Page 57 of Ruthless

Luca shakes his head as I slip on jeans and a t-shirt. “Not me. Sara.”

At her name, I freeze with one sock still hanging off my foot. “Sara?”

My second inclines his head. “She obtained useful intel on the Ghost.”

I raise my brows in silent command.

Luca presses his lips together. “I was monitoring her feed in the security office when she woke up. As soon as her feet hit the floor, she was speaking to Jackson through the crack in her cell door. I didn’t hear everything, but he told her his name and who he worked for. I guess the dumbass thought you tortured her because of him and kept apologizing for ‘dragging her into this mess.’”

After all this time, we have a new direction to follow. I’m both ecstatic and numb. “And where is he now?”

“In the interest of extracting more information from him, I brought him to the clinic for treatment.” Luca hesitates, then chuckles. “I gotta hand it to your girl, she knows what she’s doing.”

I’m not sure what stuns me more. The fact that Sara convinced the chameleon, aka Jackson, to talk or that she managed to impress Luca.

She told me that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Maybe she was right.

Her approach certainly proved far more effective than any of my attempts, which means I might need her for more than sex after all.

Chapter 22

Sara

“Did you mean what you said about wanting to help?”

At Dante’s voice, I surge upright and drop the book I was reading. A stack of smutty romance novels appeared outside my cell door, providing a pleasant diversion in an otherwise dull day. I can only count the cracks in the cement for so long before psychosis sets in.

I scramble to my feet, shocked by the sudden offer. Dante’s avoided me since the incident on the fifth floor, and the solitude provided a lot of time for mental processing.

I thought I knew myself, but my experience with Dante in the interrogation room proved otherwise. Until then, I would have laughed if someone told me I was capable of finding pain and bloodshed…pleasurable. That type of darkness goes against my nature, but I can’t deny its unapologetic appeal.

What does it say about the kind of woman I am that I let Dante do those things to me and even savored them? His actions should disgust me. Instead, the memory of his sharp teeth and strong hands marring my flesh ignites a thrill that races through me.

My life’s calling has been to help people and heal the injured. I have no clue how to reconcile that with the woman who enjoyed screwing while bathed in a stranger’s blood.

Does Dante simply bring out the worst in me? Before we found one another again, I might have said yes, but now I’m not so sure. He forces me to view the world—and myself—in more than just black and white. Dante holds up a mirror, and in the reflection, I glimpse someone who’s so much more than a nurse or her brother’s keeper.

Did you mean what you said about wanting to help?

My answer can only result in more bloodshed and lead us back to that room on the fifth floor where Dante transformed into more beast than man.

He’s giving me the chance I asked for over and over again. The position I wanted solely as a means of aiding my efforts to get away.

But it’s different now. I want to help him achieve his goals in any way that I can.

Not just for him, but forus.

“Of course. Anything you need.” The agreement comes effortlessly, like I’ve waited my whole life to say it. A small step on the long road to atoning for past sins.

Dante’s head jerks back as if he’s stunned by my ready acquiescence. After everything, does he really believe I can be scared away so easily?

A new little seed of hope unfurls in my chest when he enters my cell and sits. He’s careful to leave a gap between us, like he thinks I need the space.

I scoot over until our thighs touch. Dante’s jaw flexes in that way that tells me I’m testing his control.

After a few seconds tick by, some of the tension leeches from his shoulders. “Luca spoke with the prisoner. Jackson.”

Jackson. The name helps clear my head. I didn’t get a chance to talk to the man Dante beat into an unrecognizable mess for very long before Luca dragged him off to the clinic. He lost a good amount of blood, but his injuries weren’t catastrophic.