Page 26 of The Price of Power
As I stared into her perfect marble-green eyes, it was hard to believe how satisfying this day had turned out. After being unceremoniously ditched last night, I’d woken up in a foul mood and fumed the whole ride down here.
No woman had ever walked out on me. No one dared. Either I left, or I sent them away. That was just how it was.
They sure as hell didn’t wait until I’d ducked out of the room for a second before disappearing like Houdini.
Only Liv would try a stunt like that with me. And only because she’d had no idea who I really was.
But now she did.
From the second I stepped inside this room, I’d been watching that cold cover of realization slowly creep over her…until this moment, right now, when it finally swallowed her whole.
She shook her head, her auburn curls bouncing violently as they knocked against her shoulders. “You can’t mean…”
I held back a laugh. Still playing the innocent, she couldn’t even bring herself to say it out loud.
“Oh, I do,” I assured her.
Her eyes grew even wider, so big that the whites encircling those vibrant irises showed. “Absolutely not,” she gasped. “That’s never going to happen.”
“Never?” That was a pretty strong word for a woman who’d been shaking from head to toe since I showed up. “You’re sure about that?”
“Positive,” she answered without hesitation.
“Okay, then.” I stood up from my seat, the metal folding chair scraping against the bare concrete floor as it moved with me.
She made a flustered sound. “Wait. Where are you going?”
“I made my offer; you refused it,” I said, breaking the situation down to its most basic terms. “As far as I’m concerned, that means we have nothing else to discuss.”
I made the mistake of looking down to see her lip tremble.
“So what now? You send in your men to kill me?”
I may have woken up in a murderous mood, but it wasn’t Liv’s blood that I was after. All I wanted from her was compliance, and I had a feeling I knew exactly how to get it.
“And snuff out the only valuable member of the Collins family? What good would that do?” I said, straightening my tie and dusting off my coat. “Instead, I’ll send Tony and his crew to Chicago to deal with your brother. It shouldn’t take them more than a day to track Theo down. They’re very efficient.”
“No!” She shot up from her seat. Where was this passion a second ago when she thought she was defending her own life? “You can’t do that.”
“I can, and I will,” I informed her.
Reaching out, she grabbed my hand, holding on tight. I could have easily shaken her off, but even this simple touch reminded me of the way she’d felt in my arms last night. Her fingers entwined with mine. Her back arched. Her?—
“But…but…you said you were willing to cut a deal.” Her desperate pleading cut short my train of thought.
“And you turned down my offer so?—“
“So, that’s how all negotiations start,” she tried. “You toss out your opening bid then I give you mine. Eventually, we settle on something that benefits both of us.”
Maybe that’s how business dealings went in her world. But she wasn’t in Chicago or Milwaukee or wherever she was from. This was my world. And here I made all the rules.
To prove it, I grasped her hand twice as tight and yanked her toward me. She let out a startled gasp as her feet lifted off the floor and her body crashed against my chest. Looking down at her pretty, little startled face, I grinned.
“Where did you get the idea this was a negotiation?”
“I…I guess I just assumed,” she sputtered.
“Bad idea.” I shook my head. “Never assume you know the rules of a game you’ve never played before.”