Caped and Dangerous - Isabel Jordan Page 0,41
her voice low and dangerous. “Don’t you dare fucking say that. If you cared about me at all, you would’ve told me the truth instead of letting me walk blindly into the clusterfuck that you created.”
Killian wrapped his hands around her wrist and pulled just enough to get her to loosen her hold. “Let me explain.”
Her grip tightened again for a split second, then she released him with a disgusted noise and took a step back. “First of all, you’re going to tell me why you’re trying to create superheroes.”
He had to clear his throat before he could find his voice. Having the strongest woman in the world angry enough at him that she’d tried to crush his throat didn’t do anything good for his vocal cords. “It was a military contract. A big one.”
Her eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms over her chest. “The military wants their own superheroes? So that they can send in fewer soldiers, or something? Or so they can have an advantage against all the other countries?”
“Yes, on both counts.”
She shook her head. “Great. And you did it. You gave them superheroes.”
“Well, kind of. The experiments worked. We developed drug therapy that enhanced the subjects’ innate abilities. The theory was that all of us have the ability—somewhere deep within our DNA—to be superheroes. It’s just that for most of us, the ability stays hidden. For people like you, for some reason, it emerges.”
“So you forced these abilities to emerge in the test subjects.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes.”
“Side effects?”
God, he wished he could say there weren’t any. “Aggression.”
Again with the humorless laugh. “Yeah, I noticed that one.”
“I’m so—”
She stabbed her index finger at him. “Don’t you fucking say that, either. I’m not ready for your apologies, yet.”
The yet gave him hope. Maybe she’d eventually let him tell her how sorry he was and how much he loved her. Because God help him, he was. And he did.
“I didn’t know the subjects hadn’t volunteered until Declan escaped," he blurted, needing her to know at least that much. “I wouldn’t have done any of this if I had realized they were unwilling. The general assured us that they wanted to be superheroes.”
She cocked her head to one side, studying him. “Come on. I know you and Tony. If you didn’t know their volunteer status was sketchy, it was because you didn’t want to know.”
He couldn’t help but smile a little at that. Anyone who thought she was all brawn and no brains was sorely mistaken. “Tony said the same thing. And you’re both probably right. But it wasn’t intentional. We might’ve been kidding ourselves, but we didn’t intentionally set out to hurt anyone.”
Greer shifted her hands to her hips, tipped her head down and sighed. “Let’s just say I believe that.”
A huge wave of relief crashed over him. If she believed that, then she didn’t believe he was an irredeemable scumbag. He could work with that.
“But why did you do it in the first place? You had to know that creating superheroes was a slippery slope,” she continued. “It’s like Jurassic Park, for fuck’s sake. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.”
“It is,” he agreed. “But the contracts were huge. I couldn’t pass them up.”
Her head snapped up and she looked like she might go for his throat again. “It was all about the money? Seriously? Like you don’t have enough of that as it is? You buy entire hospital systems on a whim. You’re trying to tell me that all of this—Rio almost dying—was about money?”
Killian reached for her and tried (and failed) not to feel hurt when she flinched away from his touch. “It was about money, but not for the reasons you think. I needed that money for something...bigger.”
She snorted. “What, you needed another high rise? Another fleet of limos? What was so important that you were willing to take a contract that you knew deep down was shifty as fuck?”
The fact that she thought for a second he would’ve done this for a new fucking building was insulting. And hurtful.
And infuriating.
“No,” he said, jaw clenched. “It wasn’t for buildings or cars or whatever other material shit you know I don’t give a damn about.”
“Then what was it for?” she taunted.
This time he moved fast enough that she didn’t have time to push him away. He grabbed her by the upper arms and yanked her against his chest.
“It was for you. I did it all for you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
IT