I lift my head and gaze into his eyes. “So then revenge doesn’t really help.”
“It’s not about help. It’s about restitution. Balancing the scales.”
“So you believe that if you kill Declan in retaliation for Mikhail, the scales will be balanced?”
“Yes.”
My reply is as soft as his is forceful. “Except you’re wrong. The scales won’t be balanced. Because you’ll have hurt my sister.”
“I don’t care about your sister.”
“But you care about me. And I care about her. You can’t drop a stone in the water without causing ripples. Everything you do has an effect on something else. Someone else.”
Angry, he glares at me. I’m know I’m stepping out onto dangerously thin ice, but this needs to be said.
“What do you think will happen the day I find out you killed Declan? Do you think we’ll be lying here like this after that? Do you think nothing between us will change?”
He says flatly, “Now you’re blackmailing me.”
“I’m asking you to consider if there isn’t some other way.”
“Of course there’s no other way!”
“Yes, there is.”
“Like what?”
“Forgiveness.”
He stares at me with blazing eyes and a jaw turned to stone, his entire demeanor enraged. But he keeps his voice controlled when he says, “Don’t be na?ve.”
“Don’t be condescending.”
“Riley.”
The way he says my name feels like a slap. My cheeks burn with heat, but I don’t back down.
“You said you wanted him to suffer. I can tell you for sure that he is, because I was shot. Because you kidnapped me. Because my sister, despite her shortcomings, will blame herself for all this, which in turn will make Declan miserable. Way more miserable than if you shot him dead, because then he’d be released from his guilt and her pain.”
He sits with that silently, staring at me for so long, I think I might have made a dent.
But then the assassin takes deadly aim and pulls the trigger.
“Except there’s nowhere else on earth you’d rather be than here, remember? Which means my kidnapping you hasn’t been punishment for anyone.”
“They don’t know that.”
“But I do.”
Is he deliberately trying to humiliate me? My throat gets tight. My eyes fill with water. I whisper, “Mal.”
Ignoring my distress, he says, “I know that if Declan O’Donnell could see you now, he wouldn’t be worried. Neither would your sister. They wouldn’t like the situation, obviously, because of who I am. But they’d know you were safe. They’d know you were happy, wouldn’t they, Riley?”
His tone drips acid. He wants it to burn, and holy hell, it does.
Leave it to a man to take something beautiful and crush it in his fist.
I roll off his chest, muttering, “Fuck you.”
Before I can rise from bed, he captures me and presses me down against the mattress, flattening me with his weight, pinning my arms over my head. He stares down into my eyes, all fire and fury, his tone as sharp as the edge of a knife.
“You can keep your fantasies and your forgiveness. I live in the real world. A world where actions have consequences. And don’t forget that I’m not the one who started this.”
“You could be the one who ends it.”
“He murdered my brother!”
“And I took a bullet for you. I could’ve died.”
“You didn’t.”
“No, because you saved me. Do you know why?”
He growls, “Don’t fucking say it.”
“Because you’re good. Deep down inside, you’re a good man.”
He’s got that wild look in his eyes again, the unhinged one I saw earlier. Only this time it’s less panic and more rage.
It doesn’t deter me.
“Glare at me all you want, I know it’s the truth. You stuck up for your brother when he was getting harassed. You didn’t mean to kill that guy in the bar. It was an accident. Since then, you’ve been working off a debt that will never be paid, just so your family would be safe. You’ve been doing what you’ve been doing all this time for other people.”
Through gritted teeth, he says “Stop. Talking.”
“You didn’t kill Spider. You didn’t kill me. I’m starting to think you don’t really want to kill anyone, you’re just used to following orders.”