Page 27 of Undeniably Corrupt

“You’re evading again.” Stone scoots to the edge of his seat, staring at me like he has X-ray vision, and part of me knew I shouldn’t have mentioned this. He points to my arm. “Lift up your sleeve.”

“That’s a bit forward for us, lover. What would your wife say?”

“Vander Suze Moore, lift up your left sleeve, or I’ll do it for you.” Great. Now Katy’s climbing all over this. She must remember too.

“Oh shit.” Owen covers his mouth with his hand. “The tattoo.”

Dammit. I adjust Nolan and slide up my left sleeve, and Katy points to my forearm.

“Turn your arm over,” she demands. “Ah! I knew it. Those bloody angel wings. You have a tattoo for her.”

“It was for Cassian too.” Sort of. The blood was for all three of us. Cassian’s, Liora’s, and mine, because Liora was in my blood, and leaving her felt like I was spilling it everywhere, and hers because she bled with losing both of us. “It was a long time ago,” I state. “I was just a kid when I did it.”

Except everyone is staring at the bleeding angel wings on my forearm and not bothering to listen to my rebuttal of them.

I had these inked three weeks after I got to MIT. I was drunk and I couldn’t get her face or her tears out of my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about Cassian and how he died and how I couldn’t decide if he’d kick my ass harder for being with herall that time behind his back or walking away from her the way I did. Everything about her was haunting me, and I couldn’t think of anything else to exorcise her ghost. Or his.

It’s the only tattoo I’ve had done that neither my father nor I did.

“Wow,” Stone hisses. “I forgot how realistic the blood looks.”

“He hired her,” Mason tells them, sort of saving me, sort of not.

“You hired her?” Stone questions. “As what? I thought you just said she’s a nursing student, works at a café, and is a dancer.”

“She is.” I sigh again, knowing that won’t be the end of it, and bounce Nolan a little when he starts to squirm and fuss a bit in his sleep.

“He ran into her at the café and again at The Landing Strip,” Mason once again explains for me. “Then, because he’s freaking Vander and doesn’t know how to let shit go, he hacked her, got her fired from her job as a barista, and essentially blackmailed her into taking Champagne’s job. Oh, and he beat up some drug dealer who had apparently been heckling her.”

“Is all that true?” Katy looks half appalled and half impressed.

“All except the blackmail part,” I admit. “It wasn’t blackmail. Just… coercion. And I apologized to her for getting her fired. She obviously doesn’t know about the hacking, nor will she ever. Especially since I plan to go after her ex.”

“Vander!” Keegan half-yells. “No!”

“Her ex deserves it,” I defend. “It looks like he took all her money, put her into debt, and left her with nothing but their kid. Once she confirms that for me, I’ll ruin him.”

“Wait.” Owen holds up a hand. “She’s a single mom?”

I nod at him.

“Shit, Vander.”

“Um.” Keegan shakes her head like she’s not sure where to start with that. “I guess that explains why your knuckles are split. Why would you do all of that? I get destroying her ex if he did all that, but you beat up some drug dealer for her and forced her to work for you?”

My phone vibrates in my pocket, but with the baby in my arms and the crowd focused on me, I can’t check it. Which irritates me to no end. “The guy had it coming and is lucky I didn’t do worse. I’d have done that for any of you.”

“Fine,” Keegan concedes, holding her coffee mug in her hands before taking a sip. “I know you would have. But why do everything else?”

I shrug because sometimes it’s easier to admit to my crimes than the reason behind them. “She’s poorer than poor and a single mom.”

“And because you loved her.” Stone is loving this.

“I didn’t love her,” I lie. “We were just kids when I knew her.”

Keegan snorts and takes on a mocking tone. “Okay. If you say so.”

“How many women have you dated since?” Stone presses. “Or gotten tattoos for? As I recall, when you left for MIT, you were pretty banged up over her, and that didn’t just go away.”