“In exchange for me.”
“Yes,” I grind out. “I’m your legal guardian until you turn eighteen. The promotion…it’s contingent upon you remaining with me until then.”
Her laughter is bitter—so unlike her—but the sound is layered over hurt. “God. You and my father are both bigger bastards than I thought.”
Stabbing pain. “Even if he’d said no, angel, I would have found a way.” I have no idea why I’m defending the other man. Maybe because I want to spare her as much anguish as possible, even if it makes me look worse. “I’m not even sure I had a pulse before you spun in circles on my roof. I bought you so I could live.”
She hits me right in the soul with a venomous look. “I’m not staying with you. I’d rather die.”
Panic is like a knife cutting down the length of my spine. Already I can feel the bleak, gray world closing in around me. “The contract is signed, Veda. I won’t let your father out of his end.”
“What about my end?” Tears swim in her eyes. “You can’t just buy and sell people. I should still get a say in my life, even though I’m not eighteen yet.”
I grab her arms and lean down to speak at her mouth. “I would go out of my fucking mind without you, angel. I barely lasted the five days I spent waiting for you to move into my home.” Honesty has thickened my voice until it’s unrecognizable as mine. “Life was prison before that day—you’re the only one with a key. You’re my jailer as much as I’m yours.”
Her eyes are blank, without emotion, so I can’t tell if I’m getting through. But I suspect even if I did, her next words prove it wouldn’t matter. “I don’t feel anything for you but hate.”
My arms fall to my sides as if they weigh a ton each, the sound of crashing waves churning in my ears. “You don’t mean that,” I manage around the strangling sensation in my throat. “I only want to give you everything. Anything you could ever want, I need to make it happen, or I consider my life a failure.”
She shakes her head, disturbing her blonde hair, looking more gorgeous than anyone has the right to be. “If you love someone, the greatest gift you can give them is freedom.” This isn’t the first time she has said these words to me…perhaps I should have listened before. “That’s what I want, Ramsey. Can you give me that?”
“You’re calling for my death.”
Her shrug is jerky, her gaze conflicted, even as she hammers the nail into my coffin. “So be it.”
For hours, I stand in the conference room, staring at the wall where she last stood, listening to the sounds of her moving upstairs in her bedroom…and when I finally hear the front door slam, my knees hit the floor.
Done.
Chapter Ten
It’s cold as fuck on the roof of my building and I’m glad. At least there is a temperature to match the barren wasteland inside my chest. When Veda left, she dragged my heart along with her, letting it skid on the ground, but I can still feel the mutilated, fractured organ from a distance—it makes my whole body impossible to live in. There’s no way to escape, however, so I sit here on the roof where we met, staring out over the glittering Manhattan skyline and pray to God she’s safe somewhere out there.
It has been a full week since the angel sent me to hell, although time means nothing now. Nothing. I’m not even sure if I exist anymore, or if I’m a ghost, haunting my former life. Every time my body tries to sink into sleep, I hear her laughing, or see her spinning like a ballerina in the aisles of the movie theater. Or languishing naked in my bed, trying to tempt me…as if the simple act of her breathing wasn’t a temptation all its own.
So many times throughout the week—every single minute, in fact—I’ve been tempted to search for Veda. Or send a team of private investigators after her. The first time I encountered that urge, I slammed my head into a wall until I blacked out. And again when I woke up. And again. Until I numbed my panic enough to hear logic.
Herein lies the reason I haven’t leaped from my building’s roof yet. I gave her freedom. Total, authentic freedom…and because of that, there’s a sliver of a chance she might come back to me. Up above, at the top of the building, my name has been replaced with hers. Veda instead of Beckett.
You didn’t think I was legitimately insane, did you? I assume you’re no longer questioning me.
Having something so difficult done on short notice cost me, but I would have paid quadruple. In a moment of clarity, my business mentality kicked in and I remembered how important it is to know the ins and outs of the commodity you’re attempting to obtain. Now, lest you think I didn’t learn my lesson, I understand all too well now that Veda isn’t a commodity. She’s a perfect, warm blooded creature…and also a too-young girl. And in my short experience with Veda, my very own too-young girl, I learned they—she—has a healthy supply of vanity. So that is what I’m appealing to in a desperate Hail Mary to bring her home. I’m trying to win her back with something big and bright and shiny and I won’t apologize for it.