Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 84635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
She was trembling.
I pulled her into my arms and kissed her.
Not a demand this time.
My kiss wasn’t taking anything—not power, control, or pleasure. Just giving comfort.
“I’ll fix this. I promise.”
“You’ll fix this? You’ll give me my life back?”
He stilled.
I continued. “After this is all over, I’ll return to my cozy little bookshop and my messy apartment filled with secondhand furniture as if none of this ever happened.”
He cupped my cheek. “Madison…”
I placed my palms against his chest and pushed out of his arms. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Pierce.”
CHAPTER 56
SKYLAR
“It’s been a full day. There’s nothing on the news. No ambulance. No hospital. Nothing. Why?” Jameson demanded as he threw one of my Waterford glasses across my living room, the crystal shattering against the wall.
Bringing him here was a mistake. My mother had given me those glasses. A set of twelve, wrapped in tissue paper, tucked into a box she’d carried on her lap the entire flight back from a trip to London. The last things she’d touched before she died. I watched the crystal detonate against the wall and said nothing.
But I couldn’t stand that dingy hovel another minute. I needed my own space. Some semblance of control. What I hadn’t counted on was how little control I’d actually have once I brought him here.
We’d been here since last night. Sixteen hours of Jameson checking his phone, scanning news alerts, pacing grooves into my floors. The plan was simple: Pierce collapses, he’s rushed to the hospital, the news breaks, and I play the devastated almost-wife at his bedside.
None of it had happened. Not a single headline. Not a whisper.
“Calm down,” I said. “If they’d taken him to the hospital, it would have made the news by now. A Worthington in a coma? That’s not something you keep quiet. Unless the family is controlling the story before it breaks. They have the resources.”
“Twenty-four hours and nothing? Not a single goddamn word?”
The muscle in Jameson’s jaw hadn’t stopped twitching since he’d started pacing. I’d seen that twitch before, in other men, in other rooms. It always came right before the asking stopped.
He took two steps toward me, the kitchen island between us, and pressed his hands to the polished marble. Skin blotched red, eyes bloodshot, the tendons in his neck pulled tight. He looked like a man on the edge.
“If you’re lying to me, if you failed me again, I swear to God there is nothing that will keep you safe.”
“I swear I didn’t fail you. Check the vial; it’s in my bag. I gave him the poison. I watched him drink it. He slumped over in his chair. The glass fell out of his hand. I left him there.” I made myself hold his gaze. Looking away was the same as bleeding in front of a predator. “Then I sent that mousy girl to find him. Told her he might do something reckless. She ran straight to his side.”
Jameson stared at me. The silence was worse than the shouting.
“Tompkins is probably waiting for word from the doctor before he calls. Unless...”
“Unless what?”
“Madison. What if she got in the way?”
“How?” Jameson took a slow step left. I mirrored him right.
“Pierce had her arrested for murder, then made sure no competent lawyer would touch her case. She would hate him. If she found him unconscious with no one around, who knows what she’d do. Maybe she called her own people. Maybe she moved him somewhere before Tompkins could find him. That would explain why there’s been no hospital admission, no news.”
I’d checked every news feed twice while Jameson was in the bathroom. Nothing. No breaking story about Pierce Worthington hospitalized. No anonymous tips, no society column whispers. A man that powerful didn’t slip into a coma without someone noticing. Unless he hadn’t. Unless the poison hadn’t worked the way Jameson promised it would.
Jameson tipped his head back and laughed.
“You think some little townie bitch had it in her to drag a grown man out of that house? She was nothing. Just a pretty face. She was so mediocre, I couldn’t even get it up for her.”
I bit back the obvious question. Then why were you with her? But I already knew the answer. She wasn’t for wanting. She was for using.
We’d been circling for three minutes.
I was running out of kitchen.
“She didn’t do it. This was you failing a simple task.”
“No. I gave him the poison exactly as you told me to.” Each word was a small, careful thing. “Let me call the house. Ask to speak with Pierce directly. If he answers, we’ll know something went wrong. If he doesn’t...”
Jameson leapt over the counter.
There was no warning.
No escalation.
One moment the island was between us and the next his hand was around my throat.
My fingers locked around his wrist. His grip tightened. My lips went numb.