King of Sloth (Kings of Sin, 4)

Something was wrong.

My and Sloane’s dinner reservation was at seven, and it was currently seven fifteen. For most people, running fifteen minutes late wasn’t the end of the world, but this was Sloane. She was never late.

She hadn’t answered any of my texts, and when I called her, it went straight to voicemail.

I checked my watch again, my worry escalating by the minute. When I’d gotten in touch with her office earlier, Jillian said she’d left two hours ago to work from home. Had she fallen asleep? Been the victim of a mugging? Gotten into a car crash and rushed to the hospital?

A cold spike of terror pierced me at the prospect.

“Fuck it.” I ignored the scandalized glare from the couple next to me and grabbed my coat from the back of my chair. I wasn’t going to sit here like an idiot while Sloane was potentially bleeding to death somewhere.

I tossed a fifty-dollar bill on the table for the trouble and headed straight to the exit. Perhaps I was overreacting and Sloane would show up right after I left, rolling her eyes and huffing about my jump to conclusions, but I didn’t think I was.

Even if she wasn’t fatally wounded, she was hurt. I could feel it, an insistent cocktail of instinct and intuition that drove me into the back of a cab and toward her apartment.

My phone rang right after I gave the driver her address.

My pulse skyrocketed, then crashed. It wasn’t Sloane; it was Vuk’s office.

“Good afternoon. This is Willow, Mr. Markovic’s assistant. I’m following up on the email you sent this morning.” A smooth feminine voice flowed over the line. “Mr. Markovic would like to schedule a joint walkthrough of the vault at your earliest convenience, as well as discuss a few matters regarding your partnership. Is now a good time to connect?”

“Hey, Willow. That’s great to hear, but—” The cab shuddered to a halt at a stop sign, then ambled along at the speed of a groggy snail. How the hell did I get the only slow taxi driver in Manhattan? “I’m in the middle of a personal emergency, so I can’t talk right now.”

A long pause greeted my answer. “To clarify, you’re refusing the meeting?”

“I’m postponing the meeting due to the aforementioned emergency.” I covered the phone with my hand and leaned forward. “Get me there in ten minutes, and I’ll tip you a hundred bucks.”

The cab lurched forward with sudden speed.

Sloane always complained about how much cash I carried around, but it was damn handy in times like this.

I returned to my call. “Please give Mr. Markovic my apologies. I’m happy to talk any other time except now. As for the walkthrough, please email me his availability, and I’ll put something on the schedule.”

I hung up before she could protest. I was too on edge to argue or engage in professional small talk.

I might’ve just shot myself in the foot by insulting Vuk so soon after he’d signed on as my partner, but the only thing I cared about right now was making sure Sloane was okay.

The cab pulled up in front of her building. I shoved the fare plus an extra hundred bucks at the driver and hurtled out of the car. It was my first time visiting her apartment—we’d always stayed at my place or a hotel—but two hundred dollars, a picture of me and Sloane on my phone, and a call up to her apartment with no answer persuaded the concierge to let me past.

She wasn’t answering her phone. Why wasn’t she answering her phone?

Images of Sloane unconscious on her bedroom floor or drowning in her tub or…fuck, I didn’t know, gushing blood after she’d accidentally sliced a crucial artery open in the kitchen filled my mind.

Sometimes, I really hated my imagination.

The elevator stopped on her floor. I sprinted into the hall and blew past a row of apartments until I reached hers.

“Sloane!” I pounded on the door. “It’s Xavier. Are you in there?”

Obviously, she couldn’t answer if she was unconscious. I should’ve asked the concierge to accompany me so they could open the door in that very scenario.

I knocked again while my mind raced through my options. I could stay and wait another minute for her to answer. I could race downstairs and grab the concierge. I could call the concierge and ask him to come up, but my chances of convincing him to leave his post were higher face-to-face.

Every second counted, and—

Was that a sound coming from behind the door?

I froze, willing my heartbeat to slow so I could listen more carefully. That was definitely a rustle, followed by the click of a lock sliding free.

Then the door opened, and there she was. Blond hair, blue eyes, alabaster skin unmarred by blood or bruises.

Relief punched through my panic, but it nosedived a second later when I noticed the haunted look in her eyes and the lines of tension bracketing her mouth.

“Hey.” I reached for her but stopped halfway, afraid she might shatter beneath my touch. Sloane was always so strong, but in that moment, she looked brittle. Fragile. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She stepped aside so I could enter, avoiding my gaze the entire time.

“Sloane.” It was a question, plea, and command wrapped into one.

She disliked sharing her problems, but if she kept them bottled up all the time, they’d eventually explode.

Whatever she heard in her name made her chin wobble, but when she finally answered, her voice was devoid of emotion. “The Fish died.”

“The…” The Fish. Her pet goldfish. My stomach twisted. “Oh, fuck. I’m so sorry, Luna.” She hated platitudes, but I meant it.

When Hershey had died, I’d been inconsolable. It was one of the reasons I hadn’t gotten another pet. I didn’t want to go through the pain of losing one again.

“It’s fine.” Sloane turned her head, and I followed her gaze to a sheet of paper on the coffee table.

A closer look revealed a neatly typed list of instructions for taking care of The Fish.

1. Feed him one sinking pellet once a day every day except on Sundays.
2. Do NOT feed him more than the allotted amount or he will overeat.
3. On Sundays, feed him frozen brine shrimp for enrichment.
4. The water must maintain a temperature of 73 degrees Fahrenheit at all times.

The rest of the list was obscured by another paper, but she’d obviously put a lot of thought into it.

“He was just a goldfish.” Sloane picked up the instructions, ripped them in half, and tossed them in a nearby wastebasket. “He wasn’t even really mine. He couldn’t leave his tank or make noise or do anything other pets do. He’s not the smartest or cutest, and he probably doesn’t…” Her chin wobbled again. “I mean, he probably didn’t know or care who I was as long as I fed him.”

“You had him for years,” I said gently. “It’s normal to feel grief over a pet passing.”

“For other people. Not for me.” She took in my jacket and pants. I usually didn’t dress so formally, but the restaurant had a strict dress code. Realization wiped some of the stoicism off her face. “We had dinner reservations, didn’t we? I’m sorry. I was going to do some work before I left, but I saw him when I got home, and I had to figure out what to do with his body. Then I had to clean out the aquarium because there’s no use keeping it there when he’s dead, and when I was in the kitchen, I saw all these bags of unused fish food that I obviously don’t need anymore, so I—”

“Sloane. It’s okay. They’re just reservations.” I tipped her chin up so her eyes met mine. “They’re not important.”

She swallowed, a tinge of pink blooming around her eyes and nose. “No,” she said thickly. “I guess they’re not.”

She didn’t resist when I pulled her into my chest, and when she curled into me, just a little bit, I wanted to hold her tight and never let go.

“What did you do?” she asked. “When Hershey…”

“I cried,” I said truthfully. “A lot. He was my best friend. Luckily, he’d been outside with our housekeeper during the fire that…” I faltered at the memory of Hershey running up to me after I’d woken up. He’d refused to leave my side for weeks after the accident, as if he knew I would break if I didn’t have something to hold on to. “If it weren’t for him, I don’t know how I would’ve made it through those first few months. I went to grief counseling for a while, but it didn’t work as well as just having Hershey there.”

Some of the stiffness melted from Sloane’s shoulders as I recounted my experience. After I finished, she stayed in my arms before she said, very quietly, “Having The Fish around helped too. I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I was upset, it was nice to have someone—something—to talk to.” She buried her face deeper into my chest, as if ashamed of what she was about to say.

“I’m sad he died. I never even gave him a real name.”

“Well, he’s a goldfish,” I said practically. “There are worse things you could’ve called him.”

Her muffled laughter made me smile. I knew how difficult it was for Sloane to admit her feelings out loud, so her seemingly small confession was actually a huge step for her.

“Anyway, that’s why I was late,” she said. “We’ve missed our reservations, but if you give me fifteen minutes, I can get ready—”

“Forget about dinner. We’ll order takeout and watch the new Cathy Roberts movie.” I’d rather be here than at some stuffy restaurant anyway.

Sloane lifted her head. “The one where the big-city rich girl is forced to move to the Australian countryside and falls in love with the surly but handsome ranch hand?” she asked hopefully.

“Yep. I’ll even let you write your scathing review in peace without questioning your unfair harshness toward the poor actors or screenwriter.”

Her eyes gleamed. “Deal.”

While I ordered the food, Sloane pulled up the movie and grabbed her review notebook and pen.

However, she hesitated as the film studio’s opening credits played onscreen, and a secret battle waged across her face before she spoke again.

“There’s one more thing,” she said. “Georgia came to see me at work today. She accused me of trying to seduce Bentley.”

My eyes snapped toward hers. Her admission had come from so far out of left field that I couldn’t do more than stare, stunned, as she explained what’d happened with her sister as well as with Bentley over the holiday weekend.

But the more I listened, the more anger seeped beneath my skin, slow yet scorching. I kept a tight rein on it for now, but there was no fucking way I’d let anyone talk to her the way Georgia and Bentley had.

“I should’ve told you about his call earlier, but I didn’t know what he wanted, and I didn’t want to put a damper on Thanksgiving.” Sloane tapped her pen against her knee. It was a nervous tic I’d picked up on years ago, shortly after we started working together. It’d been one of the few cracks in her perfect façade at the time. “Georgia really pissed me off, and I was too upset to stay in the office, so I came home. That’s when I saw… well.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I figured you should know. Just in case anyone tries to make my meeting with him into anything more than it was.”

Warmth rushed to fill my stomach, calming my fury. I swallowed the choice words I had for her ex and simply said, “You can tell me anything.”

Sloane’s pen stilled.

“I know,” she said, even softer than before, and a tiny, crucial brick crumbled from around my heart.

We didn’t say much else after that, but later that night, after the movie ended and our half-eaten food had grown cold, I carried a drowsy Sloane to her bedroom and tucked her in beneath her comforter.

She fully passed out before her head hit the pillow. It’d been a long, emotionally draining day for her, but I didn’t take for granted how comfortable she felt falling asleep while I was here.

As I smoothed a stray lock of hair from her face, revealing the curve of her cheekbone and the shadow crescents of her closed lashes, Pen’s question from the simulation center echoed in my ears.

And I wondered, my mind flipping from the first time we’d met in her office to this moment right here, right now, just how in the hell I’d fallen in love with Sloane Kensington.