Chapter 7 #2
“No,” she says quietly after a contemplative beat. “That said, not knowing might help me get through the cocktail hour without committing first-degree murder.”
“Even if it’s about him?”
“Did he kill my father?” she whispers in my ear.
I shake my head. At least not as far as I can tell from his phone.
“If you’re going to tell me that he’s been using me for the last two years?—”
“Would you rather I lie?”
She stares down at her hands on her lap, at the rings on her finger, and starts to fiddle with them.
“It doesn’t matter. I already told you I didn’t love him and that our marriage was all but arranged.
” She laughs bitterly, but then lowers her voice once more.
“I suppose he’s a better actor than I am.
So what was he after? Money, my father’s company, all of it? ”
“All of it,” I parrot. “Especially the money. He has quite the lavish lifestyle and the credit card debt to prove it. Not to mention he has a serious gambling habit and a penchant for losing.”
“His daddy has money.”
“I haven’t gotten into his father’s phone or information yet, so I can’t speak to any of that.
He likes to text his father about you, though his father doesn’t offer up much that way.
Despite that, they’re both are furious that you ended it with him and are trying to find a meaningful way to change your mind, which is an aristocratic way of saying coerce you.
He also asked his attorney if once you were married if he’d have access to your money with the prenup in place.
But in fairness, I think there is love there too.
Or more like a sick obsession and an unwillingness to let you go. ”
She sucks in a shaky breath, the side of her head curving perfectly into the space between my neck and shoulder.
I can smell her shampoo and a hint of her perfume, something expensive and exotic but intoxicating all the same, and I refrain from burying my nose in her hair so I can feel it on my face and breathe her in deeper.
“Ironically, you are the last person I should be leaning on for support after hearing that. You mastered the art of using me long before he came along.”
“Only I never cared about your money.” Just your body. While pretending I didn’t also want your heart as a map that only led to me.
She hiccups out a laugh. “Right. Maybe that’s why this hurts less than that did.”
“Georgia—”
She shakes her head, immediately cutting me off. Fine. I let it go. Probably better if I don’t tell her.
“It’s more than that, and while he is after your money and company, he’s also having you followed around LA, though it doesn’t seem they knew you left for Boston until you were already in the air. He was pissed.”
Her breath hitches high in her throat, and her hand claps over her mouth. “Oh my god. I don’t even know what to say. When did that start?”
I band my arm protectively around her.
“Four months ago.”
She hisses out a curse. “When I ended it with him.” Then she snorts out a sardonic laugh.
“If he was looking for blackmail material, he couldn’t have picked a more boring woman.
The raciest thing about me is my reading collection and the fact that my hands have been in more vaginas than his have.
Is he in my phone or computer or anything like that? ”
“Not as far as I can see on his phone.”
She’s silent for so long I’m about to turn her face so I can see her eyes, when she finally says, “That’s seriously troubling. For him and for me. Good thing I broke up with him, and good thing we’re in Las Vegas, the gambling capital of the world.”
I smile dryly, chuckling lightly.
“Thank you for marrying me. Ironically, your reasons for doing so have been far more honest and altruistic than his.” A sigh. “He’s really been having me watched?”
“Yes.”
“That filthy, slimy motherfucker. I can’t tell you how invaded I feel right now. Does his father know?”
“About that? I’m not sure, but it doesn’t seem that way.”
“What do I do other than sever his balls from his body before shoving them down his throat until he chokes to death on them?”
“Actually, I don’t want you to do anything of the sort.”
“What?” she gasps in outrage, sitting up straight and twisting on me.
“He knows you’re married now, and he’ll turn more desperate than he already was and potentially try to come after you.
Whether he’s able to find blackmail material on you or not, that likely won’t stop him from creating something to try and use against you or come after the validity of our marriage.
Will you trust me enough to allow me to handle it, knowing I will never let him get away with any of that and that I intend to punish him greatly? ”
“Punish him greatly. Do I want to know what that entails?”
I shake my head. No one wants to see the ruthless side of me. No one wants to know what happens to them if they hurt one of my people, and Georgia is one of my people. Whether that’s because she’s an extension of Zax and Grey or because she’s now mine, it doesn’t matter.
“So I’m supposed to go up there and see him and not break every bone in his body until he cries like a little bitch?”
I smirk. “Yes.”
“Christ, Lenox. That’s a lot of trust I’m putting in you, and a lot of trust you’re putting in me.”
“You can handle it.”
She turns, her eyes grazing over mine momentarily. “You may look like Thor, but I’m thinking you’re more like Batman. Dual identity, growly disposition, and all.”
“Hit the button, Georgie.”
A jab from her elbow to my flank makes me oomph. “You need to stop with the Georgie stuff. It’s a new rule in the State of Georgia. That nickname is forbidden. But what button are we speaking of?”
“This one.” I tap the white rectangle that’s been flashing for the last few minutes since she sat down.
“Max bet?”
“Is there any other way?”
She smacks the button, making the wheels spin, and we lose. “Well, that sucks. I was expecting megabucks.”
A grin tickles my lips, and I pound my fist down one last time on the button. The wheels spin once more, and then the first one stops on the bright gold Megabucks symbol. Then the second one. Then the third.
“HOLY FUCK! You just won!” Georgia leaps off the chair as the machine goes absolutely berserk.
Bells and sirens and flashing lights. We’ve immediately drawn a crowd, but then Georgia grips my hand and points to the digital winnings tally at the top and how it’s climbing, climbing from hundreds to thousands to hundreds of thousands all the way up to millions.
“LENOX, YOU JUST WON TEN MILLION DOLLARS!”
Shit. For real?
How unfortunately ironic.
How very public this is.
I sigh and stand. People are taking pictures of us and of the machine.
Georgia is holding my arm, shaking it like the thing is not attached to my body.
The old lady who snapped at me that this was her machine is about to steal the oxygen tank belonging to the man beside her and bludgeon me to death with it.
Security, as well as a man in a suit with a red tie come flying over to us, pushing the crowd back and making a makeshift perimeter around us.
“Congratulations on hitting the megabucks.” The suited man shakes my hand, and then Georgia’s.
“I am Gerald, the casino manager. We have alerted our in-house technician of the winning spin, and they will come and perform a check on the machine to make sure this is a legitimate win. Would you like to come with me in the meantime? Have a drink or something to eat. On us, of course.”
No. Not even a little.
We’ll make the news over this. I just know it. People will recognize Georgia, and though I’m not so recognizable now, I do still have a name people know thanks to my days in Central Square and then Suzie’s and my father’s deaths.
Privacy. Anonymity. Simply being left the fuck alone. All that’s gone now.
Or maybe it was the second I said I do to Georgia Monroe.
Georgia takes in my expression, the way I draw back from the crowd of observers, and turns to the casino manager. “Actually, we’re expected upstairs at a work event, but we’re staying in this hotel,” Georgia tells him.
“Excellent,” he exclaims. “I just need a bit of information, and when everything is sorted out, we’ll be in touch with you. There will be paperwork to fill out and things of that nature. ”
Georgia mercifully takes care of handing over my information, and then we manage to escape, heading toward the elevators.
Georgia offers people who congratulate us small smiles and soft thank yous and keeps her face averted from people blatantly taking photos or videos.
It feels like I don’t take a breath until we step into the elevator, shooting up to whatever space Monroe Securities rented out for their cocktail hour.
“You don’t like crowds.”
I stare straight ahead at the elevator doors. “No.”
“Is that because of Suzie?”
“She loved them, and I was mostly indifferent when we were on tour. Suzie couldn’t play an instrument to save her life but got a thrill out of managing five teenage boys.
Most of the time the press never bothered with me—not when we had Greyson as our lead singer—until she died.
Until my dad…” I trail off, unable to finish that.
I clear my throat. “Then they were relentless. Everywhere. All the time.”
She bobs her head. “I remember that. I remember how you’d have to sneak out to come see me.”
“Yes.” The only place I found peace was in Georgia’s bed, even if all I was doing was watching her sleep or listening to her talk about her classes.
She hums and turns to me, a smile lighting up her face in a way that tells me she’s changing the subject for me. “What do you plan to do with all that money you just won?”
“Is this an interview?”
She snickers, rolling her eyes.
I grin but immediately rub it away with my fingers. “Donate it.”
She likes that answer. “Where?”
I turn to her just as the car slows and take her hand, staring down at her rings. At how they look side by side on our hands. “Where do you want it to go?”
She shakes her head as we step out of the car into the mostly empty hallway that will lead us to the event room holding the cocktail hour .
“No,” she says adamantly. “You won that money. Where do you want it to go?”
“I couldn’t care less.”
“I take it you don’t need the money?”
“Georgia, I have more money than the Catholic Church, the Royal Family of England, or pretty much anyone else on this planet combined. Yet no one knows about it because no one knows me or what I do or how I hide it.”
“How is it you have all that? I know you have a lot of family money, but…” She trails off, her eyebrows raised expectantly.
I grunt. “I’ve been playing the stock market since I was a young kid and figured out how it works, then I made a ton with Central Square, and over the years I’ve invested in things that have been very lucrative.
So I don’t give a fuck what you do with that ten million.
Donate it to a worthy charity, something that speaks to your heart, and we’ll leave it at that. ”
“Don’t you have a charity that speaks to your heart?”
“You’re implying I have one.”
“Don’t you?” she questions, and though I think it’s meant to be teasing, it’s not.
The serious set of her eyes as they scroll all over me tells me my answer is everything to her, and it shouldn’t be.
The more emotionless she thinks I am, the more of an emotional divide I place between us, the better.
There’s no other way we’ll survive this arrangement.
I grin smugly, poisonously. “What do you think? I used your body and left when you tried to give me your heart.”
You need to hate me, Georgia. I can’t handle anything else. Not right now.
A flush rises swiftly up her cheeks, her eyes dark and narrowed, shocked and hurt. “Christ, you’re an ass, aren’t you? If you want me to hate you again, I will. Is that your game with me?”
“I don’t play games. The money is yours to donate. Consider it my wedding present to you.”
She squints at me, and I watch as sharp points reforge from places within her that had grown dull and complacent.
I watch as they stab at her skin. I hurt her and I hate myself for it, but once again, I find myself dangling precariously on the edge of wanting to be everything to her while not being nearly enough.
I’m not the man she needs. I live in the middle of nowhere, own a town with not much of a name, and avoid the limelight—and fucking people—every chance I get.
Georgia Monroe could never find happiness in that. Or with me.