Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but deep down she hoped if spirits did exist, her mother sat this night out. “I’ll figure out a way to get it back.”
She couldn’t leave here without her locket. Maybe she could ask Aunt V for help finding it—if she ever saw the woman again. She should have never brought it with her. There were a lot of things she should have done differently in the last twenty-four hours, but there was no regretting things she couldn’t change.
Daisy looked down at her body, hidden now beneath his shirt. Shame flooded her chest, hot and suffocating.
Her gaze returned to her file. How many people had seen it? All of them?
Hadrian knew things about her, things written on these private documents. Every tribute was numbered. Why, so they could reference them?
The hunters probably studied each image, memorized every body before the chase even began. Embarrassment curdled into something darker and harder. Something with teeth.
She ripped the photograph out of the file and tore it in half. Then quarters. Then kept tearing until nothing remained but confetti.
The other pages in her file followed. The copy of her ID. Her mother’s certificate. Every scrap of personal information they stole without her knowledge or consent. She shredded them with vicious efficiency, her breathing ragged, her fingers working until they cramped into fists.
How dare they?
How dare he?
She pulled another folder from the box. Another woman’s face stared up from the photograph inside. Another life laid bare in clinical detail.
Daisy tore it apart.
And the next. And the next. She worked through the box systematically, destroying every file she touched, every photograph, every invasion of privacy her hands could find. The carpet at her feet disappeared beneath a growing drift of paper snow.
Then she found Maggie’s, and her hands stilled. Her folder felt different. Personal. Heavier.
Daisy’s gaze drifted to the balcony doors, to the darkness beyond where the hunt continued. Maggie was out there somewhere. Running or hiding or caught. There was no way to know.
What if she never made it to the safe zone?
Daisy lowered the file aside, her fingers lingering on the number briefly, before she stood. What could she do? She was as helpless up here as she’d been down there.
They were all helpless.
The leather box waited, half-empty now, its remaining contents already damned. She carried it to the hearth and knelt before the flames, feeding the files to the fire one handful at a time.
The paper caught immediately, and flames roared to sudden life, blazing higher than she’d expected. Heat washed over her face, and she scrambled backward.
They were all gone now. All but one. She stood and turned, her heart jerking at the mess she’d made of the pristine room.
“What have I done?”
She surveyed the destruction with cold, sickening dread. Paper fragments covered the rug. Torn, colored photographs littered the floor like fallen leaves. The room was ransacked, violated, unmistakably destroyed by hands that had no right to touch any of it.
Her heart shuddered.
Panic clawed up her throat as the magnitude of her actions crashed over her. She had destroyed evidence. Invaded the privacy of someone who obviously valued it. Burned records that didn’t belong to her.
She was going to pay for this. It sank into her bones.
Maggie’s file.
Daisy rushed forward and snatched it from where she’d set it aside, her eyes darting around the suite for a hiding place. Somewhere safe. Somewhere, she could retrieve it later and return it to her friend. But where?
The empty drawers? The safe was locked. Every surface belonged to him, and nothing in this room would survive his discovery.
There was no safe place. Not here. Not anywhere on these grounds.
The only way to protect Maggie was to ensure no one ever saw what was inside her file.
Daisy opened the folder with shaking hands. The photograph on her ID showed a smiling woman with dark hair and bright eyes, someone who hadn’t yet learned what this night would cost.
Margaret O’Brien. 24 Ashford Lane, Dublin.
She repeated the name. The address. Echoed them again and again until they lodged in her mind like splinters. Then she fed the file into the flames.
The fire licked at the manila paper for a moment, then erupted with tall, greedy flames, climbing higher and consuming the evidence.
A valley of ashes gathered beneath the logs. Fragments of the files still remained, but most were now lost to the embers.
“What the…”
A small scrap of singed paper, curled in the back corner of the fireplace, handwritten and illuminated by the dancing flames. Custom stationery with the letterhead JT at the top. The names leapt off the page against the licking flames Peter Pangbourne, Tannhäuser, Hadrian Welles.
Not thinking, she reached into the fire and snatched the note. The hair on her arm scorched immediately as her sleeve caught fire.
“Stop!”
Daisy spun, swatting her arm, putting out the flames, staring into the eyes of Jack. The paper fell to the floor, burning into the carpet.