Chapter 3
Juliette
Cops made me far too uncomfortable.
It had been quite some time since I had to sit down across from them as they jotted down every last thing I said, their voices mostly going in one ear and out the other.
I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be there, stuck in front of them in my stupidly white living room, going on and on about what I had seen and felt and witnessed, because I was too busy trying to stop my heart from racing.
Bridger Underwood didn’t deserve to make me feel anything except pure rage and frustration.
The cop directly in front of me wouldn’t stop talking and all I wanted was some peace and quiet to focus on the fact that my ex-boyfriend had just been in my bedroom ten minutes ago.
I could still feel the weight of him on top of me, his body on mine to hold me in place, all big and muscular and strong—too strong, stronger than he had been the last time I saw him.
Despite all that strength, he hadn’t been rough with me.
Not a single bruise had been left behind, and part of me was furious with him because of that.
It would have been a lot easier to be less infatuated with him if he had been some dark, rage-filled monster who hurt me.
My eyes closed, remembering the deep sound of his voice. Deeper than it was before. The memory almost made me shudder. I could have sworn I still felt him on me. How the hell was he in my life again?
His prison sentence had only been for two years, but part of me had always wondered if he had ever done something to get himself sent back.
He was a danger. The bad boy from the bad part of the city.
The kind of boy my parents always warned me to stay far away from, but that was the allure of him—that he was the guy that was supposed to scare girls like me.
He was dark and dangerous and wild and untamable, but that was what made staying away from him so damn difficult.
“Did any of the men have tattoos?” one of the police officers asked, notepad and pen in hand. His soft voice pulled me from my thoughts, his green eyes warm. “Any easily recognizable features?”
My head shook. Bridger had been wearing a mask and gloves just like the other men, but I knew Bridger’s tattoos.
The ones on his arms, his hands, his fingers.
The stopwatch on his forearm and the skull on his shoulder and the roaring, sharp toothed monsters that sat between them.
I could draw them right then and there if I really wanted to.
God, I could draw Bridger’s face. The face I used to know, at least, because I wasn’t sure what was hiding under that mask now.
“I didn’t see any tattoos,” I said.
“Did they say anything in particular that you think would help? Maybe they used names? Did they refer to each other by anything? Maybe even nicknames?”
Too many questions.
Once again, my head shook, pushing the blanket off my shoulders.
One of the cops had offered it to me when they came over, pulling it off the couch and wrapping it around me as I had stayed silent.
I didn’t feel cold or scared. I felt stupidly enchanted with those deep blue eyes I hadn’t seen in what felt like a million years.
They looked like the ocean. I had always thought that.
They were deep and wild, and it was easy enough to get addicted to them.
I wondered if he still looked the same with his mask off.
I bet he did. I bet he still had all that long dark hair that was always a perfectly tussled mess.
My body felt hot, my shoulder tingling with the traces of his fingertips, with the way he had caressed at my skin like he was trying to offer me some comfort despite the fact that he was in the middle of robbing me.
Why did he have to come back into my life?
He might have won my heart but he had broken it too.
My first love and my first heartache. No one had warned me that falling in love had the potential to be such a reckless disaster.
I shook my head again, not wanting to feel any of that pain.
Bridger was not worth thinking about. Not now.
Not after what he did to me back then. Not after what he had done to me just minutes ago.
That bag.
It might have been stupid to him, just another one in the pile of stupid things Gordon bought me so I lived up to the criteria of being his wife, but it was what was in that bag that was going to save me.
It was my lifeline. The cash I had managed to stash away so I could escape. The change Gordon sometimes got when leaving tips, the literal coins I found on the ground, the crumpled notes hiding in Gordon’s shirt pockets. I wasn’t allowed to work. I didn’t even have a bank account.
My parents had more money than God, were some of the richest people to ever walk the earth—but they had always made sure to never set aside anything for me, and Gordon was too smart to just give me access to any of his wealth. He knew I’d be on the first flight out the second I got the chance.
That didn’t mean there weren’t ways to save, though.
And all those wrinkled notes and battered coins?
They were my way out. It wasn’t much. Just under five thousand dollars.
My goal had always been five thousand. It would be enough to buy my bus ticket, some nights in a motel until I found a job, and freedom.
I was close to having it. Maybe I was the idiot for waiting so long.
Just a couple more hundred dollars, I had said.
Until I had enough to feel secure and ready. Stupid.
I had been saving all that money from the second I was forced to marry Gordon. I just wanted enough for when I escaped, when there was no turning back, when there was no guarantee I’d have a roof over my head forever. And now it was all gone.
“What valuables did they steal from you, Mrs. Cavendish?” the other cop asked. “We’ll need a list.”
I shrugged. Bridger would be zipping open that bag right now and getting yet another prize. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Is there any information you can tell us at all? Your cameras were hacked into, so we can’t look at those,” the cop continued. “Do you know anything? Anything at all?”
I could have said the name right then and there; it was there on the tip of my tongue.
It was a name I had never been able to forget.
Bridger Underwood. Bridger Underwood. Bridger Underwood.
Back from the dead, back to ruin my life like he had done five years ago, back to barge into my world and turn it upside down so hard and fast that it’d never go upright again.
The day we first met was clear as day in my mind.
School field trip. Sort of. I had gone to one of the most exclusive, expensive schools in the country: Stonebridge Academy.
The tuition cost more than most people’s mortgages.
Despite that, my teachers had been pretty intent on making sure they didn’t fall into the trap of coddling snobby, obnoxious, private school students.
In my final year, every month for one day, we got to visit different schools in the city.
Public schools. We’d get assigned a buddy and spend the day with them.
A way to see how the real world works, my principal had said.
A way to meet people you normally wouldn’t meet.
I liked those days. I liked meeting all those different people.
My class had shown up at Rushville High School, smack bang in the middle of the South Side—a forbidden area for a girl like me.
Chipped paint. Metal detectors. Worn out cars parked at the front.
I loved it. It was different and unruly and unpolished, and I needed that in my life when everything was so strict and cold and calculated. It was something real.
I was left to wait in the front office while they tried to locate my buddy who hadn’t shown up yet.
And then it happened.
Bridger Underwood was being dragged into the principal’s office with two fights under his belt before the morning bell even rang.
He had taken a seat next to me, his T-shirt a little worn and torn and his hair a mess and his smile crooked and stupidly endearing.
I was pretty sure I had fallen for him right then and there.
As he asked me if I was lost and teased me about my prim and proper school uniform and called me princess.
He was all chaotic confidence, smelling like cheap cologne and cigarettes, and I had never wanted anyone more in my entire life.
“He asked you a question, Juliette!” Gordon snapped, dragging me right out of the past and into the present I was barely able to cope with. “Are you going to answer him or not?”
The sharp tone in his voice made me jump, my head shaking in an attempt to clear my head. “I don’t know anything,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t even really remember what happened. It all happened so fast, you know? They were in and out so quick.”
“You were in the bedroom with one of them while they took me into the closet,” Gordon said. “What were you two doing?”
“Sir, maybe we should speak to your wife alone,” the cop spoke up.
“That’s not happening,” Gordon said harshly. “I want to know what he did to her. If he touched her.”
“Sir, if you think your wife was assaulted, we need to—”
“I wasn’t assaulted!” I cried out. “He didn’t hurt me. Not like that. He didn’t say anything to me. Nothing important, anyway. He just wanted to know what we had in the house, things they could steal.”
“Are you sure?” the cop asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “We could take you down to the station.”
Eyes big, I shook my head at him. “I wasn’t assaulted… like that. I swear. And I can’t tell you anything about them. They all wore masks. Those balaclava ones. Gloves, dressed head to toe in black. I had no idea who they are or what they looked like.”