Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
I thought I escaped him, but now here I was in Brussels, and my husband had found me yet again. When I realized he had tracked me down again, I thought this time I was truly done for.
Only, he kept his distance, watching from far away, always invisible to my eyes…
Adrian had tracked me to this hotel, to this room, to this specific window where I stood in an oversized white shirt with my hair still damp from the shower.
He was here, but he wouldn’t come to me.
That was the part that gnawed at me. Not that he was watching—I had expected that, had almost counted on it.
But it was the distance that had started to bother me.
The careful, deliberate, maddening distance. Goddamn it.
He had positioned himself in the darkness across the street like a man conducting surveillance on a target rather than a man who had crossed continents to find his runaway wife.
What was he waiting for?
I scanned the dark night again, slowly this time, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.
Nothing.
He was very, very good at being invisible.
The corner of my mouth lifted at the realization that Adrian was playing a game. He wanted me to know he was here. Close enough to feel but impossible to find.
He was making me wait on purpose, lurking just beyond my reach, content to let anticipation drive me mad. Every passing minute was an attempt to wear down my patience as he played with my mind.
He was challenging me. He was waiting for me to break.
“Oh, how foolish of you,” I whispered into the silence of my hotel room.
Hadn’t he learned yet that I was just as good at this game as he was?
A woman scorned was patient, with impeccable restraint.
And if someone was going to break… it would be him.
The thought sent something sharp and exhilarating through my veins. My lips twitched again with the thrill of accepting his challenge.
I pressed my palm flat against the cool glass and scanned the street below. There was no other movement that didn’t belong to the ordinary rhythm of the city at this hour.
He was perfectly invisible through the sheer discipline of stillness, the ability to become part of the darkness, to fold himself into the spaces where eyes couldn’t see.
My reflection stared back at me from the glass—dark, hazel eyes and a composed expression, the careful arrangement of a woman who had been taught that her face was a negotiation. I held my own gaze for a long moment, and something shifted behind it. A dark, calculated need spread through my veins, my body humming with it.
If he wouldn’t come out of the dark, I would drag him into the light.
Two can play this game, husband.
My fingers found the hem of my shirt first—the soft cotton I’d changed into hours ago, oversized and comfortable. I slowly pulled it over my head, the cold air kissing my bare skin inch by inch before I dropped the shirt to the floor.
Goosebumps peppered my skin along my arms, and I resisted the instinct to cross them over my chest. Instead, I reached behind my back and unhooked the clasp of my bra with practiced ease. The bra dangled in my fingers for a second before it joined the shirt on the carpet.
Thud.
A tingle ran down my spine. Blood roared between my ears, and my pulse thundered at the base of my throat.
The awareness of being watched crackled through the room, an invisible current that prickled beneath my skin and settled deep in my bones.
Let him watch.
Let him see what he couldn’t have.
CHAPTER SIX
ADRIAN
The darkness was my oldest friend, and it has never disappointed me.
Tonight, it served me well.
I leaned against the rough bark of the oak tree, perfectly positioned in the shadow it cast across the hotel parking lot. From here, I could see her window—third floor, second from the left—without being seen myself. The angle was deliberate, calculated with the precision my father had drilled into me since childhood. Never expose yourself. Never give them the advantage of knowing where you are.
The darkness was not empty. It never was.
I had learned that lesson before I could read, before I could tie my own shoes, before I understood that the men who came to our house at night with their low voices and their hands in the pockets of their custom suits were not there to play cards.
The darkness held things. It held watchers. It held secrets.
And tonight, like every night since I’d found her in this small hotel, I was the thing the darkness held.
The light in her room shifted, and my body tensed instinctively. I watched as she appeared at the window, a slender silhouette against the yellow glow of her laptop screen.
Serafina stood at the glass with her arms crossed loosely beneath her breasts, her gaze moving across the street in a slow, methodical sweep that I recognized immediately.