Page 45 of Deep (Chicago Underground 8)
I sucked in a breath. He meant me, that Philip shouldn’t help me. I was the weak spot.
“Leave,” Philip said on a breath, so quiet I barely heard him. Raine heard him. He shoved the diamond into the pouch and disappeared into the back room in a rustle of hanging beads.
“Who did you tell?” Philip asked without turning. Now it was his voice that sounded raw.
All that anger, the force of his will, was directed at me. He wasn’t even looking at me, but I could feel it—dissecting me, ripping me apart. “What are you talking about?”
“Who did you tell about me?”
My hopeless crush on him. The unsigned postcards. “No one.”
“Are you sure? Even a friend. Even someone you thought you could trust.”
“No,” I said, louder, more sure. I wouldn’t have told them about Philip. No one at school would have understood what I went through—or about my strange fascination with a criminal. “I never told a soul.”
“Someone did,” he said, finally turning to face me. The rage in his eyes hit me like a lash. The rest of him was deathly cold. “And we’re going to find out who.”
He brushed past me to the door and held it open.
Everybody got a weak spot.
It sounded wild, like some kind of dark fairy tale. It couldn’t possibly be true. Except that Philip seemed to confirm it with every action—with watching me, with saving me. With keeping me. It was more than sex he wanted from me. It was everything. He wanted all of me, and a man like Philip always got what he wanted.
Nothing about his posture invited me in. He didn’t offer his hand. He didn’t offer any comfort.
He didn’t have anything to give, I realized. Not comfort. Not acceptance. And definitely not love.
He had sharp, shiny diamonds in velvet bags. He had threats and money. He had desire, and that would have to be enough for me, because I had already made the deal with him—and this visit was the signed ink on the contract.
Chapter Twenty-Two
WE HIT THE city limits before I realized what direction we were going in. Who did you tell about me? he’d asked, because that was the link. Whoever knew about us was a suspect now. He would burn down every house to find them. And we were heading toward a very specific house.
“No,” I said. “No way.”
There was no way that Shelly would have told anyone about Philip’s strange fascination with me or my childish crush on him. The only possible use for that information was to hurt us—and she would never do that. God, she’d risked her life to save me when I was a stranger.
Philip didn’t answer. He just stared out the window, light from the streetlamps whipping over his sharp features. He was angry, I realized. No. He was furious.
“Who else?” he asked, low. “Who else would know?”
I had to admit the number of people who could have guessed that about us was slim. It wasn’t even a real relationship, the kind you can catch on camera or read in a diary. It was just wishful thinking, a cruel trick of fate that made two people interested in each other when they both knew a relationship could never work.
Shelly had been there, though. She’d seen my fascination with him—and, apparently, his fascination with me. If anyone could intuit it from our
actions and words, it would be her.
“I don’t believe that,” I said. “She would never put me in danger. And definitely not you.”
A short laugh. “You remember she was once an informant for the cops. Who did you think she informed them about?”
“That was different.” Different because the man she loved was a cop. She would have done anything for him. But he would never have put us in danger either, never have worked with the kind of men who would kidnap my brother just to strike at Philip.
He wasn’t listening to me. Instead he was focused on the gun that had appeared in his hand. He was checking that it was loaded and ready to fire, his expression determined and deadly cold.
This was how he must appear to his enemies.
“Stop,” I whispered. “We shouldn’t even be focusing on this. We need to find my brother.”
