said earlier, he had eyes and ears everywhere.
“Charlotte, don’t tell me you have a soft spot for Max Locke,” Thames said in a low tone. “You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
She shook her head. “I definitely don’t have a soft spot for him. I just know why he is the way he is.”
“Is this about the hole?”
She tensed, her eyes widening as she looked at him. Yeah, she knew Locke had eyes and ears everywhere too. Did she think he could hear them now? The paranoia in her disturbed Thames.
“See, this is a problem,” he growled, working his jaw. “He’s forced you to do his books. You’re scared, aren’t you?”
“Of Locke?” She let out a dry laugh. “There are scarier people than him, Conor, and no, he didn’t force anything on me. That part I eventually volunteered to do. I meet with some clients of his who want their money squirrelled away. It’s not just him, and there are safeguards. It’s a system that is very complicated, very difficult to crack.”
“That system can put you away for a long time.”
“He would never allow that.”
“How do you know that?”
“He gave me his word.”
This girl. Thames wanted to strangle her, fuck sense into her, tell her all the cruelty Locke was responsible for to make her understand how dangerous he was and how little he cared for anyone but himself.
“Locke would happily throw you under the bus if it meant saving his own ass,” he told her, firmly.
“But he doesn’t work that way,” she argued calmly. “He doesn’t do things that don’t make sense. He’s logical in everything he does. Everything, Conor.”
“What is so logical about employing you?”
“He confides in me.”
“Confides in you?”
“He turns to me,” she tried to explain, though she looked like she was grasping for straws. “When he needs me, I’m there. He trusts me.”
She couldn’t be serious.
I need you, Charlotte.
No, he couldn’t handle this shit. Shaking his head, he slipped out of bed and paced the room. She watched him closely, hardly breathing. He sensed she noticed the anger rolling off him. He wouldn’t lose it, not like he would have before, but he really missed those days just then. He missed the dominance. He missed the curses. He missed the hurting. And at the same time, he didn’t miss any of it either.
No, no, he didn’t miss it at all.
“Have you ever stopped to consider he might be manipulating you?” he asked, stopping in front of the bed to look at her. “He’s cunning enough.”
“He’s not manipulating me,” she replied, looking weary now. “Conor, you have to trust me, okay? Locke’s done nothing wrong to me.”
“Except make you launder his money.”
“First of all, most of what I do is legal. Secondly, that other stuff is impossible to prove.”
“It’s never impossible, dove. There will always be a trail buried somewhere.”
She remained resolute, shaking her head with confidence. “He would never watch me fall. Locke isn’t that kind of man.”
“Don’t tell me what kind of man Locke is,” he gritted out. “You know nothing, Charlotte.”
Her breaths came out fast now. “I’m not going to argue about this, Conor.”
“You should never have turned to him.”
“I never did.”
“But you let him help you.”
“I needed it. I had nothing. We were running on fumes, and I’d depended on you to keep everything balanced.”
Those words hurt more than they should have. He went still, hardly breathing. “Do you think I ever intended for that to happen?”
“Conor, no –”
“I killed Billy –”
“We aren’t addressing Billy, goddammit!” she snapped suddenly.
“I shouldn’t have killed him, I know that –”
“It’s done, Conor, it happened –”
“If I’d just stopped kicking him, if I’d been under control, you wouldn’t have struggled –”
“I’m not blaming you for what happened, Conor, and I’m not trying to revisit it, either. Please, stop. If anything, I’m grateful for all you’ve done for me. I’m simply telling you that I was running on fumes, had nothing to fall back on. I was young and he offered me a lifeline.”
He stared at her with confusion. “You act like you had no one else.”
She didn’t back down. “I had no one else.”
“What about my mother?”
“What about her?”
“She would never have let you struggle.”
“I understand that –”
“And Jem. He was there for you.”
“Yes, he was, but god, Conor, what was I supposed to do exactly? Whatever help they would have given me would still have paled in comparison to what Locke offered me.”
“Anything would have been better than his help.”
“Why do you hate him so much?”