Page 21 of Ruthless Claim

I’ve heard him on the phone sometimes, that low controlled voice that doesn’t change inflection whether he’s discussing dinner reservations or, presumably, the disposal of a body. I go to bed.

I lie on my side and I stare at the ceiling and I listen to him breathe.

Then I reorganize the closet again.

The avoidance strategy is technically working.

We’re not fighting if we’re not in the same room.

The problem is that I was not built for avoidance.

I was built for direct confrontation, for saying exactly what I think, and the strategy of careful scheduling and disappearing before dawn is making me feel like I’m living in my own home as an intruder, which I hate.

I hate it more than I hate Cillian, which is saying something because I hate Cillian a significant amount.

When we do cross paths—and we do, because no amount of strategic scheduling can make two people sharing three thousand square feet of penthouse completely invisible to each other—it’s always the same.

He makes some cutting remark about my uselessness, my inability to function without staff, and the decorative quality of my existence.

Just last Tuesday I was looking at something on my laptop at the kitchen island and he walked past and glanced at the screen and said, without breaking stride, “Still deciding which cause to pretend to care about this season?” I’d been reviewing acquisition proposals for the gallery. I told him this. He said, “So someone else does the actual work and you put your name on it. Got it.” Then he poured himself coffee and left. I sat there in stunned silence before I started composing the most vicious response I could think of, none of which I said out loud because he was already gone.

That’s the other annoying thing.

He doesn’t fight like a normal person.

He makes his cut and walks away.

By the time I’ve constructed the perfect response the moment is gone. It’s infuriating.

The man has the emotional engagement of a sniper, but he’s also a fucking coward because he doesn’t stay to fight.

I retaliate when I get the chance.

I make observations about his cultural range, which appears to extend to whiskey and violence and very little else.

I comment on the particular brand of problem-solving that involves Connor’s organization, the kind where intelligence is apparently optional as long as you have enough men.

Last Wednesday he tracked mud across the kitchen floor and I told him that perhaps whatever he’d stepped in at work was at least more interesting than the work itself.

He looked at me with those ice blue eyes and said keep going in a tone that meant I dare you and oh, I certainly did keep going.

I said something about the limited intellectual requirements of being Connor’s errand boy, and ooh that pissed him off.

He crossed the kitchen slowly and leaned against the counter directly next to me, close enough that I could smell his soap, and said very quietly, “You have no idea what I’m capable of, Valentina,” and the way he said my name, not princess for once, just my name in that brogue like something being pulled taut…

I held his gaze for the full four seconds it took for him to push off the counter and leave and then I breathed.

I don’t think about that moment. I’m not thinking about it now.

There’s something about the way he wears the violence that gets under my skin in a way I can’t quite rationalize away. Leo does violence too.

My brother has done things that I know about and things I don’t, and I’ve made my peace with what he is, with what all of us are in this family.

But Leo compartmentalizes.

He comes home and he’s Leo, he’s Emma’s husband, the big giant softy who cried when they found out the baby was a girl.

The work is something he puts on and takes off.