Page 72 of Broken Mercy
“Hello, Arsen.”
His lips press tightly as he gestures at Brenden. “We need a word.” He walks off without waiting.
“It’ll be fine,” Brenden promises. “Wait here.”
“But what if?—“
He’s already gone though, chasing after my cousin.
Worry rifles through me. I hate this so much. It’s freaking torture. I slam back the rest of my drink and snatch another as Lena joins me. She smiles happily, and I note that she’s wearing flats.
“Do you have any idea how many of these we do every year?” Her nose wrinkles at the tables, chairs, twinkling lights, staff, bartenders, at the general din and the mess.
“It’s good though. I mean, the causes are good.”
“I’d do more if we could, but maybe somewhere else next time. Arsen likes having them here, he says it shows we’re human, but I don’t know.” She rolls her eyes to the stars and back down to me. “I mean, you’ve met your cousin.”
Her grin suggests she’s only partially joking.
I like Lena, but I’m freaking the hell out. Fortunately, she carries the conversation. I finish a second glass of champagne by the time Brenden comes back, a stormy look on his face. Lena squeezes my wrist and makes an excuse before walking off again.
“How bad?” I hiss at him.
“It’s fine.”
“Brenden!”
“He wanted to talk about work. They don’t know.”
“You can’t be sure. There might be cameras?—“
“We’d be dead. They don’t know.” He’s standing stiffly now and not touching me, which is confusing.
“Something happened.”
“It’s nothing.” He pulls away when I try to get closer. “We should go.”
“Tell me what Arsen said.”
“I told you, it’s work.” There’s a sharpness to his tone that takes me off guard. I don’t remember him ever talking to me this way before and I don’t like it.
I want to throw my drink in his face. Instead, I place it down primly on a table. “Then let’s go.”
We don’t talk on the trip back to the house.
It takes a lot of effort not to cry the whole way.
CHAPTER 20
TALIN
Itry to make sense of it. All morning I run through exactly what could’ve gone wrong. We made it through; he got the key; Lena didn’t catch us. Assuming Brenden didn’t lie about Arsen, there was no reason for him to act like the world’s coming to an end.
All he’d say is the same thing, over and over.We talked business. Let it go.
Now he’s gone, yet again. We went to bed together, but in the morning his side is empty.
I wander through my routine like a zombie. The whiplash of last night left me emotionally raw. Whatever went down with him and Arsen, it was like Brenden wrapped all those layers around himself again, all the layers I’d stripped back. I got to glimpse him, the real him, the man talking about growing up with his terrible parents, the man calling me baby and holding me tight and protecting me, turning his body to shield me from Lena’s sight. Right until that man was buried under secrets again.
