Quiver (Revenge Book 1) (20 page)

“What made the warrant fall through?”

“Some bullshit.”

“What kind of bullshit?”

He sighed. “Faulty language. Translation: the rich prick I was gunning for found yet another loophole.”

“Yet another? So you’ve been after this rich prick for a while?”

Linc continued demolishing his bag, apparently having had enough conversation for the day.

But Veda wasn’t done. Now that she’d had a plethora of firsts with him—a first touch, a first conversation, even the first hint of a smile—all in less than five minutes, there was no way she could go back to the silent place they’d been before.

If she couldn’t tell him who she was, thank him, and return his mother’s chip, then at least she could be his friend. Gym buddies.

That seemed safe enough.

“Why did you let Todd get away with raping Sarah?” The moment those words left her mouth, she realized this wasn’t the greatest way to make friends, but she wanted an answer more than she wanted to win him over.

He didn’t look at her, continuing to punch the bag as if she weren’t there.

Her voice rose. “Why didn’t you try harder to get her to do a tox screen?” When he still didn’t answer her, Veda gave up. She faced her own heavy bag, kicking it with the toe of her sneaker while sneaking looks at him. Convinced she’d lost him with her incessant questions and accusatory words, she went back to punching her bag too, but her strikes were halfhearted.

“I can’t make anyone do a tox screen who doesn’t want to do a tox screen.”

She jumped at the sound of his voice, her eyes flying back to him. She took hold of the heavy bag on both sides, digging her fingers in.

His eyes bored into hers over his shoulder. “I can’t make anyone do a rape kit who doesn’t want to do a rape kit. I can’t make anyone press charges who doesn’t want to press charges. I can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to do. And neither can you. The sooner you realize that, the better your life will be. Trust me.”

“Why choose the Special Victims Unit if you weren’t willing to fight for these girls? Why SVU if you don’t give a shit?”

His eyes smiled at her. “I don’t give a shit,” he said, as more of a statement than a question.

Veda shrugged. “I mean… We both know what Todd did, don’t we?”

His eyes hardened.

“And yet, he still walks free.” Now that Veda was questioning her capacity for killing Todd—hell, her capacity for doing anything but being with Gage—she figured seeing him behind bars would be the next best thing. If she were in Linc’s shoes, she’d stop at nothing.

“When I was eighteen….” He took a moment, his eyes going to another place, as if some part of him was still in the process of trying to ignore her. That part of him seemed to lose out, however, when he continued. “When I was eighteen… just a snot-nosed probationary… I found a woman floating face down in the ocean. I fished her out and gave her mouth-to-mouth. It wasn’t until she opened her eyes that I realized she wasn’t a woman at all but a girl… dressed like a woman. A girl… with the body of a woman. A girl with bloodstains on the seat of her dress. A girl whose eyes told me she’d rather I left her for dead.”

Veda didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she inhaled sharply.

“She was probably sixteen years old. She was so damn young… It shook me. She ran away from me before I could snap myself out of it, but I’ll never forget the look in her eye… the blood on her dress… By the time it occurred to me to go after her, she was gone. Disappeared behind the black rocks.” He licked his lips. “That’s why I chose SVU. Not to force women, or change women, or make women do things they don’t want to do… but to help keep them breathing
.
If I can’t do anything else, at least I can keep them
breathing
.”

Veda licked her own lips, her eyes falling to his.

“Okay?” He raised his eyebrows, silently asking if she had any more nosey-ass questions for him. When she didn’t, he went back to his bag, punching harder that time, enough to elicit a groan with each hit.

She forced her next words out before she could talk herself out of it. “What happened to your wife?”

The moment she saw the muscle under his jaw roll, she knew she’d gone too far. He stopped hitting the heavy bag, catching it when it swung back toward him.

After steadying it, he looked at her again, from the corner of his eye, green orbs on fire. “I don’t know.” His voice went low and gravelly. “Why don’t you ask your boyfriend?”

Veda gasped. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but it sure as hell hadn’t been that.

He went to walk past her but she caught his arm in the nick of time, stopping him in mid-stride. His bicep felt like a boulder, so solid she was sure she could lift her feet from the ground and swing from it like a jungle gym.

He froze with his back to her, looked over his shoulder, and claimed her eyes.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she whispered, hearing the quiver in her voice when she realized it didn’t matter. What mattered was the implication he’d just made. The one that had left her stomach in a puddle at her feet. “And what does that mean?”

It was as if they’d both climbed into a time machine when the corner of his lip lifted. Veda saw the exact moment he took ten steps back.

He held her gaze in silence, letting the stillness fall in. Then he lowered his eyes to her fingers, dwarfed by the bulging bicep she still clutched.

It was as if his eyes had shot fire and scorched her hand because it flew off his arm in an instant, releasing him.

Freed, he crossed the room without another word, snatching up his duffle bag from the corner before yanking the door to the weight room open.

And Veda’s heart was in her throat.

—

Gage sighed as he entered his home with a duffle bag on his shoulder. It was becoming harder every day, being away from Veda, even if only for a couple of hours. It was harder to walk into the grand foyer of the mansion he shared with the wrong woman. It was hard to lie in the bed he’d yet to share with Veda, even though she’d been sharing hers with him for months.

His dress shoes clicked on the wood floors as he made his way to staircase. The crystal chandelier overhead beamed down and made the black leather shine.

“Darling….”

Gage stopped with his foot on the first step of the staircase, swiveling toward the unmistakable sound of his mother’s voice. He found her in his dining room, sitting stark straight as usual in the tufted wingback dining chair. The fitted black dress hugging her curves made her pale skin look see-through, almost disappearing against the white chair.

Her red lips remained ever smiling, but as soon as their eyes met, it grew warmer. Easier. More genuine.

Gage moved toward her, dropping his bag in the middle of the foyer. “Mother.”

Celeste stood and greeted him once he made it to the foyer, clutching his arms in a grip a little tighter than normal while kissing both his cheeks.

She allowed her eyes to travel him, looking for imperfections only a mother could see. Once she deemed his appearance exemplary, her eyes flew over his shoulder.

Gage followed her green gaze, caught sight of his duffle bag, and looked back to her. “How long have you been waiting here for me?”

Her smile lost a little of its toasty warmth, a little of its sincerity. “Why, only for the last five days, darling.”

The color drained from Gage’s face. “Five days?”

“For five days, I’ve sat in this dining room, waiting to see a familiar face in my son and future daughter-in-law’s home. Waiting to see
any
face, at all, in fact. Five days and…” She shrugged. “Nothing.”

Gage felt the heavy swallow moving down his throat. Saw her eyes follow its journey to the pit in his stomach. “I’m leaving her, Mother.”

Celeste’s eyes fluttered closed. The hold she still had on his arms tightened, but not to the point of pain. She wasn’t strong enough to cause him physical harm, not even if she wanted to.

She took a deep breath. The tiny shred of softness finally left her smile until she was giving him the same ice-cold grin his father had been on the receiving end of since the day he was born.

“You do live to torture me.” She dropped her eyes.

Gage lifted his head high. “It might’ve been easy for you and Dad, but I can’t marry a woman I don’t love. It’s not what I want for my life.”

“The family business—”

“I don’t care.”

“Your father—”

“I don’t
care,
Mother. I don’t care about any of it. I’m no longer willing to auction off my
soul with the hope of some halfhearted return, for whatever
scraps
of inauthentic love he may choose to reward me with. If he doesn’t want me to be fully vested in the business without selling my soul, then I don’t want to be fully vested in the business. If he doesn’t want me to be a part of the cruise line, I don’t want
to be part of the cruise line. If he doesn’t love me, then to hell with him.”

“Darling, your father loves you. Dearly. You have to understand—”

“I understand completely—”

“I’m
speaking.
” Her voice rose, eyes steely.

When she reached up and cupped his cheeks, he blinked his own eyes shut.

“We might’ve given you the illusion that you had a choice in this, darling.” Her words came harsher. “But you have
no choice.
”

Gage opened his eyes and searched her gaze. “I’m leaving her.”

“Your father would sooner die than allow you to destroy this deal.”

The air left Gage’s lungs.

“He’d sooner see you die.” Celeste squeezed his cheeks harder, shaking him. “And
I’d
sooner die before I allow you to throw your life to the wolves.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she sucked in a shaky breath. “You’re my sun, my moon, my stars.” She brought her trembling hands from his jaw and ran them along his tie, swallowing. “Now, we’ll just pretend we never had this conversation.”

Gage waited for the tears in her eyes to dry. “I’m leaving her.”

Celeste’s arms fell to her sides and she brushed past him, her sky-high heels clicking as she entered the foyer. She kept her back to him, one hand pressed to her hip and the other over her mouth. “The woman from the bar.” She swiveled on her heel as she made her declaration. “The party-crasher?”

Gage held her gaze, feeling his heartbeat pick up. “For my entire life, I’ve watched you and Dad, barely tolerating each other.
Hating
each other. For my entire life, I believed true love was a lie. I believed it was a lie because the proof was right there next to me. Under the same roof as me. The proof looked me square in the eye, every day. The proof fed me, clothed me, nurtured me. I believed love was a fairytale for the foolish. Something I didn’t believe myself
capable
of.”

Celeste approached him, her hand over her heart. “You should’ve come to me about this.”

“And said what?” He attempted to keep his voice level. “That I’ve fallen desperately, madly in love?” He smiled softly. “No.”

Her eyes grew vulnerable.

“I knew you wouldn’t understand.” He motioned to her. “How could you?”

Celeste flinched as if he’d punched her. “Perhaps you should speak to Todd… about the woman you’re supposedly so in love with.”

Gage felt his heart skip a beat, and he clenched his teeth to keep it from showing on his face. Still, his cheek flinched, and he knew she saw it happen.

It made the smile that had been slowly growing on her face pick up speed. “Perhaps you should speak to Todd about the woman you’re on the verge of throwing your life away for, before you make the catastrophic mistake of actually following through.”

The implications behind her words threw him, forcing him to take a step away from her.

He frowned.

Celeste tilted her head. “Even after you took him around the neck in
public,
” she spat, “Todd still had the grace, the class, to come to me and tell me you’ve been fooled, blinded, and misled by this devious woman.”

“Devious? Mother, stop.” He tried to bite his tongue but couldn’t. “You don’t know anything about her.”

“I know Todd sees her every weekend flirting with Lincoln Hill at the downtown gym.”

Gage felt his blood run cold.

It was as if Celeste had a hold of his veins and could feel the exact instant they went frigid. “A woman who Todd saw, just yesterday, holding Lincoln Hill’s hands.” Celeste began toward him, taking tiny steps, the click of her heels the only sound bouncing off the vaulted ceiling outside of Gage’s scant breath. “Lincoln Hill, the man who’s been out to ruin your family for the last five years. You’re throwing your life away for a woman who’d dare
breathe
in his direction?”

“He’s lying,” Gage grumbled. “He has a problem with Veda.”