Chapter Three

Chapter ThreeIcould only stare down at him, my lips parted. He could not be here. He couldn’t be.Danton’s dark eyes fixed on me with lethal accuracy, gleaming with intensity. “There you are.”And there was he, evidently.But why?He sure as shit hadn’t ever come to my parents’ house before. These two particular crime bosses did not get along. As such, I highly doubted that this was a meeting about ‘business.’My scalp prickled with unease as my eyes bounced from one male to the other. Nothing in their expressions gave anything away.Sliding his gaze back to my father, Danton fluidly rose from his seat. “Remember what I said.”What? What had he said? What in the hell was going on?Jorge fixed his attention on me. “You didn’t mention that you were involved with Danton.”My lips firmed. Oh, that motherfucker. He’d come here to do what he’d no doubt sensed that I wouldn’t.I opened my mouth, intending to thoroughly renounce Danton. But I hesitated as a thought entered my head. If Jorge heard that I was done with this man, there was only one thing he would do—order me to stay in Danton’s life and pump him for information. Any objections on my part would be taken out on Teresa. Then I’d be stuck.But if I instead made no such renouncement and left Jorge in the dark about the arrangement being over, he would leave me be—other than to later call and ask what titbits I might have learned about Danton, of course. That would mean I could walk out of here right now while under no orders. And once Danton and I were alone, I could tell him to go suck a bag of dicks. Using plenty of suction.Preferring the latter scenario, I gave Jorge a slight shrug. “You’re never interested in who I’m dating.”He cast me a dark look. Yeah, he knew I was fully aware that this was something he would have wanted to know; something he would have wanted to use for his own gain. But he couldn’t exactly say that in front of Danton, could he?Danton crossed to me and cupped my elbow in a very proprietary gesture that—despite the time and place—annoyingly made my pulse skip a beat. “It’s time we left.”I really couldn’t agree more.The guy who’d been leaning against the wall moved to stand behind Danton, clearly one of his men. The amusement hadn’t left his eyes. What he found funny I was not sure.“There’s no rush for you to leave,” said Jorge, his tone smooth. “Surely Catalina mentioned the gathering that we’re having. You’re welcome to stay.” It wasn’t so much an invitation as a pressing request.Danton shot him a dismissive glance. “Cat and I have plans.”My father’s jaw tightened. What, he’d thought that Danton would play nice with him due to being ‘involved’ with me? If that was the case, he’d not only gravely overestimated this dude’s interest in me, he’d forgotten one very important thing: Danton Quintero didn’t play nice.I swept my gaze over Jorge, Julian, and Marcos—none of whom seemed at all pleased with the situation—as I said, “Enjoy the gathering.”All assertiveness, Danton led me out of the study and through the house, keeping a possessive hold on my elbow. I didn’t shrug him off, though it was tempting. I wouldn’t disrespect him in front of one of his men. That wasn’t done in our world. Plus, my father had cameras everywhere. If he later looked at the footage and noticed that I’d pulled away from Danton, he’d wonder why.Outside, Danton led me to a sleek, black vehicle parked in the intricately paved driveaway. He opened the front passenger door. “Get in.”I frowned. “I’m not leaving my car here.”He held out his hand. “Keys.”“What?”“Give me your car keys. I’ll have Vicente drive it to your building and park it in the lot. You and I need to talk, don’t we?”Yes, we definitely did. I wanted answers, and I wanted them now. So rather than argue, I pulled my keys out of my purse and handed them over.Danton tossed them to Vicente and then gestured at my car, obviously well aware of which vehicle was mine thanks to his background search. “Follow us.”Vicente gave him a sharp nod.Danton turned back to me, his gaze flicking to his own car. “Get in.”My mouth tightening, I slid inside and clicked on my seatbelt. The moment he hopped into the driver’s seat, I asked, “What have you done?”“What needed to be done.” He clicked on his own belt and then switched on the engine. “I made my stance clear to you last night. But when I realized you’d blocked my number, I knew that you weren’t going to tell Jorge shit.” He drove forward, heading down the curved driveaway. “I did warn you that I’d do it if you didn’t.”Yes, he had. But I hadn’t believed he’d go through with it. Forcing my back teeth to unlock, I asked, “What exactly did you say to him?”“That you’re mine. That he and I won’t have any problems providing he doesn’t try turning you into a honey trap; that if he crosses me on that then I’ll deal with it in a way he won’t like.”I stared at him, incredulous. He’d said it all so casually. Like it was only natural that he’d lay claim to me. Like it was nothing to threaten a freaking crime boss. Like the entire scene was no more notable than grabbing donuts from a bakery.I twisted in my seat slightly to better face him. “Are you high? You know how ruthless he is, you know—”“He’ll heed me.” Pausing, Danton pulled out onto the main road. “Jorge is a lot of things, including a piece of shit, but he isn’t stupid. He knows he doesn’t have the means to take me on.”“That’s not to say he won’t retaliate somehow. But let’s put that aside for a moment and concentrate on the main issue here. Telling him we’re involved with each other was not okay, Danton. You had no right—”“I had every fucking right, Cat.” He fired me a hard look. “You belong to me. Something you well know. I am not going to let him or anyone else force you to do shit you don’t want to do.”I scoffed. “You didn’t issue that warning to him for my benefit. You did it for your own. You don’t like that one of your rivals would have taken what you consider yours and essentially given it to someone else. That’s all. And I cannot tell you how much I detest being a pawn in power games.”“You’re not a pawn, and this isn’t a game. It’s a simple situation. You’re mine. You agreed to that over six months ago—”“And last night, I made it clear that I’m no longer yours. Why is it that you chose to completely ignore me as if what I say, feel, or think isn’t relevant?”He tossed me a sideways frown. “You said you needed to end our arrangement due to family obligations. Those obligations are now gone. I made them go away for you. Does that sound like I ignored you?”Well no, but that wasn’t really the point. “I didn’t ask you to interfere. I told you I didn’t want Jorge to know about us. You should have stayed out of it.”“You honestly thought I would?”“Yes, actually, I did. You’ve never interfered in my life before. And it’s not like you were anything close to serious about me. We fucked. That was all.”“Not sure why you’re talking in the past tense. I told you last night, we’re far from done.”Oh my God, his selective hearing was on fire.“I don’t know why you’re so pissed. You had a problem. I fixed it.”I did a slow blink. He didn’t know why I was pissed. Well of course he’d struggle to see things from my point of view. He didn’t seem to be fully in tune with his sense of empathy.“You didn’t fix the situation, you complicated it,” I told him. “And you did it for no good reason. It was pointless.”His brow creased. “Pointless how?”“It hasn’t changed anything—we’re still over. I didn’t only choose to end our arrangement because Jorge tossed a request my way.”Tension slipped into his broad shoulders. “Then why?”My heartbeat sped up. Moment of truth. Yanking up my metaphorical bootstraps, I took a subtle, preparatory breath and blurted out, “You matter to me.” I watched him carefully, noting how his fingers minutely tightened on the stirring wheel. “I don’t like being in arrangements with people who matter. There’s no true way of being content with ‘casual’ in a situation like that.”“Other people manage it just fine,” he said, surprising me—I’d expected him to shut down and drop the whole thing. “Some of the arrangements that exist within the Vault might be relatively impersonal, but most aren’t,” he went on. “There’s respect there. Regard.”“It’s more than that for me. Which would be fine if it was a two-way street, but it isn’t.” I was relieved that none of the hurt I felt at that laced my voice.His nostrils flared. “You’re not some faceless toy to me, Cat.”“No, I’m not. But although you’re possessive, that’s as far as it goes for you. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t leave me straight after sex. But you do. You always have to go. Well, maybe I want someone who doesn’t.”“You never complained about it before.”“Because I believe in respecting people’s boundaries. I respect yours. That doesn’t mean I’m fond of them.”Stopping at a red light, he looked at me. “What difference would it make if I stuck around after fucking you?”I could see that he genuinely didn’t understand where I was coming from. “It’s not a matter of me needing you to hang around awhile. It’s about the fact that you don’t wantto. It illustrates what I’ve been saying—I don’t matter to you. And I wouldn’t care about that if it weren’t that you matter to me.”Pausing, I tilted my head. “Are you getting what I’m saying? Because I feel like you don’t; like your detached sense of empathy is stopping this from really sinking in and resonating with you.”Facing forward as the light turned green, he drove on. “I get what you’re saying. But I don’t get why you think you don’t matter. Or why you’d want to matter to me when you don’t want anything more than a casual arrangement.”But that was the thing. I did want more. I just wasn’t in a rush to lay it all out for him.I’d already told him I cared about him—that had been hard enough. It also hadn’t made the impact on him that I’d thought it would. He hadn’t turned wary or uncomfortable. In fact, he hadn’t reacted to it at all. He’d pretty much just glossed over it.But that was Danton. Selective hearer of the year.God, I was going to have to admit that I wanted more than a mere arrangement, wasn’t I? That would penetrate. That he’d hear.I pulled in a long breath. “You’re wrong.”His eyes darted to me and then back to the road. “About what?”“I don’t want a casual arrangement. I’m looking for more.”He frowned. “Since when? You avoid relationships. Always have. Not once have you been involved in anything serious. Not within the Vault, not in the outside world.”He really had done an extensive background check, hadn’t he? “Yeah, but that’s mostly because of Jorge’s renowned habit of punishing me by harming those I care for—I don’t want to risk that he’ll hurt whoever I bring into my life. But what am I supposed to do? Stay single forever? No, that’s not what I want. Though, for a while there, I did a good job of convincing myself otherwise.”A muscle in his cheek ticked. “You want out of this arrangement so you can go find a guy to play happy fucking families with?”“No, actually, that’s not it. I do want more than casual, yes. The thing is, Danton, I want more with you.” It was so much harder to admit it than I’d thought it would be, and Danton? He didn’t even look my way. I could almost think he hadn’t heard me, except his jaw hardened and his grip on the wheel once again tightened.“I didn’t see it coming,” I went on. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. But it did. And so I have to walk away from you, because the fact is that you’re not going to offer me more, are you?”One broad shoulder stiffly lifted slightly. “What would be the point? You won’t want to live in a gilded cage. But that would be your reality.”I felt my brow pucker. “A gilded cage?”“By virtue of its restrictions, the arrangement we have protects you—to anyone looking in, you’re nothing to me but a pretty diversion. Even now, though I’ve made it clear to your father that you’re mine, it won’t be assumed that you mean anything to me since we don’t meet outside of the Vault. No enemies I have would consider you a weakness they could exploit. But if you stepped fully into my world, that would change.”“And you’re so sure that they’d strike out at anyone who they think means something to you?”“No, I’m not sure of it at all. The likelihood is that they wouldn’t dare. But that won’t mean shit to me. The only people I ever cared about were gunned down right in front of me.”My heart squeezed. I’d heard that his parents and two brothers had been killed at gunpoint when he was a kid, but I hadn’t known he’d witnessed their deaths.“So would I take any chances with the life of a woman I brought into my world? No. Not one. Hence the gilded cage.”Which was perfectly understandable, given that he’d not only undergone a traumatic experience but that the danger in his life was very real. Still, I didn’t believe that that was all there was to it. There’d been an off note in his voice when he spoke of not being prepared to take risks with a woman he hauled into his world. “It’s more than that.”His brows slid together. “What do you mean?”“I mean it isn’t simply that you don’t want to put someone in your enemies’ line of sight. The plain truth of the matter is that you don’t actually want to claim anyone as your own, isn’t it?”He fired me an odd look. “I claimed you, didn’t I?”“Technically, no, you claimed the right to be the only man who fucked me. That’s nowhere near the same as officially making a woman yours.” I paused. “You’re never going to do that, are you?”His jaw briefly tightened. “Watching people you love get shot by your father’s enemy makes you reluctant to form serious attachments.”Yeah, I supposed it would. My heart went out to him. It also sank, because it meant I knew for certain that we would never have been anything but club-buddies. Ever. “Then I guess there’s nowhere for us to go.”“Why do we have to go anywhere? Why can’t things stay as they are?”“Because I’ll grow bitter, Danton. Bitter and resentful of the fact that the person I care for, the person I want a relationship with, won’t ever give me what I want. It’s best that we just part ways now.” I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry you lost your family.”I faced forward, a scratch building in my throat. A throat that began to ache and thicken. Fuck, I was not gonna cry. I wasn’t.Silence fell between us, taut and tense. Well there was nothing more to say on either side, was there? We’d reached an impasse.There was something bittersweet about having finally gotten through to him. Because now he’d officially drop the whole thing. As much as his obstinate refusal to accept my “we’re done” statement had annoyed me, a part of me had liked that he’d pushed me on it.He wasn’t pushing anymore.We soon arrived at my building. Before I could reach out to open the door, he snagged my nape with one hand and yanked me to him. I gasped as his mouth descended on mine, his tongue boldly sweeping inside. He took my mouth with the same sense of entitlement that he always did. The kiss was hard, deep, and charged with frantic desperation.I sank into it, heat flaring in my lower stomach. I’d miss this. Miss the addictive burn of his mouth, miss the blatant possessiveness in his touch, miss the lava that always poured through my veins when he took me over this way. Miss the moments when he dropped his guard and looked at me like I was special.And him. I’d miss him. His slow smiles, his steadying strength, his ‘Stay safe’ orders whenever we parted, and even all that damn imperiousness I’d come to find endearing.He broke the kiss with a bite to my lower lip and then rested his forehead against mine. A goodbye. It was a goodbye.The backs of my eyes stung, and my chest felt swollen and heavy. This was it. We were done for good.He gave my nape a quick, tight squeeze and then righted his head. His hand slid away from my neck as he straightened. He looked like he might say something, but then he clamped his lips shut.The heaviness in my chest grew, and a lump built in my throat. Not trusting that my voice wouldn’t break, I exited the car without a word. Finding Vicente waiting there, I took my keys from him with a grateful, jerky nod.Walking to my building, I didn’t glance back at Danton. I kept my stinging eyes trained forward. I couldn’t break here. Not here, where he would see.Once inside my apartment, I went straight to the living area and sank onto the sofa. There, I let myself cry. Let myself truly feel the emotions battering at me. Let myselfmourn what I never could have had. And I found myself wishing that I’d said no to the question he’d asked me that night we first met.I almost had said no. Something had warned me that this man could ruin me for others. Which was exactly what he’d done.And then he’d let me go.I could have heeded my gut, but I hadn’t. I’d chosen to play with fire instead. Like a freaking idiot. So I had no one to blame but myself for the fact that I got burned.