Page 90 of The Villain's Beast

“Bellamy didn’t check for the false bottom,” I said, unlatching the secret compartment in my desk that kept the copies of my father’s financial records safe. I pulled the whole stack out and set them on my desk. “Everything your father will need is there.”

“I can’t believe your father trusted you with all of that,” he said, lips pursed. “Mine would never.”

“We have different relationships I think, Sin.” I kicked the drawer closed. “Has your father ever tried to kill you with his bare hands? Because mine has.”

“Not with his hands, no.”

I walked around to the front of my desk and rested my ass against the edge, crossing my arms over my chest and staringat the way he’d spread himself out against his seat. The way he looked from the books to me with a calm and calculated kind of interest. These moments were our last together in this version of our life. Once his father had the records of my father’s financial dealings with the Angelinis, a bomb would go off. I wanted to kill my father—and I was going to—but I had no idea what Fletcher planned to do with his.

“He’s known all along,” Fletcher finally said, almost under his breath.

“What?”

“About the Angelini debts…and a hundred other things.”

“How do you know that?”

He shifted from his recline, dropping both of his feet on the floor and bracing his forearms against the tops of his knees, staring down at me like the answer should have been as simple as me knowing the sky was blue or the grass was green, or that I loved him more than my own life.

“Why do you think I did what I did?” he asked me, bottom lip pushed into a dangerously kissable frown. “Back before, I mean.”

“Because you’re a Sinclair.”

His eye twitched.

“You had me, Gideon. You know that, right? You had me convinced that we were bigger than we thought. That we could change things.”

“We are,” I reminded him. “We’re doing it now.”

“But then, I mean. I thought…” He swallowed and caught me in his stare, eyes dark but clear. “I thought loving you was going to be enough.”

“Sin.”

He shook his head, tracing his tongue across the front of his teeth. Climbing to his feet, he stood tall, still shorter than me, but taller than most. He closed the space between us, comingto stand between my spread legs. The position giving him a few inches on me and, for the first time in years, he stared down at me.

“He was going to expose your father back then,” Fletcher said. “Not because he wanted to hurt your father, but because he wanted to hurt me.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I loved you then, because I wanted…because…” He exhaled and tipped his head back, exposing his throat. “Because united families was never somethinghewanted.”

“What are you saying?”

“He knew about us. Somehow. Or maybe it was a guess and my actions confirmed it for him. I don’t think I’ll ever know. He was going to ruin everything. He was going to ruinyouand I couldn’t…” Fletcher’s voice grew thick, and he swallowed hard. “I couldn’t let him.”

“So you did it yourself instead?”

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he whispered. “I was in love with you, and I wanted you, and I thought I was keeping you safe.”

His words hurt more than the brand in the middle of my chest ever would, but I rubbed my hand across it like I was capable of easing the pain and the history between us with my fingertips.

“Is that what you still want?”

“United families?”

My throat was drier than the desert, and I rasped, “Me.”

Fletcher opened his mouth and closed it again, all his features going soft like he was on the cusp of crumbling.