The Ring Bearer Read Online Free PDF

bars to grab her under the chin.
    She instinctively pressed on his chest, prepared to push him away. He noted the movement and caressed her cheek with his thumb like that was his intention all along. “Now, as someone familiar with the loss of a lover, you tell me. Do you think I read those fucking files?”
    Danato’s voice arched to new depth and his grip tightened on her face. She shook her head—as best she could. Tears of empathy and shame poured down into his hand. “If you had brought me the key and expressed your concerns about his incarceration, I would have read through the file. I would have seen the misdirection. We could have fixed this Cori! Together!”
    He dropped his hand taking in a breath as he looked her over with the same disappointment she had seen in him so many times. “You are so worried about whether or not you can trust me, but you never give me a reason to trust you.” Danato gripped the door. “If you ever go behind my back like this again, I will suspend you. You will be back on cleaning duty like your first fucking day! Do you understand?”
    Cori’s heart clenched. She had never considered being demoted so low. The thought of going back to janitorial work, made this entire place seem intolerable. “Yes, sir.” Her voice shook. The coldness between them was only exasperated by her subservient prescribed response.
    His expression softened, but only enough to make her hope that he would offer reassurance of his love, which he didn’t. “Why didn’t you tell me about it all before Clark came to get you?”
    “In case you didn’t agree to not send the collectors out right away. I knew they would need time to get away.” Cori could feel the lie roll off her tongue and she hated it, but it was too soon to ask Danato for asylum. She needed to let this moment play out. When he was calm again, she could negotiate with him. “And…I just didn’t want to. I knew this would be the end result either way.” She motioned to her cell. “I just wanted another hour of normalcy, before all my screw ups caught up with me.” Her tears trickled down. She didn’t bother wiping them away. “I just wanted another hour before I lost every last ounce of your trust.”
    If Danato was even remotely affected by the conviction in her voice he didn’t show it. “Cori,” he said firmly, “I may still need to send the collectors out after them. I can’t just let them run freely. They may not have to go back to Clark, but we will have to register them and decide what to do with them. Especially, if they are haphazardly or accidentally going to burn, drench, and electrocute things. Do you understand that?”
    “Does that mean you might be able to offer them asylum?” Her voice pitched a little too much revealing her enthusiasm.
    “I don’t know. I can’t answer that yet. That will be for Belus to figure out with our head bureaucrats. You’ve dug us in too deep to do this under the table. We have to go by the books now, or risk being audited. Believe me, as much as you hate being under my thumb, you would hate an audit.”
    Cori exhaled feeling the stress of having to now convince Belus that the elementals should be taken from Clark. Oh, the joy of paperwork. She hated doing things by the book. She hated books. Reading—words—snore. “When do you think I can get out of here?”
    “If I give him the elementals back, Clark will release you of his own free will. Supposedly,” Danato added as an afterthought.
    “You think he might try to detain me?”
    Danato shrugged. “It’s nothing, I just don’t trust him.”
    “Neither do I.” She grimaced. “I should have just let Daniel kill him,” she murmured.
    Danato reached his hand through the bars and caressed her cheek. She leaned into his hand like it was a life preserver to her drowning body. “You leave Clark to me Cori. If anyone is going to be aiming weapons or fists at him, it will be me. Understood?”
    She nodded into his hand. As