Chapter Eighteen

I WAS THE MASTER of sniffing out lies.

Thanks to Drake’s firm tutelage when we were kids, he ensured I’d learned that lesson very well. When he pulled me in for a hug because our parents walked into the room, I felt the fakeness of his embrace. When he shared his dessert because our mother glowered at him over the table, I tasted the phony sugar. When he punched me in the goddamn face, only to kiss my cheek as a concerned brother when our father caught us, I throbbed with the bruises of forgery. 

Thanks to him, I knew every feeling of a lie.

The weight of it, the heat of it, the sound of it.

All lies had the same construction. The same level of hypocrisy mixed with beguiling misrepresentation. A lie was worse than any other danger because your own mind wanted so much to believe it. It wanted to accept the smarmy untruth, to believe the counterfeit tale.

It took discipline to see past such a thing.

It took ruthlessness to punish the liar.

After a while, I used lies to my benefit. I played games with those who thought they were masters at deceit.

I made them think I accepted their bullshit, all while waiting for a time to reveal the hand of cards I’d been steadily gathering against them. Each time I chose to prove their inability to hoodwink me, I had a winning hand. And each time I played such a game, the loser never had access to me again.

Either in a personal relationship or business.

Cross me.

Lie to me.

And you’re dead.

On paper to start with, but push me, keep trying to convince me that I was the one in the wrong, and then you’re dead in reality too.

As Eleanor slumped in the harness, her eyes snapping closed and chin crumpling to her chest, I suffered a pang of unease.

Thanks to her, I had a conscience these days.

She’d been another teacher in my life, just as my brother had.

She’d taught me the signs of heartbreak.

The taste of bitterness, the ache of wrongness, the awful, nasty understanding that no matter how you felt about someone, they could still double-cross you. You couldn’t control them. Couldn’t stop them.

She had her own thoughts and feelings. Her own beliefs and convictions. She believed them so strongly, she almost convinced me of her lies.

Strangely, it wasn’t the monster inside me who’d constructed this little game to sniff out her truth. The monster had already thrown his stupid heart at her and given her the key to every shred of trust he had left.

But the monster didn’t have an excuse. After all, it was an animal—a beast driven purely by instinct—who’d chosen Eleanor for its mate.

It was the man who’d loaded her into Euphoria.

The man’s last-ditch attempt to survive her. To prove that she was a liar. A thief of his fucking heart and the best con-artist he’d ever met.

It didn’t matter that her lies didn’t taste right or sound right or showed any of the normal revelations of a fib. It didn’t matter that I already knew she spoke the truth.

Adam Marks had heard her name from me. Not her.

Thanks to my lack of security and obsessive desire to be inside her last night, I’d caused this mess.

If anyone deserved to be punished...it’s me.

And that was exactly what this was about.

This little game wouldn’t break Eleanor.

It would break me.

And when it did...every single piece would be hers.

And she could either leave me scattered by her feet or gather up what was left and sculpt me into whomever she wanted me to be.

Because if this worked, I would be free.

Free to trust wholeheartedly.

Free to love completely.

Free to be happy.

And if it didn’t...

Well...Hell already had a throne waiting for me.