It’d been a long day, so I’d get to work when the sun rose.
Making an appearance was work in itself.
The guards never knew when I would arrive. Magnus didn’t even know sometimes, not because I didn’t trust him, but because I didn’t know I was going until ten minutes before I left.
Magnus knew of my arrival but didn’t speak to me.
Good.
He would depart in the morning, and hopefully, he would do that without a farewell. Our relationship had never been more tense, personally and professionally, and it was best if we didn’t interact for the time being. Emails were intimate enough.
I stared at the fire, my thoughts going to the exquisite woman I’d left behind. My watercolor painting. The future countess. The only lover I’d ever had that I wanted all to myself. A woman who had been worth the patience. A woman worth all the high-end jewelry in my vault.
Footsteps thudded against the wood right outside the door.
My eyes stayed on the fire.
A knock sounded.
I drank from my glass.
He let himself inside, like my silent answer made it through the solid wood and into his ears. His hood was pushed back, his hair messy from being underneath the material all day except when he was inside a cabin.
I didn’t give him a glance.
He stood there for a while, waiting for my coldness to thaw before he sat down. When that didn’t happen, he did it anyway. He moved to the couch adjacent to my armchair, so we weren’t face-to-face.
I didn’t push the bottle into his hands. Offered him no hospitality. Gave no respect.
After a long silence, Magnus spoke. “Thank you—”
“Don’t fucking thank me.” My head snapped in his direction to regard him, my brother, who shared so much likeness but embodied so much difference. “I don’t want gratitude. I want the respect that I lost when I granted your request.”
Magnus held my gaze, his features as impassive as ever. “You’re the boss. You don’t need respect—”
“Without respect, there is only fear. Those girls work out of fear. The guards obey out of respect. Don’t tell me you’re too stupid to see the difference.” I set my glass down with a loud thud, tempted to punch him square in the mouth. “What the fuck is it about this cunt? She’s hideous.”
Magnus’s eyes flinched slightly, but he kept his mouth shut.
“If you moved mountains for a woman like Melanie, I’d understand. But she’s not only unremarkable, she’s disobedient, idiotic, and difficult. Fuck your whores in Paris. Fuck the beautiful women who want to lick your balls. But don’t waste your dick and your reputation on a woman who’s beneath you in every way imaginable.”
He only took a breath and let it out. There was no other reaction.
“She’s on her third strike, Magnus.” No one even got one strike, but this bitch managed to secure three, and that infuriated me even more. “If she crosses that line, I’ll kill her myself. If you care about this whore, keep her in line.”
Magnus shifted his gaze to the fire. “Our production has exceeded the schedule—”
“I’m not done.”
After a breath, he shifted his eyes back to me.
“Don’t fuck with me again.” He knew exactly what I was referring to without my having to address it.
“Charles paid—”
“I don’t give a shit. He missed his deadline—”
“What happened to ruling with respect and not fear?”
My eyes narrowed on his face harder than they ever had. “He disrespected me when he missed his deadline—”
“You need to calm the fuck down, Fender. Greed and ego collapse regimes all the time. Don’t let that happen to us. Because if you continue to operate this way, it will.” Now his eyes showed the same anger as mine. “If you looked past your tyranny, you would see that I’m helping you. You would see that I’ve got your back through and through. You would see that I’m protecting you from yourself.”
My nostrils flared as I breathed, processing his insulting outburst.
Regret didn’t move into his features even though he had a few seconds to reflect on what just happened.
I was so livid that I actually quieted my voice rather than raised it. “How does protecting that cunt help me, Magnus? How does humiliating me in front of my men help me?”
Magnus held my gaze, absolutely still.
“Answer. Me.”
The silence stretched, growing louder, our eyes boring into each other’s. Then he looked away.
“Get out, Magnus.”
Fifteen
The Language of Love
Melanie
With Fender gone, there was a hole in my life.
All I had was my books, my thoughts, and TV entirely in French.
I slept alone in my bed, and while I did that every night anyway, I didn’t smell like him. I didn’t have that intimacy right before, our bodies wrapped around each other, his enormous size sinking me into the mattress. Without his whispers in French, without his hot gaze, I felt like nothing.