Boy in the Club a boy & billionaire novel - Rachel Kane Page 0,82

if you deserve that thing.

Uglies don’t get the billionaires, says Jimi’s voice in my mind.

Colby lets go of my chin, withdraws from me, and at first I think that’s a bad sign, then I realize, he’s taking me at my word. He’s thinking. Hard.

The fact that he has to think about it, doesn’t seem like a good thing.

Stop fretting. He just told you he’s not good at the emotional side of things. Let him think it through.

Okay, but what if he thinks I’m asking for more than he’s willing to give? What if he thinks I want a relationship—

Don’t you?

Do I?

He’s walking past the conference table now, but when he speaks, his voice is as clear as if he was right next to me.

“Did I tell you about this room, about how the architect talked us into it?”

It’s like he’s standing in the sky.

No, like he is the master of the world, floating above his dominion.

“You mentioned it, yeah,” I said.

“I never wanted it. There was never anything in my heart—if I even have a heart—that said, you must have a glass room to scare your competitors. The thought had never occurred to me. And yet, when the architect showed us the plan, and described how it would look, I suddenly wanted it. I coveted it. Here was this thing I’d never thought about before, something I’d never seen, and I wanted it more than anything else, even more than I wanted my own office. Dalton tried to talk me out of it—Dad did too—but once I’d heard about it, I knew I had to have it, and the cost be damned.”

He is at the wall, not touching the glass, although I can see his breath softly fogging it. His hands are clasped behind him.

“Sometimes,” he continues, “you don’t know what you really want until someone shows it to you.”

But what does that mean? It’s the sort of thing you could interpret any way you pleased. It’s vague, and it’s not like Colby to be vague.

Maybe he’s just as nervous as you are.

It is hard to square my image of Colby—brash, arrogant, self-assured—with someone who is nervous about talking over this stuff. Yet he can’t seem to look at me while he speaks.

“And?” I prompt him. “What do you want?”

“I want the same thing every man wants. I want the world on its knees in front of me, worshiping me. I want the entire population of humanity to understand that I am a great man, as great as my father.”

“The thing I like about you is how humble you are.”

He laughs, and it’s a warm, genuine sound, and I love it. I made him laugh. Why does that make my heart feel so light?

“But it’s true,” he says.

“What, that every man wants to rule the world?”

“Wasn’t there some 80s song that said the same thing?”

“I have to admit, I wasn’t around back then.”

He turns from the wall, but he doesn’t cross the distance between us. “Admit it,” he says. “You want it too.”

“What, I want to smite my enemies or whatever?”

“Don’t you? Given the chance, wouldn’t you make Jimi crawl on the floor in front of you, begging for forgiveness?”

I blink at that. Was that something I wanted?

Maybe partially. Mostly I just want him to go away…and to be sure he has gone away, forever.

Yet I couldn’t help feeling like Colby was straying from my point…maybe intentionally.

“So that’s all you want out of life. People to bow down before you.”

“More than that,” he says, and there’s a note in his voice, something I heard last night, a tone I can’t quite identify, but which sends a shiver of combined fear and pleasure up my spine. “I want them to want it. I want them to like it. The world should be comfortable and joyous in its proper place beneath me.”

If anyone else had said those words, I would have burst out laughing. Instead I’m frozen to the spot, it’s like I’m hypnotized and he’s the king cobra, gently swaying, filling my field of vision until he’s all that I can see.

I realize I’m going to have to fight him for this. If I want to pin him down, if I want him to really talk about us, it’s going to take a battle of wills, because Colby doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do.

“How are you different from Jimi, then?” I say, and now instead of a cobra and its prey, we are like two swordsmen, and I have