Page 123 of Hard Count
Jayson gave Piper a sinister smile and slowly walked out of the house without saying another word.
Tank ran downstairs in a towel toward Piper.
“Are you hurt? I should have been down here!” Tank said, grabbing Piper.
“Guys, I’m fine.”
“Look at me, Piper,” Vivienne demanded.
“We will handle this.”
Vivienne grabbed Piper and walked him to the kitchen. She put both hands against the edge of the counter.
Vivienne Cross did not cry. She hadn’t cried at her father’s funeral and was not going to start now.
She took a deep breath and lifted her head. She turned around. She was Vivienne again.
“Okay,” she said.
Piper looked at her.
“Viv.”
“Yeah.”
“How long have you known?”
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand the question.“Since the day I signed you.”
Piper closed his eyes.
“All of it?”
“Most of it. The contract, the structure, the fact that he was paying for the apparatus around you. I didn’t know what was specifically going on in Atherton. I knew about the men. I have known the financial architecture from the day I opened your file.”
“You took me anyway.”
“I took you because if I didn’t take you, somebody worse would. Somebody he picked and I made sure I was the one in the room he could not buy and could not move. That was the deal I made with myself. I have not been proud of it.”
“Why didn’t you ever say that?”
“Because you would’ve left me. You would’ve left anybody who knew. You would’ve closed the circle around yourself and Jayson, and you would’ve signed the next thing he put in front of you alone. I have watched so many people do that. I was not going to be the woman who pushed you into doing it.”
“You were waiting.”
“I was.”
“For what?”
“For you to have something to leave for.”
Piper went quiet.
“Noah,” she said. “I have been waiting for a reason that you would survive seeing yourself walk out of this life that was built around you.”
“And tonight?” Piper replied.
“Tonight Jayson came into your kitchen with a gun in his pocket, and you saved your own ass. I am sorry for all these years of complacency.”
