Kian
Renata walks into my office, radiating fury. She’s swapped her jeans for sweats and a hoodie, and yet she still manages to look sexy as sin.
As usual, my cock senses Renata’s presence and starts hardening at once. I don’t bother suppressing the instinct. I already know it’s pointless.
“Pardon me,” she hisses sarcastically. “Am I interruptingsomething?”
Aisling has paled noticeably and she keeps looking towards me, face marred with guilt. But I remain calm. I don’t even rise from my seat behind the desk. “Not at all, Renata,” I say smoothly. “What can I do for you?”
“Fuck you!” she yells. Aisling flinches. “Fuck you both. I heard everything.”
She rounds on Aisling. “I thought I could trust you! I thought we were friends.”
“Renata…”
“You can go back to referring to me as Ms. Lombardi,” she snaps. Then she turns on me. “You had one of your maids spy on me?”
I shrug. “What would you have done?”
She’s too angry to see the reason behind my words. Aisling was right: she’s looking for a fight.
“You’re nothing but a hypocrite and a liar,” she accuses. “You claim to be better than every other man like you, but you’re not. You’re the exact same, if not worse. At least none of those men claim the moral high ground. At least they can admit what they really are.”
“I never lied about anything,” I tell her, knowing that my excessive calmness is only pissing her off further. “If you had asked me if Aisling was watching you on my behalf, I would have told you the truth.”
“Lying by omission is still a lie.”
“I gave you freedom of my home, Renata,” I tell her. “Did you really think you wouldn’t be watched?”
“It’s more than that and you know it. You wanted information from me.”
“I told you that.”
“So then why not ask me your questions directly?”
“Would you have been honest with me?”
She stops short, unsure herself of the answer to that.
“You can’t deny that you still have some sort of twisted sense of familial loyalty to your brother,” I tell her. “How could I give you free rein and complete trust when you yourself don’t know where you land?”
“He’s my brother.”
“He sold you to a rapist.”
I know I’ve crossed a line by mentioning it at all. She shared that with me in a moment of rare vulnerability. But I need her to realize who her brother is—sooner rather than later.
Especially since I’ve realized that killing Renata Lombardi is not an option for me anymore. My first instinct where she’s concerned is to protect. Not to hurt. Not to break. I can’t keep telling myself that same old lie.
Things between us have changed. Forever.
“You bastard,” she says, her voice pitiful with uncertainty and hurt. “You made me think I could trust you.”
“You can trust me, Renata. I am what I’ve always been. I just wasn’t sure that I could trust you.”
She flinches back at that one. “Is… is that why…?”
She leaves the question unfinished, but I know exactly how it would have ended. Is that why you changed your mind down in The Room? Is that why you rejected me?