“So what is it you want, Annick? Other than to not be dead.”
She looked up at him, and for a moment, he thought he saw her falter. For a moment, he saw vulnerability. “I would like for you to come back to Aillette with me.”
“No.”
“You have not even heard my proposition.”
“I don’t need to.”
“You should hear my proposition, I think.”
“You are perhaps overrating your proposition. I have so much here,” he said, indicating the mansion that he did not care about at all. He was dead inside. And when you were dead inside, you did not fear death, not overmuch. But Annick did not need to know that. Annick only needed to know what the rest of the world knew about him. Though she did know a few things, which he found disturbing. She knew that he was responsible for the death of the dictator of Aillette.
Annick had joined his two lives together.
A problem.
But he was not in the business of dispatching small women.
It was only ever those who deserved it. Only ever those who had committed great and terrible atrocities. He did not consider himself to be a good man, but he was a man looking for a way to balance the scales in the world.
To try and fix what he had not managed to fix all those many years ago.
And nothing would bring Stella back.
He remained, she was gone and it did not fix itself, no matter how many deserving people he took out of the world. But he considered it his payment.
A way to try and at least put some sort of balance out into the universe.
Annick looked at him and lifted a shoulder. “I require a small thing. I need you to return to my country with me. To act as my guard.”
She had successfully silenced the brute.
She had done a decent amount of research into Maximus King before stealing away to San Diego to confront him. He was a fascinating character. She found she was not frightened of him, though she perhaps should be. But she was not easily frightened.
For her entire family had been lost to her as a child, and she had been trotted in and out of the dungeon ever since. Educated, made to appear somewhat civilized.
They thought she had been made loyal.
But she had been lying, for all her life, out of a sense of self-preservation. And now she finally had a chance to make up for it all. Now she had a chance to finally make a difference. To make the years of farce worthwhile.
She just had to convince this playboy, who she was given to believe was a secret assassin, to become her protector.
She needed a man by her side. This was the problem.
Annick was a realist. You could not live ten years as a prisoner without being a realist. The world was harsh. And nobody cared if you were a child. Nobody cared when there was power to be had.
Annick had been forced to play the part of silent figurehead to a country that she loved, to stand beside men who made her burn with hatred and smile. So that for all the world to see, Aillette was a functioning government.
It was not.
Her people were badly treated.
Reform. Revolution.
Those had been the rallying cries of the men who had stormed the palace and destroyed her family.
It had been none of those things.