Page 26 of Ruthless Daddy
“Because I want to. Because I can’t stop thinking about you. Because I do not want to see you disappear. Because once, years ago, I failed a woman who was important to me, and I vowed I would never do it again.”
The words hung in the air. Heavy. She looked at me with something like pity, or maybe just understanding.
The bus driver called: “Detroit, all-aboard. Five minutes.”
She didn’t move. I half-expected her to bolt, to make a run for it, but she just stood there, staring at the screen of her phone like she could will it to offer an answer.
I said, “You don’t have to decide now. There’s another bus in an hour.”
She nodded, but it was the kind of nod that meant nothing.
I stayed right where I was. I could have reached for her, could have tried to hold her bag for her, but I remembered how she’dlooked when I’d touched her before—like I was on fire and she was all oxygen. I kept my hands at my sides.
The clock rolled to 9:20. The driver came back in, checked her and me, and then scowled at his phone.
She watched the bus through the window, watched it until the doors snapped shut and it pulled away, trailing exhaust.
And still she didn’t move.
We stood there while the station emptied out. The minutes stacked up, slow and heavy. At some point, I realized I was shaking. Not much, but enough that I had to brace my hands on the edge of the plastic chair next to me.
She noticed. She watched my hands, then looked me up and down, like she was checking for weapons.
“Take me there.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. My name’s Angela.”
“Angela,” I said, finally allowing myself a smile. “Good to meet you.”
I held out a hand. She took it.
And as I looked at her, I had a feeling—that I would remember this moment forever, that my life would be split at this moment into the time before I met her, and the time after.
I just didn’t know what my new life might look like.
Chapter 6
Angela
Thecarwasablack Mercedes with nothing on the dash. No dealership tag, no ornament. I sat in the passenger seat with both hands in my lap, watching the city smudge past. We went north. The streets got wider, less angry. River North somewhere, I guessed, but I’d lost my sense of direction three turns ago. He didn’t talk, except once to ask if I wanted the radio, which I said no to, which he seemed grateful for.
He drove like a man who had learned to be careful. One hand on the wheel, eyes always scanning, never taking a light yellow. At every intersection, he let the world move first. If there was a tail, I never saw it, but I knew he was watching for one. I tried not to look at him, but in the glass I caught pieces: the set of his mouth, the length of his fingers on the wheel, the way his right arm, bandaged at the knuckles, rested between us with the suggestion of what it could do if asked.
We pulled up to a building I didn’t register. White stone, black glass, a doorman in a dark coat. The kind of building you didn’tlook twice at if you didn’t already know who owned it. He got out first, circled to my side, opened the door and offered a hand. I didn’t take it. He waited, then withdrew.
The doorman looked only at him, not me. “Signore,” he said, and held the lobby door open with the soft deference of a man who understood what you were. We walked through a lobby as bright as a surgical suite and as empty, floor polished so clean I could see my own boots reflected in it.
The elevator was waiting. The doorman keyed it. I had never been in an elevator that required a key. I had been in plenty of buildings that should have, but never one that did. He stood at the back of the cab, hands loose at his sides, watching the floor display count up. The numbers were white on black, modern, clean. It went straight to the top. No stops.
At the penthouse, he stepped out first. Waited in the hall. Then, “This way.”
The apartment was a corner unit with windows on two sides and a view of the river. The world outside was neon and sodium and the low orange of a city that never got truly dark, but in here it was silent, close, muffled as if the glass was three panes thick. Maybe it was.
He showed me the rooms without touching me or even coming close. Bedroom. Bathroom. Kitchen with an island big enough to sleep on. Living room, where he set his bag down by the couch and turned to me.
“I’ll sleep here,” he said. “For as long as you stay. The couch is fine. You will not see me unless you want to.”
