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I don’t know why, but I believe him. The words just feel true as they come out of his mouth. Henry is competent, deeply so. He’s showing me this place, but I know that this is only one of many. There’s no way he has all this surveillance and no firepower. There’s no way his pack isn’t bigger than anybody realizes, more dangerous than anyone understands. He has been underplaying his hand at absolutely every turn because he wants people to underestimate him. And they have. And I have.
But I’m not going to keep making that mistake.
“If I asked you to remove them all from existence, how long would it take?”
He glances at his watch.
“Baby girl, it could be over by lunchtime.”
“No fucking way,” I say.
“When they took you up on the Russian plan, then showed their hand in hurting Rick, we put the final phase of the plan in place. Like I said, it has been years in the making. Now maybe we can’t clean up every loose end by lunch, but we can have the major players taken out. The people who surrounded your father and poisoned your family for years all have tails. It’s a matter of when we decide to take them out, not if.”
“It’s 11.50 a.m. right now,” I say, incredulous at how easy this all feels.
It’s not easy, though. Not really. It’s more testament to how much Henry has been working behind the scenes, tirelessly setting the cabal up for their fall. When it happens, it’s going to be biblical. And he thinks he can do it all in ten minutes? This I have to see.
“Exactly.”
I go up on my tiptoes so I can whisper in his ear.
“Do it.”
He smiles, takes out his phone, and sends a message to someone. Then he slides it away. “Alright,” he says. “That’s done. What should we do now? Are you hungry? Want some lunch? I could do sushi.”
“What do you mean that’s it? One fucking text message?”
He flickers me a wink. “I live for displays of efficiency, sweetheart. I mean, now that’s done, what would you like to do next?”
He has me by the hand and he is walking me back to the elevators. Once there, he hits the button for the top floor while I am still trying to process everything that has happened.
“What do you mean, now that’s done? You can’t have dozens of people killed with a text message.”
He smiles, and I see the darkness that has always been in him, the quality that saw what I was doing to that asshole in the alley and watched because in some way it amused him.
Henry has been playing the good guy. I think he always will. But that doesn’t mean he’s not without danger. He might be more dangerous than all the bad guys I’ve ever known.
God, that is so fucking hot.
People are dying right now. People who deserve to die. People who never deserved to draw breath at all. I feel a certain sense of solemnity as I reflect on what this moment means. The evil that has stalked my family for generations is being eradicated because this man refused to let it continue. I owe him everything. I owe him Rick’s life, my life, the life of our babies yet to be born.
“Do you feel bad about what’s happening? Do you wish you were there?”
“No,” he says. “I want to be here. With you. By your side. Keeping you safe. What’s happening out there is what should be happening. They don’t matter. You do.”
The elevator doors open, and he leads me out into what I guess must be his office. It’s surrounded by glass and looks out over the city. Here we are part of a massive metropolis of so many people that what is unfolding now might not even make the news. Too much happens in the city for every single unfortunate accidental death to be recorded. I assume he’ll make them look like accidents. There’s a symmetry to that, a plausible deniability, and it’s what they’ve been doing to us.
That chemistry is crackling between us again, the mate bond is being supercharged by the intensity of the moment. There’s a part of me that wishes I could sink my teeth personally into the throats of those who crossed my family, but I know Henry would never allow that.
“Come here,” he growls softly, pulling me close. “Let me look at you.”
He thumbs my chin and turns my face up to his. “I am going to spend the rest of my life looking after you, and our family,” he promises. “I love you with everything I am.”
“You don’t have a choice,” I quip back, at the risk of ruining the moment.
“I don’t have a choice as to whether you’re my mate, no. But I have always had a choice as to whether I wanted to look out for you, protect you, do what had to be done for you.”
“And you were doing that long before you had to,” I say. “I’m never going to be able to repay you.”
