King of Pride (Kings of Sin #2) by Ana Huang

Sometimes, his unflappable demeanor reminded me of Kai, except Kai was infinitely less annoying and more encouraging.

My heart gave another wrench at the thought of Kai and what I had to do, but I pushed it aside.

Don’t worry about that until you have to.

I showered, unpacked, and said hi to Monty. I’d fed him right before I left, so he was good for another week.

“Hey, bud. Did you miss me?” I stroked his cool skin with one hand as he twined around my other arm and flicked his tongue in greeting. Reptiles couldn’t feel emotions the way humans did, but I could’ve sworn his eyes glinted with concern when he looked at me. Or maybe that was my exhaustion talking.

I gave Monty one last pat before I released him back into his tank.

I fished the new Ruby Leigh thriller I bought at the airport out of my bag and was preparing to sink into an evening of sex, murder, and self-soothing when the doorbell rang.

I groaned. “It always has to ring after I get comfortable.”

I threw off my faux fur blanket and padded, barefoot, to the door. I looked through the peephole, expecting to see the old lady in 4B who was always asking me to fix her Wi-Fi.

Black hair. Glasses. Cheekbones that could cut glass. Kai.

My heart dropped several inches.

“I picked up Juliana’s on my way here,” he said when I opened the door. “White pie, your favorite.”

He stepped inside, looking even more impossibly handsome than usual in a pale-blue button-down and charcoal suit. He must’ve come straight from work.

“Thank you.” I mustered a weak smile, trying to ignore the greasy knots of tension forming in my stomach. “You have perfect timing. I was just about to order delivery.”

Kai gave me a quick kiss. We didn’t get a chance to talk over the weekend since I was so busy with my family, but his movements were easy and relaxed as we settled at my coffee slash dining table and dug into the pizza. I hadn’t seen him so serene since before the CEO vote.

“You look happy,” I ventured. “Did something happen at work?”

A grin flashed across his face. “You could say that.”

I listened, mouth open, while he relayed what had happened over the past few days. When he finished, my jaw was practically scraping the ground.

“Wait. Russell was spying on the candidates and blackmailing board members into voting for him? How does that even work?”

My head spun. I couldn’t grasp this level of corporate subterfuge; it sounded like something out of a TV show, not real life.

“He focused on taking Tobias and me down since we were his biggest competition,” Kai said. “He couldn’t blackmail me into withdrawing since it’s my family’s company and people would never believe I dropped out willingly, so he attacked in a different way. He left most of the board members alone. The only ones he pressured into voting for him were the ones who were already on the fence.”

“Including Richard?”

Kai’s features hardened. “No. Richard reportedly voted for Paxton.”

So his last-minute outreach to Richard hadn’t worked. Knowing Kai, it must gall him to no end, considering how he’d swallowed his pride to ask for the other man’s support.

“I thought you said Russell didn’t want to be CEO,” I said. Russell had worked at the Young Corporation for over a decade. According to Kai, he hated dealing with external affairs, so why would he go to such lengths to be the public face of the company?

Kai’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “I misjudged him.”

Coming from someone who was used to being right all the time, it was a huge admission.

The knots in my stomach tightened as he described his plan for exposing Russell and forcing a new CEO vote, which he was bound to win if the first part of his plan succeeded.

I didn’t doubt for a second that it would succeed. This was Kai. When he set his mind on something, he always got it done.

Besides Russell, the only reason he’d lost was because I distracted him. If it weren’t for me, he might’ve caught on to Russell sooner, and he wouldn’t have to deal with all this.

“Enough about work. What about you?” Kai asked. “How was Christmasbirthdaynewyearpalooza?”

For some reason, hearing him utter Christmasbirthdaynewyearpalooza in that posh voice made my throat close.

He’d done so many ridiculous, reckless things because of me, and I wasn’t worth it.

“It was good.” I picked at my pizza crust, unable to look him in the eye.

“That’s the same way you said good when I asked if you enjoyed James Joyce,” he said dryly.

I winced at the reminder. Reading Ulysses had cemented my opinion that one, classics weren’t for me, and two, stream-of-consciousness writing made me want to gouge my eyes out.

“It was nice seeing my family again.” Except Gabriel. “But I…” I shredded another piece of crust. “I, um, didn’t finish my manuscript on time.”

Given the craziness surrounding the CEO vote, we hadn’t discussed my book’s progress before I left. I felt even shittier admitting my failure to Kai than I had to my family. He’d tried to help so much, with the typewriters and the writer’s block suggestions, and I’d still let him down.

“That’s okay,” he said gently. “You will. It wasn’t a hard deadline.”