Chapter 3

three

Olympia

Eight years. For eight years, I’ve held a torch for Cole Taviera.

For eight years, I’ve gone to sleep every night thinking of his smile. The deep, warm timbre of his voice. The smell of him, spices and shaved wood.

He’d never been for me, though. Not really. But he was the only man I’d ever wanted. He was the first man I’d ever loved. The only man. I’m pretty sure I’ll never love any man but him.

And that sucks.

Because I’m finding that Cole is an asshole.

He’s not a good man. He’s not a kind man. He’s no longer the man who ruffled my hair or took care to acknowledge my presence when no one else bothered. He’s no longer the man who told me I was pretty whenever I got a new dress or attempted a new hairstyle. He’s no longer the man who cared to take the time to make me feel seen, to build my fragile, youthful confidence. To treat me like a person, with feelings. As though I was more than a pretty doll, but never one as pretty as her.

I’m not so naïve that I believe he ever returned my affection.

He’d been in love with my older sister, the belle. He’d been head over heels for her, ready to marry her.

That thought, even as a girl, had killed me. Now, well, I’m a glutton for punishment, because it still hurts.

The fact that he’d ever loved her, hurts.

It shouldn’t, just like realizing the man he’s grown up to be is a dink, shouldn’t hurt.

But it does. So much.

See? Glutton for punishment.

Shoving my childish feelings and raw hurt down deep, I stroll deeper into his house, hating that I love everything about it.

It’s not crafted in cold, lifeless, sleek materials. It’s not designed to encourage envy, or perfection. It’s perfect and comfortable and warm. Lived in.

It’s no secret, the man has more money than I’m sure he knows what to do with. He could have any number of stately homes, but he has this. It’s not sprawling or openly grand. It’s not small, either.

It’s cozy.

It’s the kind of place you feel comfortable and right to curl up on the couch, beneath a soft blanket. Maybe, you even feel safe eating buttered popcorn on the couch, not worried about staining priceless fabric with buttery fingers, because his couch is a couch made for movie nights.

I’ve never had a movie night in any house I’ve lived. My movies are watched on my tablet in my bed sans popcorn, because as much money as I may have been raised with, Remira had always been firmly against televisions in the bedroom. Food in the bedroom was also a no-go. Something like buttery popcorn, that could add to my already generous ass, was strictly forbidden.

Cole probably doesn’t need a TV in his room—not with a couch like this. The kind you can really sink into. And his coffee table, a rustic blonde wood, is dented and scuffed. I think—I think he might put his feet on the table when he lounges back on that couch.

I don’t know why, but of all the things in his home, it’s his coffee table I love most. The scuffs and life in it.

I bite my lip, the pain cooling the hot sting of tears I refuse to let fall.

This house, Cole’s house, is the kind of place where love is made. Both the love between a family and the love between a man and a woman.

I’ve always fantasized about that love. I’ve always wondered—does it even exist? Like, really? Is it something that normal people have? Because I’ve never seen it. Not ever. Not from anybody in my life.

In my life, people are like sharks. They scent blood, and they devour. Weakness is a game they all love to play. It’s a wound that they poke, and prod.

Love, real love—now, that’s the biggest weakness of all. It’s also not a weakness I imagine many can afford.

So, it’s best I squash the love I thought I had for him here and now. Before things spiral really out of hand.

Besides, I’m a big girl. I don’t need to be stroked with pretty words, and I most definitely don’t need a man to love me, in order to crush everyone who hurt me. And I will crush them all for every whip I endured. For every slap. For every mean, cutting, abusive slash of the tongue. I will destroy them.

I just have to wait a year. In a year, I’ll have the power I need at my back to take over what is rightfully mine. That’s if my father doesn’t destroy it first.

And my whole plan hinges on this asshat working with me.

For that reason alone, it’s a damn good thing I have the one thing he wants. The sole ticket to destroying his own awful family.

I paste my plastic smile on my face. “You have a nice house.”

A brow raises. “You think?”

“It’s cute.”

He makes a noise in the back of his throat. It sounds unimpressed. “Yeah, cute.”

I twist to meet his eyes. Like always, I feel them deep inside. It’s like they have talons, and when they land on me, they cut in deep, leaving little spurs that burrow behind.

I wish they wouldn’t.

I look away. “I don’t know why you’re saying it like that. Like you think I’m not being genuine. It’s a nice place, Cole.”

“I’ve already told you. It’s Tav,” he grumps in a way that almost makes me smile, because I’m pretty sure it’s exasperation I hear in his voice.

I shake my head. “Not to me. You’ll always be Cole to me.”

He drags his hand over his short hair, gives one sharp shake of his head and mutters, “Whatever.” My heart squeezes. It’s painful, and awful, and I ignore it. “What do you want, Olympia?”

It takes very real effort not to flinch when he says my name like that. Like he hates me as much as he hates them.

But how could he?

I was a child when he left. I was a child who looked up to him, who—God—he had to know I had feelings for him even then. Even innocent little girl feelings. He had to know.

In my mind, I can see the way I blushed whenever he was around. I can still hear Ophelia’s scathing words, telling me to leave him alone, to stay away. That he thought I was ridiculous. A child. Annoying. Pitiful. Even though her words had seared me like hot iron, I’d never been able to keep myself hidden away whenever he would come to visit. Even as Ophelia glared at me from over his shoulder, I’d always come out of my room when Cole showed up, hoping for scraps of his attention.

I hate those memories now; how desperate I’d been. How lonely. How my sister, who always hated me, hurt me with her words. How those words still hurt today.

How they throw me back to that young, pitiful girl. That child.

In comparison to him, even now at nineteen, almost twenty, he probably still views me as a child.

I don’t know why I thought I could show up and he’d see a woman.

He’s my childhood crush, but he’s not mine. He’s never been mine, and I deluded myself into hoping anyway.

I push back my shoulders on a deep inhale, my heart skipping when his dark eyes drop to my chest before lifting, hard as stone, back to mine.

I won’t let him see me tremble. I won’t let him see how afraid I am right now.

“Today was my engagement party,” I tell him flatly. He doesn’t deserve my raw emotion, but I feast on the surprise I see in his expression. Through the surprise, I think I see something darker. Something I can’t begin to read.

“You’re engaged?”

“I was.”

His eyes drop to my bare finger. He knows very well that Remira Laurier would never have accepted a proposal for her daughter’s hand from a man who dared to ask without putting a rock on her finger, weighty enough to drown her, if she ever happened to fall in a large body of water.

The rock had certainly been a weight I’d worn painfully for three months before I’d run for my life. I’d left the ring on the lid of the toilet, glittering against white porcelain in a silent statement of exactly what I thought about the marriage I’d nearly been forced into.

Thinking of it now, I should have taken the ring. I could have pawned it.

But I’d had a statement to make, and running, as much of a statement as that made in itself, hadn’t felt like enough.

I was a fool.

I was a fool for leaving the ring worth enough to help me set up another life away from—them. And I was a fool for running to him.

To Cole Taviera.

“Who’s the sorry bastard?”

Ouch. Asshole.

I don’t let him see that his words hurt as I hold his eyes. “Your brother.”

That something dark I thought I saw—it’s full of rage now.

He comes at me again fast. This time, he doesn’t touch me. But I can feel the hot puff of angry breath that blows from his nose. His eyes are filled with a kind of heat that could burn me from the inside out. They just might. Lord knows those talons have their hooks in deep enough.

“You’re engaged to my brother?”

“Was engaged.”

“Your engagement party was today?” His voice is gruff. Like the emotion in it is bursting at the seams, a moment away from detonation. I don’t know why, but I want to push that button.

I refrain, of course. I am a lady, after all.

“You smell like cheap perfume.” I deadpan.

His brows bounce. “What?”

“You smell like a stripper.” I spell it out for him. Daft, irritating man.

“Like a stripper?” His lifted brows slam down, eyes bouncing the length of my body. “What do you know of strippers?”

“I know you smell like one.” I shrug. Maybe I’m not the lady I thought I was, because I can’t help myself. I slam my finger into that button, hard. “And I know, because I’ve smelled them on Darius. Cheap. Perfume.”

He grinds his teeth. A vein in the side of his neck bulges, throbbing in time with his quickening pulse. His big hands curl into big fists at his side. “How long have you been with my brother?”

“I’ve never been with your brother,” I spit.

His lip curls. “Not what it sounds like to me.”

“That relationship was between my mother and Darius. I’m just the prize they bargained.”

His eyes flash, but he says, “You agreed to be that prize.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “I did. And then I ran away.”

“To me.” The way he says that—something about the hard edge to his voice turning soft—I don’t know why but it makes me feel things I know I shouldn’t feel.

I steel myself. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Why me, Olympia?” His breath washes over my face. I want to close my eyes against the assault of spiced rum and shaved wood. Of him…

Because I’m stupid. Because I fell for you when I was a child, and I never found a way to pick myself up again. Because I believed you were good, and strong, and that you could save me. Because they isolated me to a point, I had no one else to turn to.

I don’t say any of that. I just hold those hard, dark eyes with my own. I give him the ruthless truth. “I came to you because they hate you. They all hate you. You didn’t play into their bullshit.”

His hands fist at his sides. “My father fucked the woman I was in love with.”

I do flinch this time, because those words—hells bells—they’re like a sucker punch to my gut.

I’m winded for at least three heartbeats.

“He did.” It comes out as a croak. So much for cool and collected. This cucumber is officially charbroiled.

“Yeah,” he agrees bitterly.

“She wasn’t innocent in that, Cole.”

“I am well aware, Olympia.”

I roll my lips. “They hate you because you didn’t fall in line after the fact. You didn’t smile and wish them well.”

“Ophelia married him. My mother was on her deathbed, and she had to watch the woman I thought I loved, marry the man she gave her life to. The man who didn’t stand beside her when she got sick, with the woman she thought of as a daughter.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I was there!” Now my voice is rising.

I’m losing control.

But I really hate hearing him talk about Ophelia. I hate it so much; it burns like acid on my tongue. Not because I’m in any way loyal to her, but because I hate that she hurt him like this. I hate that he ever gave her the power to hurt him like this. She never deserved it. Never deserved him.

I don’t know why he couldn’t see her for the spiteful person she’s always been.

I would never have betrayed him like that. If he made me his, I’d stand loyal for him until the bitter end.

But he won’t make me his. Not ever. It’s a foolish thought for a foolish girl, and I’m over it. I’m done.

I’ve given enough of my headspace to Cole Freaking Taviera.

Now, my only focus is my freedom. He just happens to be my ticket.

“They’ve never let you come back into the family. Not after the way that you left. After you smeared them publicly. In our families, that’s not forgivable.”

“Why were you engaged to my brother?” he demands, for some bizarre reason stuck on that.

I give him his answer. “Because my father is a drunk. And when he’s drunk, he likes to gamble. So, he’s kind of got the Laurier family, assets included, in a pickle.”

He frowns. “Are you here to ask me for money?”

I groan. “I can’t believe you. You think I’m here to ask you for your money?”

“What are you here for, then?” he growls. Yes, growls—like an animal. “Get to it. I don’t have all night for this shit.”

“I’m here because I want—” I pause, rolling my lips, because now that it’s time to say it, I don’t know if I can.

I once trusted this man completely. Now, I’m not so sure.

I’m not so sure that he will keep me safe from the bloodthirsty monsters that want to devour every inch of my spirit even as they tear into my body.

“Well,” he urges impatiently.

I can feel myself trembling on the inside. Anxiety is beginning to claw at my guts, at my chest. I want to vomit.

It takes very real effort, even though I’ve had years and years of practice, to slide that plastic mask in place. I say simply, “I want to make a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“The kind where we both get what we want.”