Surely I wouldn’t give a fuck about buying her more of those stupid shoes I couldn’t keep my eyes off of?
“But when you annoy me, how will you apologize?” She smirked, all the trauma in her gaze vanishing as though we had never even come close to venturing into dark and dangerous territory.
“You can have whatever you want that’s free.” Nothing came to mind, but I offered her the choice to pick – to decide what she wanted from me that cost nothing but effort or time.
“I want a secret.” It was an odd choice, but one I hurried to agree to before she continued speaking. “What happens when I piss you off for real, though? What do you want from me? I would offer to buy you a present, but I don’t think you’d like anythin’ worth five dollars and an old McDonald’s coupon I don’t even think is in date anymore.”
“Give me a secret of yours.” I blurted out before I could think too hard about the fact I wanted to say that I wanted a lot from her. “That should put us back on equal footing without requiring my debit card. We can trade secrets instead of gifts.”
“A secret of mine?” She frowned a bit but bobbed her head, seemingly agreeable to our deal.
“Yeah. We can try it out now if you want an example of how secrets work.” I was only joking, but she ran with it anyway and I wasn’t going to stop her.
Secrets were things I traded like gold, and I would never turn any down. Sure, normally it was about gang things or information I could use as blackmail in the future. But this wasn’t like that. I wanted to… tolearnthings about her. I wanted to see what was going through her mind and what sort of monstrous thoughts she had roaming around her head.
Ruby thought long and hard, using the time to finish her drink and another donut. Eventually, she sighed, giving in with a slight curl to her lip and a mildly dark look back in her eyes.
“My birth name was Hannah Moore.” She whispered, before she tried to tease me again to change the sudden odd vibe in the air. “Now why don’t you tell me somethin’ juicy? I like gossip, especially about billionaire gangsters – seems like it could come in handy one day when I decide to blackmail you for all your money.”
I knew what her name was. I knew her name, her hometown, and her entire life before her capture. I knew her mom had died in childbirth, then her hardworking single dad had died of cancer when she was fifteen. That had broken her heart – she’d been a daddy’s girl through and through… After that she’d fallen into foster care, then a bad crowd that eventually led to her getting a shitty gangster boyfriend who was a decade older than her when she was seventeen.
I knew said boyfriend had done unspeakable things to her before offering her to a rival gangster as payment for something he couldn’t afford.
I knew she had spent another three years, six months, and two days in a house just like the one we had found Diamond and Yeva in.
I knew who had walked inside that house every fucking day she had been there until the FBI raided it and arrested half the monsters inside and freed the women they found.
I also knew they were dead. The customers, the owners, the staff that even did nothing more than clean the building. The ones who made it to jail had also been visited by friends of mine who sent them on a nice little break from life.
I was even aware that her ex had been easy to break. Too easy. He’d folded like a bitch barely twenty minutes after Aiden and I had started playing with him… he had lasted less time than it took for Miguel to burn his useless, mutilated corpse.
And finally, I knew there was only one name left. One piece of shit remained on the list I made the moment I realized Ruby wasn’t the worst human in the world, even if she was a woman. The list I started after the first time I dropped her home and needed an outlet for my rage and continued when I realized my boyfriend was fucking obsessed with her and that for some God forsaken reason, I couldn’t get her out of my head either.
That man on my list was the last one standing – the only name I hadn’t crossed off myself. Aiden was keeping him somewhere nice for me. Or not for me, I supposed. ForRuby. I liked the idea of one day offering her penance in the form of her biggest monster’s mutilated flesh and screams.
He deserved worse than she would ever manage to dish out and if she decided she never wanted to see him again, then I would play the devil for her.
I would make him suffer for longer and far worse than she ever had, and I would ensure that even in death he felt the echoes of the pain I dished out.
The pain he deserved for touching someone who wasmine.
Not that Ruby was mine. She was… she was just…fuck.
“It’s nice to meet you, Hannah.” I grinned, knowing full well I would never admit the truth about the stupid thoughts bouncing through my brain. I’d have taken a bullet first. “It’s a pretty name and all, but I prefer Ruby. You look like a Ruby.” Clicking my tongue, I tried to think of an easy secret of mine to start with and came up short. I would have to find something to share with her later on, when I wasn’t messed up in the head and being distracted by the sights of Sapphire breathing.
Ruby snorted. “That’s because you’re gem obsessed. It’s a whole thing for you – you’re like a horse girl but with shiny stones.”
My brows pulled. “What the fuck is a horse girl?”
And so began a three hour long conversation about horse girls, over doing hobbies and the most random of bullshit that meant nothing at all of importance except for one teeny tiny detail.
I’d had been one hell of a distraction – the best sort of thing to pull a man out of his head and the darkness that consumed it.
The kind of thing I really needed but would never have asked for.
Especially from a woman.
Chapter Fifteen
