"Could be." That was how women like Cerys laid traps--with the truth, the bitter, painful truths that niggled at a man. You had to make him bleed before you offered to kiss it all better. "Could be you don't know her half so well as you think."
"It's possible," she admitted. "That's why I'm here instead of talking to Lex."
"Yeah, she'll love that."
Cerys smiled. "No, she won't be happy with me. She does prefer to ignore the reality of her situation sometimes."
Leading words. He wanted to be too stubborn to ask. Wanted to. "And what's the reality of her situation?"
"You own her, and she's not a woman who can be comfortable with that."
"I own Lex exactly as much as she lets me," Dallas replied, baring his teeth in his own sort of grin. "You of all people should appreciate the pitfalls of trying to own Alexa Parrino."
"I do, which is why I now realize that I should have been grooming her for something special." Cerys shifted on the chair and crossed her legs. "I should have been readying her to take over Orchid House."
Well, shit. He hadn't seen that coming. "You getting bored of politics, Cerys?"
For a moment, her serene mask slipped, and she looked tired. "I'm getting too old for the games, O'Kane. The bickering between the sectors, the threats." She shrugged. "I have money. I want to enjoy it."
"And you want to hand your business over to the one that got away?" The perverse part was that it made a sort of sense. The girls who stayed to be trained into docile little puppets wouldn't have the ruthless fire necessary to lead. If he could trust that the weariness he'd seen in Cerys's eyes was truth and not simply another mask.
"I'd still benefit. I'll receive a healthy cut of the profits until I die, that's tradition. The way things are done." Her smile turned cunning. Jaded. "Do you think my predecessor liked me? She loathed me, but she knew I could make money. So here I am."
Still not the right answer. "What makes you think Lex would turn a profit? She doesn't just hate you. She hates what you do."
"For the girls' sakes, of course. So she knows they'll have someone looking out for them."
He thought about Lex's whispered confession, the need to help, and he hated Cerys a little more. Not only for knowing where to stick the knife, but for knowing better than he had. With Lex under his nose day in and day out, he'd still found a way to be oblivious to the need gnawing her up from the inside.
Cerys hadn't. "Even if that pitch worked on her, who says it'll work on me? I happen to like Lex right where she is, not off playing hero in some other sector."
She responded with an unladylike snort. "Right where she is for now, you mean."
"You know some travel plans of hers that I don't?"
"Cut the shit. You know what I'm talking about."
She'd already said it once: Lex would want to do more, be more. The only thing he hated more than this meeting was having it after that fucking fight over the prospects from Three. Lex already wanted to be more. Could Cerys smell that weakness on him? Hear it in his voice?
Fuck that. "Lex is a lot happier as my queen than she would be running a damn whorehouse."
"You say that with such derision, but isn't that what she is? Your whore?" Cerys shook her head. "Perhaps she'd be even happier as your equal."
Rage overwhelmed good sense, and he slammed the knife down on the table. "You watch your fucking mouth, unless you want me to drag you back to the fence by your hair and throw you over it."
She held up a placating hand. "I meant no offense."
"Bullshit, you didn't." Bracing both hands on the scarred wood, he rose and leaned forward, pinning her in place with the force of his anger. "You pretty it up over there. Flowers and nice dresses and training, but you're a pimp, Cerys. A grasping, greedy pimp. If anyone running a brothel in my sector tried to take a third of the percentage you do, I'd let Ace pound their face into the cement. You meant for me to be fucking offended, but you know what? Calling her a whore's still not as big an insult as turning her into you."
Cerys stared back, unmoving. "I've upset you."
Which had probably been the damn point, but he couldn't