Page 81 of The Guru: Shadow

Why don’t you run?asked her reasoning mind. Any normal person would have. Only her mind had no say in the matter anymore. Not because of the money, the fame, or the status. None of it mattered. But that he challenged her darkest self, and for some fucked-up reason, she, for once, wasn’t the most fucked-up person in the room.

“The cars, they are all yours, aren’t they?”

“They are.”

“And your driver, he’s not a normal driver, is he?”

“No, he is not.”

I was right. My instincts are right.

They parked near an elevator, and when the car door was opened for them by the driver, Deis almost lifted her out of the car.

The whole ride up, they did not speak. She was sure they’d go for the penthouse, so the ride was quite long; there were no numbers. She tried not to look at him, but he stared at her so intensely that it made her glance at him again and again. His stare was the very same stare he had on his face back at Stone’s, as if he would x-ray her body while stripping her soul of all masks.

“Holy shit,” she gasped. It was all she could say as the elevator door opened and she stepped out into an entrance of such grandiosity, that it rendered her speechless.

Fucking Billionaire’s Row,she thought in absolute amazement as the beautiful view of Central Park unfolded in front of her eyes.

Unable to grasp where to look first, her gaze fell first onto a painting on her left, definitely a Rembrandt and one hundred percent an original. She stared at the painting, then turned to stare at Deis, who stood leaning casually against the wall, observing her.

Who the hell is this man? Just by having fifty-six million followers doesn’t make you this wealthy.

As she walked further, she turned around and took everything in. There were probably thirty-foot ceilings, 360-degree glass walls, and a grandiose beige couch, which looked as if it cost as much as her apartment. There was also a magnificent piano, offering the player a view of the Hudson River. Opposite, was a colossal windowed spiral staircase, connecting at least three levels.

All of it was beyond anything she had ever believed she would see in her life. She did not want to be rich. None of it mattered to her, except maybe the view. The most amazing thing. The view of all of Manhattan. The Manhattan she loved so much with its unique flair, where you become everyone and no one at the same time, the beat of the buzzing concrete jungle pulsating through its streets. And now she stood in this salon or whatever it should be called, she didn’t even have a name for the grandiosity of its appearance, the city to her feet all around her.

Too much.

How is it even possible?

Me, standing here?

Him kissing me?

She rounded on him, her mouth half open, to excuse herself and get out. She didn’t belong here. She had a maxed-out credit card, student debt, and couldn’t keep a job. And somehow, right this moment, a dark realization hit her of what he had done. What she had done. He was pulling her into the darkness, and she just followed him.

He opposes all my moral rules.

He is abnormally rich.

He dragged me into shit and then he murdered Carl.

I shot Carl.

Fuck!

It was too much, all of it was too much.

“I…I must go,” she stammered and rushed to the elevator.

But he stopped her by grasping her wrist as she passed him.

“No.”

“Deis, I–I don’t belong here, you need to let me go,” she almost pleaded with him. Somehow, being here and seeing what she saw, overwhelmed her. Not only because there seemed to be a mile’s deep rift between them, rubbing the understanding of the magnitude of the differences in their existences under her nose, but also because something in her clenched. It clenched from injustice that one person held so much while billions of people suffered from hunger and lived in the worst of homes – if they even had one. It was not right. She could never live up to this. She didn’t even want to. None of it was right.

Sure, she got used to Manhattan’s controversy by now, the extremely poor and extremely rich living in such close proximity, but this here, him, this penthouse, experiencing it, seeing it with her own eyes, was wealth in a different dimension.