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)
“Humor me.”
He held my gaze a beat too long before he drank.
The first sip.
I stopped breathing.
Pierce set the glass down on the side table. Slowly. His fingers lingered on the stem.
The word “murder” hadn’t felt real until this moment. It crashed through me now. Pierce was going to die in this room, by my hand.
Jameson’s warning scraped through my memory. “Make sure you see it through. You don’t want to make an enemy of me.”
Pierce picked up the glass again.
I forced myself to look at the fire.
“You seem distracted.”
I turned back. His eyes hadn’t left me. “I’m fine.”
“Are you?” He took another sip, watching me over the rim the entire time, as though he already knew the answer. As though he was testing me.
I pressed my fingers against my pulse, a gesture I immediately regretted.
Pierce noticed. He always noticed.
“You’re pale.” He set the glass down and stood.
My heart lurched. “I’m tired. That’s all.”
He took a step toward me.
“Pierce—”
“Tell me why now, of all times, you want to reminisce?” He stopped two feet away. His brow furrowed as he raised a hand to his head, then looked at me. “What did you do, Skylar?”
I blinked as I stepped back out of arms’ reach. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Mm.” He retrieved the glass from the table without looking away from me and held it up to the light, swirled it once more.
And then his posture slackened. One hand reached for the arm of the nearest chair, missed and caught it on the second try. He lowered himself into it. He rested his head in his hand.
I didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
The fire hissed and snapped. The clock on the mantle kept its count.
Then he slumped. His shoulder hit the armrest. The glass rolled from his fingers and landed soundless on the carpet, the brandy spreading dark and slow, seeping into the wool fibers.
Gone.
Just like that.
I stood in the middle of the room and didn’t know what to do with my hands. I stumbled to the window and pressed my forehead against the glass. Grateful for the cold. Tears came. I couldn’t stop them.
What or who was I crying for? Pierce? Myself? I didn’t know the answer.
Somehow, someway, in this tangled web of revenge I’d allowed Jameson to pull me into, I’d lost the reason why. I’d lost the purpose of it all. It had been so clear to me when I began…but now…I wasn’t so sure.
I stared at Pierce’s lifeless form.
It was a little late to be questioning my motives.
The deed was done.
All I needed to do was remember…he chose her over me.
Would it be his precious new fiancée, Madison, who found him?
I hoped so.
I wanted her to see the future she stole from me slip from her fingers.
I tilted my head and watched the color drain from his face and his mouth slacken.
All the careful planning hadn’t prepared me for this.
For how ordinary it felt. How quiet.
I’d done it. I’d killed him. I was a murderer.
Jameson claimed he had a plan to cover my guilt, but I knew with certainty it was a lie. Jameson had no reason to protect me.
I’d just become the next loose end.
CHAPTER 48
MADISON
Agorgeous, well-dressed woman with impossibly high heels pushed past me in the entryway. She stopped to look down her perfect nose at me.
I recognized her condescending demeanor from the gallery at the trial.
I grasped the lapels of my borrowed terry cloth robe. “Who are you?”
She chuckled as she pulled a gold diamond-encrusted compact from her purse and then a tube of Chanel lipstick.
She touched up both overly filled lips and gave the mirror a duck-lip pout, running her tongue over her perfectly white teeth before barely glancing over her shoulder at me. “I’m the woman Pierce desperately wants to marry. The one he will be thinking about every time he sleeps with you.”
My hand pressed against my stomach, trying to stop the nauseous twisting.
It was ludicrous.
This was good news.
My escape.
And yet…
The woman shrugged one elegant shoulder.
“Poor thing. I had to turn him down.” Her gaze swept over me. “I couldn’t possibly be with a man who slums it with the lower class. He is just going to have to settle for someone more…common.”
My foot shifted back as I physically recoiled from the vile woman.
With a flip of her hair, she tossed her compact into her purse. It clinked against something that sounded like glass.
She then smoothed her hand over her dress before giving me a final dismissive glance. “You may want to check on him. The poor thing was utterly devastated—I’m afraid he may harm himself, not that anyone could blame him. Losing me and then having to settle for you, it has to be devastating.”
Pivoting on her spiked heels, she sauntered out the front door with a swing of her hips. Her obnoxious perfume clung to the air in her wake.