Jail time was nothing to what they’d fling at me if they saw what I had in here.
I cleared my throat, oddly nervous yet excited too, because I knew she’d get it. Before, I didn’t think she would. But knowing who she was, what she was, I knew this would thrill her even if she wanted to cut me for it too.
Shooting her a glance, I saw from her scowl she was peeved, but from the way she gnawed on her cheek, I could tell she was nervous too. She gulped when the wall, where the seams were so airtight not even a fucking sniffer dog would be able to sense them, flipped and retracted inwards. Within seconds, a cavity opened up, exposing a silver vault.
Her mouth had rounded into a perfect circle that I remembered stuffing with my dick, and she rasped, “What the fuck, Dec? You turn into Richie goddamn Rich on me?”
My lips twisted. “The Macauley Culkin version? Hell, yeah.”
She snorted but folded her arms over her chest. This time, her excitement was real.
She knew this level of security was for something hardcore. Something epic.
She wasn’t wrong.
The door to the safe was about ten by eight feet. It was made so that once it was open and fully activated, it was like a wall. On nights when I was alone, which I always was because no bitch ever slept here, I’d open it up and stare at my bounty.
I pressed my hand to the sensor, which opened up the initial lock. Then, I pressed my chin to the silver ledge, and let the device scan my retinas. Once that was done, I had to key in a code, and she murmured, “Christ. This is heavy duty, Dec.”
I didn’t say anything, just took a step back.
There was a buzzing noise as my details were registered, and then a heavy clanking as the doors began to retract, pulling inward before pushing out.
From behind fifteen layers of titanium, that not even a fucking bomb could destroy, three portraits tunneled out on mechanized shelving.
When she took them in, she automatically took a step back.
The two on either side of the central piece were magnificent.
But the one in the middle?
I knew why she flopped backward, not stopping until she was all arms and legs, barreling onto my unmade bed.
“Felt that way the first time I saw it too,” I commented.
She gulped, her mouth working still, and I decided to let her take in the glory that, even though its majesty was astronomical, didn’t compare to the beauty that had taken my breath away when I was sixteen fucking years old.
Her.
Hobbling over to the door just in case Seamus decided to get his ass out of the shower sometime this century, I closed it, then turned and saw she’d moved with the silence of a stalking panther and was peering at it. So close that her breath was touching the paint.
It was a testament to what I felt for her that I didn’t bark at her to back the fuck away.
Behind the safe’s walls, for eighteen hours a day, the paintings were in a protected environment. Everything in this room was controlled to protect the oils from the humidity and the temperature. Didn’t matter if it was high summer or the dead of winter, it was always seventy degrees Fahrenheit, and the humidity was at a constant fifty-four percent.
Exhausted even though I was excited too, I leaned against the door, then asked her, “You know when I was Seamus’s age, I’d been in the Points for two years, don’t you?”
When she didn’t answer, I knew she was as taken with the pieces as me.
That was to my good fortune.
If she understood, then maybe she’d get why I’d done what I had. Why I allowed myself to be blackmailed.
“It’s real.” She shook her head a little blindly. “It’s actually real.”
“Yeah. It is. The others are too.” That had her dazedly turning to me, and whispering, “There is no way in fuck that I’m looking at a couple hundred million on the wall, Dec. Please, God, tell me I’m having some kind of psychotic episode.”
My lips twitched. “No psychotic episode. You are.”