Lies That Sinners Tell (The Klutch Duet 1)

“Yes,” he answered my question.

He’d been fucking following me.

“Why?”

“Because I do what I’m told,” he replied.

Jay. The man I’d walked away from. The one I’d dreamed about. The one I was so very sure had forgotten about me the second the elevator doors closed on me as he looked out upon the sea of beautiful women at his club.

He’d had me followed.

It was creepy and completely unacceptable. But it had also saved me from a terrible fate.

“I’m not going with you,” I declared, preparing to run to my apartment, lock the door and call the police if I needed to. I could do that. I should be doing that right now. But I was still here, speaking to Karson.

“I’m under orders to make sure you’re not alone, that you don’t have a second where you have to be alone with your thoughts,” Karson explained.

I blinked again. Orders. Jay didn’t want me to be alone. For whatever reason. And no way in hell did I want to be alone. No way did I want to climb my stairs to my apartment, be greeted by the cat who loved me one percent of the time and was indifferent the rest. I didn’t want to be around familiar things. Mostly I didn’t want to be around the silence. Nor did I want to have to call Zoe, to say the words out loud. There would be a lot of words once the police were called. A lot of lights. Flashing, confronting. I’d have to speak to strangers. Recount something I already wanted to forget.

Karson looked like a very serious, intense kind of guy. If I didn’t get in the car, he was going to stay true to his orders and follow me around, back up to my apartment, or the police station, depending on how all this shook out. I had no idea the procedure for this kind of thing.

There was going to be a procedure. Statements. Strangers asking me what I’d been wearing at the time of the attack, somehow insinuating that my silk midi skirt and six-inch heels were an invitation to rape.

So instead of doing all of that practical, scary and sickening stuff, I let Karson lead me to the car.

CHAPTER THREE

Jay was pissed.

It had been a chaotic week. Month. Fuck, his whole life had been chaotic. Luckily, he thrived on that shit. Dealing with drama in the boardroom then dealing with the darker side of his business after the markets closed. That was, after all, where he got started. Made his first million. Earned enough money to exist in the daylight, began rubbing shoulders with people who wouldn’t have given him a second look if not for his money and his reputation.

He could conceivably live off his day job alone, but he didn’t know how to live in the light full-time. He needed the underworld.

He thrived on it, most of the time. Even when shit got fucked up. Even when shit got so twisted he had to send Karson to make sure people in the city knew who was in charge. Even when he had to make certain trips himself.

Even when things got bloody. Especially when things got bloody.

Jay thrived off that power. Needed it after everything he’d been through in his life. Needed to have some blood on his hands to remind himself that no one would ever wear his again.

Things often got ugly in the underworld. Come to think of it, things got ugly in the world above too. Men and women made millions, billions, off the backs of everyday Americans defaulting on loans, losing their houses, blowing their brains out because they had gotten themselves in so much debt they couldn’t see a way out.

Jay was jaded to it all. Whatever might’ve been inside of him to give him enough compassion for those people to want to change professions or make some kind of difference had been hammered out of him before he’d turned ten years old.

Whatever traces of compassion, humanity, he had left in him he shared with Polly. It was just a shred, and even then he wondered if he pretended to possess it just so he could be around her. The woman was a wonder in this world. She cared about people. Truly. Purely. Despite what had happened to her. Jay would’ve killed every man responsible for kidnapping, beating and raping her, but her husband had taken care of that. That had been his right. His responsibility.

It was a good thing, too, since Jay had no business avenging the honor of anybody. Technically, he shouldn’t have gotten close enough to her to feel the heat of fury in his veins, to crave the blood and pain of everyone who’d hurt her. That had been a mistake. But once one met the creature that was Polly, it was impossible not to like her, to want to protect her.