Page 145 of Twisted Play

The devil who owned my soul was the same man who’d locked this broken boy in a wine cellar and taught him that compassion was weakness.

Nausea rolled through me as the buzzing continued. Every secret I’d stolen, every file I’d photographed, every piece of information I’d fed to that monster—it had all been used against Cole. Against the team he loved. Against everything that mattered to him.

I was still betraying him. Even now, lying skin to skin in his bed while his fingers traced gentle patterns on my spine, aching to comfort him, I was his father’s weapon.

Cole’s body tensed as the buzzing continued. “You should answer it.”

“No.” The word came out fierce, desperate. I reached over and silenced the phone completely, my hand shaking.

“Eva—”

“No.” I pressed closer to him, as if I could somehow absorb his pain, make up for being the knife in his back. “Not tonight.”

He pulled me closer to him, dropping a sweet kiss on my forehead.

He has no idea.None of them did.

Cole thought I was choosing him freely, but I was still his father’s spy, still the agent of his destruction, no matter how gently I touched his scars or how desperately I wanted to shield him from more pain.

His breathing evened out, sleep pulling him under. But I lay awake in the dark, my cheek on his chest, his heartbeat steady and strong beneath my palm.

I was going to destroy him, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.

I’m sorry.

53

EVA

I kneltbeside Alek’s chair, the warmth of the perfectly-made macchiato seeping through the ceramic into my palms. He took it from me with a brush of our fingers that made my breath catch.

“Good girl,” he murmured, his free hand stroking my hair, scratching my scalp, offering me the desperate calm I’d sought day after day in his office, sometimes nude, sometimes, on afternoons like today, fully dressed but submitting all the same.

I settled back on my heels as he sipped the macchiato I’d made exactly how he liked it. The ritual usually calmed me, gave me that strange peace I craved when everything else felt out of control. But today, I was itchy, as if I couldn’t quite settle into my own skin.

“Eva?” Alek murmured as I shifted on my knees, unable to sit still and find the calm he always brought me. “You’re exhausted,” he continued.

Heat flooded my cheeks. Cole and Tristan had kept me up most of the night, then again that morning beforeclasses. Then we had practice in the afternoon, and now I was here.

“I’m fine.”

His thumb traced my cheek. “When did you eat last?”

The question caught me off guard. The guys had bought me breakfast that morning before practice, but I’d skipped lunch because I had a paper I had to finish.

“Before practice this morning?”

His jaw tightened. “This morning? It’s nearly five in the evening.”

“I’ve been busy?—”

“Too busy to eat.” It wasn’t a question. His fingers tilted my chin up, forcing me to meet his gaze.

I wanted to argue, to tell him I was handling everything fine. But the gentle concern in his voice made my throat tight. Cole and Tristan took care of me in their own intense, possessive way, but this quiet worry felt different.

“You don’t have to?—”

“Thai or Italian?”