Page 96 of Intrepid

The frown on my face only exposed a fraction of the confusion swirling in my head. “What do you mean? Like what?”

The silence between us skated across my nerves, as he turned his head toward the window, casting his gaze from mine.

“Hey.” Hand set to his cheek, I guided his eyes back to mine. “Tell me. I promise it won’t change anything.”

His brow flickered, jaw shifting with either annoyance, or disbelief. “What if I told you I needed something.”

Without so much as a flinch, I held his stare. “Tell me.”

33

Ty

I was the quintessential definition of a rotten prick. I’d gone there under the guise of wanting nothing more than to fuck her, and as much as I wished that was the case, that wasn’t entirely true. Everything I’d said to her, wanting to leave my mark, wanting her to remember me, wanting her so bad I couldn’t breathe—I hadn’t lied about that. Fucking her had been my own selfish indulgence. One last high to keep me going for a while, because I already knew the withdrawals would destroy me.

But I’d come with ulterior motives, and I’d have sooner stabbed my heart with a gut-hook blade, over having to see the look of betrayal staring back at me.

Only she had access to the ledger—the one thing capable of saving a bunch of kids from turning into sex mules, enslaved to the whims of sick fucks like Fox and Gideon.

And her own father.

I’d avoided her as much as I could physically stand to be away from her, but with the clock ticking down the seconds, and Kutscher’s mansion guarded like a fortress, I had no choice but to enlist Sera.

I already knew her trust in me was sketchy, and without doubt, she’d question my interest in her from the beginning.

Even at the risk of losing her, though, I couldn’t let what happened to Eli become some other kid’s fate. Sera and I shouldn’t have been what we’d become anyway. Like light and dark, fire and water, the moon and the sun trying to come together. We didn’t mix.

In another life, she might’ve been everything I wanted, maybe even something I’d bust my ass to keep, but in the life I’d chosen to live, she was my enemy’s daughter. An impasse with no other outcome.

A thought for which I’d punish myself with a fifth and sharp blade later, but I needed to get what I had to do over with. I needed to break things off before I hurt her any more than I already had.

I slid my gaze to hers, so warm and inviting, framed by hair all sexy and tousled about her face. A stab hit my heart from just looking at her. “I want you to understand something.” I pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, dragged my finger down her cheek to her chin, lifting it just enough to kiss her. “Given the choice, I wouldn’t have traded tonight for anything. No regrets.”

“No regrets,” she echoed, but the dubious expression on her face told me she suspected something bad.

The indecision crashed inside my head, jumbling my thoughts around until I couldn’t straighten them out. I couldn’t grasp the treachery of the words I was about to say to her.

“I need you to retrieve your father’s crypto ledger. Looks like a USB thumb drive.” As I talked, I watched the muscles in her face slacken, the shine in her eyes dull. If I could read her mind right then, she’d undoubtedly be imagining a dual meaning to my words, or maybe searching my eyes for the punchline of the joke I hadn’t revealed. “It holds his cryptocurrency wallets. There should be a twenty-four-word passphrase. A series of random words written down on a paper that came with the ledger.”

Her eyes glistened in the moonlight, before she pushed off my chest and shielded her face behind her palms.

The seconds of ensuing silence beat against my conscience in a deafening reminder that I was the most rotten piece of shit. Perhaps worse than her father.

A bitter laugh broke the tenuous stillness, but quickly ended in a sob. “You …. You were using me this whole time?”

My heart flared inside my chest, as if it would kill me from the inside out. I reached out for her, but she slapped my hand away and scooted toward the opposite side of the bed.

“Don’t fucking touch me!”

“Sera, listen—”

“I knew there was something. Something didn’t make sense. Why would a guy like you want anything to do with a girl like me? For weeks, I couldn’t figure it out.”

“You don’t understand. The ledger contains—”

“You seduced me,” she cut in. “You hoped I’d be some starry-eyed little nympho who’d fall so in love with you, I’d steal for you!”

Another stab. That one with a soul-shredding crank of the blade. “No. I didn’t want to hurt you.”