Demon's Plaything Read Free Page B

bitter voice chilled her and made her stomach lurch. Ian had made similar comments before, occasionally complaining that Nana’s, and to some extent her own, expectations were bothersome, but he was rarely this direct. The transition from his undeniable concern about Nana to this angry other side of him was jarring.
    “You know she loves you, Ian,” she said on a commiserating sigh.
    “I know. You love me, she loves me, everyone loves me,” he said mockingly as he stood and carried their plates to the sink. “But none of you respect me.”
    “That’s not true.”
    Her words sounded timid and frail, unreassuring even to her own ears.
    “Huh.” He scoffed.
    “She does the same thing to me!” she said, voice now a bit shrill. “Goes on and on and on about how sweet you are and how I should be more friendly and outgoing like you.”
    “Yeah, Shay, but she doesn’t believe that you are fundamentally incapable of taking care of yourself.”
    Shayla didn’t have a response.
    “But anyway”—his face and voice transformed, and the brittle anger that had been in both smoothed away—“that’s going to change.”
    She raised a brow and quirked up a corner of her mouth, trying to be supportive but not quite able to squelch her skepticism, guilty as she felt about it. This resolution was just the latest in a string of many, many others that had come before it.
    “I’m serious,” he said as he dried his hands and joined her back at the table, placing the unopened deck of cards between them.
    “I’m listening,” she said as she opened the cards, reveling in the feel of the stiff, plastic-coated paper in her hands.
    She cut the deck and shuffled, waiting for Ian to begin.
    “You know, you would have been amazing in Vegas.” Ian revived an old joke between them.
    “Don’t think I wasn’t tempted every day of my residency,” she responded, allowing the repetition of the action to soothe her.
    “So…” Ian began.
    Shayla kept shuffling.
    “I have a situation that could also be an opportunity…”
    She kept shuffling, wondering how a conversation about how no one respected him had shifted into a request for a favor, one that he knew she was unwilling to give but that he seemed to have no qualms about asking for anyway.
    “I have a…business arrangement”—Shayla couldn’t stop the unladylike snort that escaped her, but Ian soldiered on as if he hadn’t heard it—“with some people that’s gotten a little…unwieldy and having your help would be extremely beneficial.”
    She stopped shuffling, put down the cards.
    “Ian, what the fuck does that mean? That was just a series of words spewed in seemingly random order,” she said, exasperated.
    Wordiness was one of Ian’s tells. The more he said, the bigger the ask, the theory being that most people would be too worn out by the time he finished to think very hard about what he’d said. She’d loved the quality when they were kids, had relied on it to get out of trouble more than a few times. But she was paying for it now. She narrowed her eyes and looked over at him, that simmering unease that always rose when Ian needed “help” slithering up her spine.
    “Do you want the details, Shay?” he challenged.
    He held her gaze and a moment passed, then another, and she knew that Ian had yet again won, at least for the moment. It was weak, cowardly, but she didn’t want the details, knew that if she had them, she’d be powerless in the face of her desire, almost compulsion, to make sure Ian was okay.
    Take care of your brother .
    It had been ingrained in her since his birth, and thirty-three years later, the edict was a part of the very fiber of her being. And Ian knew it too, had used that knowledge to his advantage more times than she cared to remember. But she couldn’t fault him completely. Shayla well knew his manipulations, and how easily she bent to them, and she hadn’t yet gathered the will to resist them. That was all on her.
    “No,”