Marian #2
“Penny…” My hand came to rest on my stomach.
Just the thought of going back, the thought of Drayton, left me feeling sick.
All the ‘whys’. All the blurry memories of the big blowout between our families.
I’d refused to think about it for years.
I always had the weight of the guilt, but I rarely allowed in the details. “Why don’t you pack and come with me?”
“Me? Go to Florida? But I have to work. The agents said—”
“Katia knows you’re safe with me. Besides, I’m the boss,” I smiled. “You said so yourself. Come to Miami with me.”
“Really?”
At my nod, she was running over, throwing her arms around me. Just like I’d continuously done to Drayton.
I was the shark.
I was the shark.
I was not the mouse cowering to my mother.
Not anymore.
I pulled back, trying my best to compose myself. No more old Marian. No more Drayton. Work. Books. Maybe even men. What could it hurt? I’d been so good all this time. So… lonely. “Go pack. We’re going to Miami. We’re going to make this a vacation neither of us ever forget.
“Statistic.” Penny’s lips were parted, and she kept shaking her head back and forth. “I can’t get that word out of my mind. That Prologue. That first chapter! And now she’s been kidnapped? Marian.”
I cringed. “I tried to warn you, Penny.”
“I told you it was fine. Just… hard, but… fuck.” She let out a deep breath. “It’s hard to read because of what happened to me, but… there’s no going back. I can’t stop now. I know this is dark, but I just have to make sure. Slade’s not the bad guy, right?”
I smiled, leading us towards the luxury SUV as we left the plane.
The sun was beating against my skin, and I wished I would have changed from my dark business clothes to something cooler.
A dress. I should have just worn a damn sundress.
But there was a possibility I’d run into someone from Dodge Corp, and I couldn’t risk seeing them dressed down.
A shark wouldn’t do that. Not until the deal was secured.
“Slade is a good guy. Oh yeah, he’s really good. At everything.”
Penny squealed, and I laughed hard as she clung to the book.
Had I ever seen her so excited and happy?
There were the nightmares. The crying episodes.
Disassociation and depression. But she was getting better.
She tried to be strong, but there was no mistaking the horror she’d gone through when the masked man killed her parents and held her captive for almost four months.
Mask. He’d always worn a mask. It’s why they could never positively identify him. He could have been anyone.
“Next stop, the hotel. Then, we can eat. I’m starving.” I glanced back at Elliot, watching as he scanned the tarmac. Even with the sunglasses covering his dark eyes, I knew he was taking in everything around us. “Hungry?”
“You know I am.” He gave a quick smile, not even looking my way as he continued his assessment.
The dark suit he wore was uniform. It was typical, no matter where or what we were doing.
And not by my orders, by my parents. Elliot had been my bodyguard since after Drayton.
I’d spent my entire adult life having the older man follow me.
But he wasn’t technically old. He was fifty-two now, compared to my twenty-nine.
The brown hair he once had was more salt than pepper, and his body was in immaculate shape.
Elliot was right at six feet, and his face had softened over the last decade.
Where he used to never smile, we’d grown on each other.
I even flirted with the idea of trying to seduce him once.
It was a stupid idea, but loneliness and too many romances took their toll.
Not that it would have ever come to anything even if we wanted.
My parents had already given me a list of men I could marry.
And I was engaged now and on a deadline, even if I was pushing it to the very last days.
I just couldn’t stomach marrying a man I didn’t love.
And I didn’t love Bastian Allard, who happened to be the man I was marrying.
He was French nobility and a ladies’ man.
Kind but cocky. He was everything I didn’t want, but his prestige benefitted my line, and he’d leave me alone outside of heirs. We’d been in agreement about that.
A man standing outside the back passenger door opened it as we approached.
I knew the drill. Elliot passed, leaning in to check the interior before nodding and allowing us in.
The cool air brushed my skin as I slid inside, and Penny followed.
We weren’t even settled before she opened the book and began reading again.
Elliot slid in the front seat, glancing back.
When the SUV took off, I tried to relax.
To forget the memories I’d stirred from the same book that rested not a foot away.
I couldn’t. It was a blessing and a curse.
Slade was the ghost of the old Drayton, and the only remaining evidence I had of a love dead and gone.
A love killed by lies. Drugs. A web of manipulation… that my mother was responsible for.