Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
UNLOCKED
ANNALIESE
Sebastien got called into an emergency meeting at the Fortress tonight.
It was Adrian who sent him a text, telling him he was needed to sit in on a discussion with him, Dallas, and Connor Heyward.
The fact that Connor would be there made it impossible for Sebastien to refuse, choosing dinner with me over heading out to see his friends for Order business.
He offered to let me go with him. Connor’s delicate wife, Haven, was just dropped off at Adrian’s house so that she could stay with Loni and the Hellers’ cats.
I was invited to go hang with them, the third member in our Order trio until Dallas finally chooses his Offering—though, if it is a marriage of convenience and not a love match, there’s a good chance Connor won’t let Dallas’s new wife anywhere near his—but I declined.
I was happy to just stay home myself, get a little work done, maybe watch some TV while I wait for Sebastien to come home.
About half an hour after he left, he sent me a text:
HUBBY
I don’t think I’ll be coming home soon. Lock the door, love. I brought my keys.
Oh, Sebastien. After he proved how easy it was for him to break into my apartment, he has this fear that someone will do the same here.
I tell him he’s being silly. No one in Harmony Heights is dumb enough to go up against Sebastien Reynolds.
Sure, my husband is loaded, but they’re taunting a leather-wearing devil if they think they can rob him.
But if it makes him feel better, I’ll do it.
So I text him back that I’m on it before tossing my phone to the couch.
I’m in the living room. Besides the bedroom, it’s my favorite one in the house.
Not only because it has a huge television and a comfy ass couch, but because this is the room where Sebastien and I first signed our contracts.
Humming to myself as I pad toward the front door, I freeze when I swear I hear something. It’s a soft creek, followed by a pair of footsteps as though someone has just let themselves into the house.
Cold dread shivers up my spine.
“Hello?” It has to be my husband. Maybe the text was delayed because service in the Fortress can be shit sometimes, and he sent that before he turned around and came home for something. “Sebastien? Is that you?”
No answer.
I roll my eyes, chiding myself. It’s nothing. I imagined it. Sebastien put the idea in my head when he told me to lock the door. There’s no one here—
I step into the foyer and freeze.
Because that’s Eric Ward standing there, the door closed behind him.
Oh, no… oh, no. It can’t be. The salt-and-pepper hair…
the shrewd and cold blue eyes… the suit that I’ve seen him wear a hundred times.
This scene has played out a hundred times.
Jonathan warning me that the master was home, and how he expected me to be standing in the front room, hair perfect, dress perfect, make-up perfect, ready to do whatever it was he expected of his mistress.
Only I’m not his mistress. I’m Sebastien Reynold’s wife.
And I’m in fucking trouble.
“What are you… how… how did you get in here?”
Eric looks insulted by the question. Duh. I know exactly how he got into my home, and his answer confirms it: “Silly girl. You didn’t lock the door.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. His cruel gaze sweeps over me, lips curving in distaste when he takes in my appearance.
My bare legs, the oversized shirt that I stole from Sebastien’s closet after we had a before dinner quickie, my sex-fluffed hair wild and down since I had no plans of leaving the house.
Something ugly sparks in his eyes.
My stomach revolts. Something ugly. Something hate-filled.
And Eric is looking at me like that.
I take a step back. I don’t know exactly where I’m going, but away seems like a pretty good idea even as I whisper, “You shouldn’t be here.”
He raises a brow. “Why not? It used to be our routine. Me coming home to you or the both of us leaving the office together.” His lips twitch, then curve into a mocking smile. “Now you’re playing house with the Reynolds boy.”
My fingers curl at my sides. Boy. Sebastien is twenty-nine. In the hierarchy of the Order, his name puts him on top of Eric. He’s my husband…
I swallow, wrapping my arms under my boobs, hugging myself. “Eric. You need to leave. Please.”
He steps closer. “No. I don’t think I will.”
I back up. “Sebastien will come home soon—”
“Good.” He says the single syllable just the way that my husband does.
But then Eric smiles, sharp and deranged, and I have to bite back my moan of fright.
“I want him to see you choose me. And if you don’t…
I told you, sweetheart. I told you what would happen if you chose anyone else.
Annul your marriage. Claim fraud. I don’t care. You’re coming home with me or else…”
My stomach drops to my feet as his threat trails off. I don’t have my phone. I don’t have anything. It’s just me and Eric, and the insane gleam in his eyes.
“But why?” I choke out. “You have Cicely!”
“Why? Because I miss you.” Eric steps closer, clearly stalking me. “I love you.”
I stare at him. Love me? Not the fuck he doesn’t.
“You’re incapable of love,” I whisper. “You just want to own me.”
His smile widens. Another step. “I do own you.”
I flinch.
“You’ve had your fun,” he tells me, voice tightening. “But it’s over. I didn’t put five years into molding you, shaping you, creating the perfect mistress just to see you with another man. Not my Annaliese.”
I’m an idiot. As he moved closer, I stopped matching him step for step. Suddenly, he’s right there, within arm’s reach. It’s too late to do anything but stand my ground, which is what I do as I tell him plainly, “But I’m not yours. I belong to Sebastien.”
I love Sebastien.
Oh, Eric doesn’t like hearing that. His face twists into an expression of fury, and I’m so stunned that he dropped his mask that I don’t protect myself as he slaps me.
It’s open-handed, flat across my left cheek.
The sound cracks through the entire foyer as my head snaps sideways.
Even worse, the momentum knocks me to my knees as my cheek burns.
Before I can even let out a soft cry of pain and fear, Eric lunges down.
His arms wrap around me, lifting me easily up off of the floor.
I want to struggle out of his sudden hug, but my ear is ringing.
He clapped that, too, in his strike, and I’m too dazed to do anything but let him drag me down the hall.
Down the hall and toward the stairs that lead up to the second floor where our bedroom is.
The way he’s groping me, the way he’s dragging me…
I suddenly know exactly what Eric means when he says that he’ll show Sebastien I chose him.
If my husband comes home, finding me and my former lover in bed together…
if Eric has me under him in mine and Sebastien’s marriage bed, no matter how he got me there…
I don’t know if Sebastien can forgive me that.
After all, we’ve only been married for two and a half months.
I’d like to think that Sebastien would realize that I would never go back to Eric, but then I remember how the first time I fucked him, I did so to forget about Eric.
What if Sebastien believes that I haven’t?
No. I can’t let him do this. I struggle, yelling ‘stop’, yelling ‘no’, but all Eric does is continue to manhandle me, maneuvering me up the stairs.
Of course he figures out easily which room is the master bedroom.
I don’t even want to think how, but he no matter how I try to go boneless so that he can’t continue to carry me into the room, Eric is too strong. Too determined.
And I’m scared out of my fucking wits. Scared and angry. Scared and furious.
“Get the fuck off me!”
He spares a hand to pop me in the mouth again. I see stars. It was a lucky hit, shoving my nose up, making my eyes water even as he snaps, “My Annaliese doesn’t curse. So maybe… maybe you’re not mine anymore.”
That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him. “Get out,” I repeat. “Before Sebastien comes home—”
“Oh, no. You don’t get to send me away.” He drops me. I hit the floor hard, but before I can crawl out of his way, his hands are around my throat. “You don’t get to leave me.”
I twist beneath his weight, panic clawing at my lungs. “Let… let go—”
He snarls, and I choke. He squeezes, and I start to buck underneath him.
“Eric…” I gasp out, clawing at whatever part of his wrist I can find. “I can’t… what are you… please…”
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he says, his voice suddenly so tender, I’m even more terrified than I was. “And when you stop breathing, you’ll take your final swan dive.”
What?
His grip tightens. Stars spark at the edge of my vision, the black creeping in as my airway continues to close.
Eric leans in, smiling like a man delivering a love confession. “You realized you couldn’t spend your life with Reynolds. And I wouldn’t have you back. So you killed yourself. Like Reese Collins. Like Sebastien’s Julie.”
No.
No.
His voice drops to a dangerous whisper. “In the Order, the only way out is death. Your boy threatened me with it. Well, who says it has to be mine?”
Something snaps inside me. Fight or die, Annaliese. Fight or give Eric the pleasure of disposing of you like so many other Order woman.
Fight or—
Before I lose consciousness, I slam my knee upward with every ounce of desperation I have left.
He wasn’t expecting it. He must’ve thought I was already gone, but he underestimated me like he always does.
Good. All I needed was one hit, and I get it as my knee collides hard between his legs.
I aimed for his cock. After all, it’s caused me more grief than it ever did pleasure.
Eric folds with a strangled sound, grip loosening enough that I can finally crawl out from under him. He’s already fighting to get to his feet. I back up, looking at the window, knowing that if I can’t get out of this, I’ll be tossed out of it, my body left for Sebastien to find.
No. I finally got my happy-ever-after. I won’t let Eric Ward fuck it up for me.
With the same rage flooding through me as the night I attacked that Used, all I want to do is hurt Eric. Because it is Eric, I want to hurt him badly. Spinning around, I dash over to the dresser.
The pocket knife that Sebastien gave me is in the place of honor on top of it.
Without even thinking twice, I grab it. My hands are shaky.
I don’t drop it, though it takes more effort than it should to flip it open.
But I do. I fucking do. I get the knife open just in time for Eric to grab my arm, whirling me around to face him.
His icy blue eyes are as murderous as I feel. “You worthless little—”
I stab him. In his neck. In his throat. In his cheek.
I keep shoving the blade into whatever part of him I can find as he howls, trying to cover the stab wounds as I make them.
Blood spurts hot across my hand. I ignore it.
I ignore him. I just keep stabbing with Sebastien’s knife, and when Eric drops to the floor, I climb on top of him and jab the knife over and over again into his chest.
Screaming, sobbing, shaking… I don’t stop until he stops fighting back.
Until he stops moving.
Until the howls in my head go silent.
Until everything inside me finally breaks...
Finally, I drop the knife. My knees give out at last, and I collapse next to Eric’s corpse, curling up into the fetal position, sobbing so hard my ribs ache. The tears don’t last. The gasps replace them until all that’s left is my pitiful cries as I stay on the floor.
And that’s when I hear my husband’s voice calling my name, and I can’t even bring myself to answer him.