Total pages in book: 18
Estimated words: 18308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 92(@200wpm)___ 73(@250wpm)___ 61(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 18308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 92(@200wpm)___ 73(@250wpm)___ 61(@300wpm)
How very strange.
Rosé was making a phone call while watching Payton fall to her death, and it was really, really strange, with how Payton could hear the other girl’s voice so clearly.
“P-Please help!” How convincingly frantic Rosé sounded. “I just saw someone fall!”
Payton slowly closed her eyes.
This is it.
This is really it.
When I open my eyes, I’ll know if—
“Why didn’t you tell me you were in danger?”
Her eyes flew open, and oh, how her head hurt, with the way everything was spinning. But unlike before, she wasn’t absolutely clueless, and so she knew.
It was her funeral again.
Eric was being arrested.
And Niccolò...
Her heart ached as she saw his jaw clench. He looked as if...he wanted to be dead like her.
“And how...”
His gaze was even more haunted, his voice rawer.
“How did you know you were my heart?”
Payton bit her lip hard, but it just kept trembling. In all the years she had worked for him, not once had she ever been tempted to call him by his name. It just didn’t make sense, especially for someone like her who had worked at Todd & Tolstoy for five years.
For Payton, there should always be some kind of boundary between her and her employer. But with Niccolò now looking as if he wanted to be dead like her—
Oh, Niccolò.
When she had first him say those words...
Tu sei il mio cuore.
She truly hadn’t understood where he was coming from, but now...
No. No. No.
Oh, if only she could pretend she still didn’t know.
If only she could tell her boss...
If only...
But there was no chance for her to complete the thought.
The darkness wanted her back, and she had no power—no power at all—to resist it.
Chapter Two
POOF!
She was alive.
Again!
It didn’t make sense at all.
But she was alive, and...and...
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
It was the same day again.
Thursday.
But this time, Payton wasn’t on her desk. She was back in Niccolò’s office, and her boss wanted to know why that was.
“I...”
I want to cry.
I want to say sorry.
I want to tell him I don’t deserve someone like him.
But because all those words still felt forbidden—
Payton could only look at him helplessly, and his gaze narrowed.
“Are you alright?”
Wasn’t that what he had asked her the last time?
“I...”
Words failed her yet again, but this time her knees also buckled, and oh!
Payton might have kept herself from blushing the first time, but her cheeks were completely on fire now, with Niccolò sweeping her up in his arms and—
The marks.
With her hands trapped against his chest, she belatedly noticed that those heart-shaped marks she had noticed the first time—
There were only two of them now.
Why?
It felt significant somehow, but with Niccolò gently laying her down on the couch, Payton found herself distracted and tormented all of a sudden, the memory slithering into her mind like a serpent, and no no no—
She remembered the last time someone did this for her, it was to kill her—
Stop it, Payton!
She had to clench her fists against the urge to shove him away.
Niccolò was not Eric. He never was, never will be.
“Lie down,” he said sternly, “and rest. Do you have vertigo?”
When she tried to shake her head, pain seized her temples, and Payton stilled.
Huh.
With all the die-reborn-die time jumps she had gone through in the past hour or so, maybe she did have vertigo now?
Niccolò loomed over her, and he looked unusually on edge. “Be honest with me.” His tone was also uncharacteristically stiff. “Do you have any problems at home?”
And the reason for that became clear when she realized what he was asking.
“W-Why would you ask that?”
“Because I hear people talk.”
Right.
People as in...her coworkers.
Eric was always keen to invite them over, and while Payton could never admit this to herself in the past...
It was time she stopped pretending to be blind.
Eric had been so full of himself that he was convinced her coworkers all loved him. Not once had it occurred to him that her friends were only there because of her, and that all of them...could see through him.
All of them but her.
Payton the Idiot.
But even so.
After getting murdered by Eric, then Rosé, the last thing she wanted was for Niccolò to get involved with her supernaturally messy life, and so—
“I think I know where you’re going here, Mr. de Vindice,” Payton heard herself say. “This is about you never being a part of our guest list at home. I-Isn’t it?” It was, as always, the lamest excuse ever, made even lamer by the way her voice had caught at the end. But she had no choice. That was the best she could come up with, and so please...
She looked at Niccolò, her gaze unconsciously pleading.
Please. Please. Please.
The silence in his office was fraught with tension, and as she waited for his reply, she couldn’t help thinking it was just so ironic...
All those years, she had convinced herself that it was Eric’s ego she was protecting. But since she was done lying to herself...