a time, bypassing my room to favor the attic bedroom. I’ll remedy that later tonight but for now I let her go.
Before I head up to clean up, I go in search of Ryker, finding him hovering in the living room, nursing a scotch and an ice pack.
“I wouldn’t have let anything happen to her,” he tells me, spotting me in the threshold.
“This Griffin, what did you think?”
Ryker frowns, “I didn’t get much of an impression, you want to contact him?”
I nod once, “contact him from a burner. Set it up. Somewhere public. I want him to come alone.”
“The club?”
“Do it in a few days. There’s a couple of leads I want to follow before I contemplate using one of Valentine’s men.”
“He could have taken her out you know,” Ryker tells me, “he wasn’t alone, I spotted at least four others with him, he let her go.”
“A false sense of security is what will get you killed, old friend.”
He winces, “yes, boss.”
I leave him with my instruction and head up, unbuttoning my shirt as I go. The blood on the shirt has seeped through, leaving faint red splotches on my skin.
Another dead end lead. Ainsley had given me names. Names of people supposedly linked to the Syndicate only they had fuck all for me, either that or they were more terrified of them than they were of me. And that was going to be a big problem.
I was still no closer to figuring out who they were and Valentine was only getting more persistent in his plots to get his daughter back.
Wren doesn’t think this is a war, but this is going to be the bloodiest battle this city has ever seen.
And me, the twisted fuck that I am, was going to paint the streets red with their blood and stand atop the pile of bodies of those who dare question me.
The Syndicate may think they have me cornered, trapped with no way out and Valentine can believe all he likes that he has some hope of getting Wren back but if I am nothing else, I am resilient.
They can push and they can pull, but there was no way in this hell or the next I was giving up what belonged to me.