Page 46 of Brutal
I climb in, shivering, and curl up as much as I can in the back seat.
Brutal takes one look at me, then walks to the trunk of the car. I don’t understand why he’s lingering until he returns and tosses a blanket at me. He slams the door shut and gets into the driver’s seat.
I wrap the blanket around myself and watch the woman shouting after us as we drive off.
Brutal doesn’t seem to care as he screeches around the corner with his expensive car. All I can do is hold on for the ride as he speeds through the abandoned streets and into the city.
With any luck, we’ll get there in one piece.
CHAPTER 11
Drake
I go straight for the liquor cabinet.
Mimosa closes the door behind her as she follows me inside, and it’s almost funny that she does it so fucking meekly because she could easily make a run for it. She even has a blanket she could use to cover herself. She could go straight to the police, who might or might not listen, depending on which officer she talks to.
She’d probably be fucked, though. I have enough money and power to get myself out of almost any situation. A scandal might hurt me — and my stocks — but I’d recover.
For now.
I grab a glass but rethink it, choosing instead to grab the bottle of whiskey and taking a swig right from it.
“Fuck,” I mutter to myself as my thoughts go right back to the maze and what I’d stupidly done to get myself blacklisted over a woman I don’t even like. Why had I done it? “Fuck!”
Mimosa is so quiet that for a second I wonder if she’s actually run away after all. But a brief glance tells me she’s still standing there.
Her expression is strange, and I feel another stab of emotion I don’t want to think about. “What? You got a problem? An opinion?”
Mimosa nods. “I have an opinion. But you won’t like it.”
I laugh, the sound half-crazed even to my own ears, then take another long gulp from the bottle. “Oh, I won’t like it. Since when has that ever stopped you, you crazy fucking bitch?”
“Considering I just spent an hour running around, only to be assaulted by two men?—”
“I fucking stopped that, didn’t I?” I snap back at her. “And it’s not like I can go back anyway.” I lift the bottle to her in a mockery of a toast. “So you’re safe from that.”
She pulls the blanket tighter around herself. “But I’m not safe from you, am I?”
“You’ll never be safe from me,” I tell her. Another gulp of the whiskey. Another hard look at her before I laugh again. “Fuck, I rescue you, and now you’re scared of me? I put my whole reputation with the friends I have in high places on the line, and now you keep your fucking mouth shut. Unbelievable.”
I stalk toward her, stopping just in front of her, and I scowl when she flinches.
Why does she have to be terrified of me now, when…
When I don’t want her to be.
I don’t know why.
“You expect me to stay calm after everything?” Mimosa looks away from me. “You expect me to just forget everything that happened and keep trucking along?” She laughs bitterly. “I guess that’s what men want in general. A person who doesn’t exist outside of them. A person with no thoughts or feelings of her own.”
“Tell me,” I demand. “Fucking tell me. What opinion do you have, huh? What thoughts and feelings do you fucking have?” I’m going to end up draining the bottle at this rate, but that’s fine. There’s always more. There’s always what I have in my safe, and I have a feeling that I’m
going to need it by the end of the night. “Or do I need to get the cane back out, make you talk?”
She scowls, showing a hint of that fire that is always hidden behind her eyes. “Fine. Let’s see how right I am, then.” She takes a breath and tilts her head to look me directly in the eyes. “You suddenly care, just a little, about my safety. That’s why you didn’t want those men to potentially rip me apart. It’s cute, given how you’ve been treating me.”
I stare at her, then drink the last of the whiskey from the bottle because fuck, I need it if I’m going to listen to this. “You?—”