My pulse fluttered, and I took a step back. “Your face triggers me.”
Another step. “Why the drugs?”
Another one back. “Why the fifty questions?”
“Answer me.”
I gritted my teeth. “Make me.”
A shadow crossed his face as he walked toward me slowly, but I still saw the spark of anger in his eyes. “Do you want to know what I learned over the years?”
I shook my head.
“Interrogation. It takes about twenty minutes to break someone—to make a grown man cry for his mother. I could have you screaming in two.”
My blood ran hot and cold. “Where does one learn to do something like that?”
“Hell.” He said it without pause and so matter-of-fact it sent a chill down my spine. “You’ll tell me why you fucked around with blow today, and you’ll tell me now.”
He was the last person I would willingly share my past with. He already thought of me as a mess; I could only imagine how he’d regard me if he knew all my dirty little secrets.
“You disappear for three years and then come back and demand things from me? You made your interest clear a long time ago, Allister. I’ll never answer to you—get used to it already.”
Cold eyes pierced me with an arrow through the chest. “What part of ‘call me if you need anything’ did you not fucking understand?”
My pulse beat unevenly. A part of me couldn’t believe we were actually going back to that night.
“Please. When a woman doesn’t hear from a man in two weeks, she gets the picture crystal clear.” Another response ricocheted off the walls in my head: You weren’t there. You weren’t there for me, just like everybody else.
Resentment wrapped around my throat.
“Or maybe it was just easier for you to accept a new husband with enough money to keep your self-indulgence supported for the rest of your life.”
I laughed and then choked on it in fury. “I despise you.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
He headed toward the door, and I turned to watch him go.
“Tell me, Officer, were you this cold to your mother?”
He stopped in his tracks.
The temperature in the room took a dive, and goosebumps rose on my arms. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I wanted to hurt him; to make him feel something for once in his life. “I feel sorry for the woman—to birth such a heartless son as you.”
He turned around. If expressions could kill, I’d be dead. “Shut your goddamn mouth.”
I laughed coldly. “What are you going to do? Make me scream? Is that what you did to your mam—”
The air escaped me in a rush as he grabbed me by the throat and pressed my back against the wall.
“You know nothing of my past,” he growled.
His words were different, rougher, than they should have been.
It took me a moment to understand the significance while I was trying to catch my breath. And when I did, I stared at him, panting.
The bastard was Russian.