Chapter 8
DANE
Iconsidered the possibility that my wife had killed him, but Harrison seemed the most likely person responsible for Gerald’s death.
“I need you to explain. And you’re going to tell me everything this time. This bullshit ends now.”
“I poisoned him with arsenic for weeks.” Her voice breaks. “Then I staged the car accident as the cause of death. But it wasn’t an accident, and I killed him. Harrison helped to cover it up, and now he’s blackmailing me.”
The remaining pieces fall into place. Harrison paid off the coroner. That’s why she attempted to give that fuck any information about my accounts and businesses.
I seize her throat and slam her back against our headboard.
“Are you feeling fucking guilty about killing that bastard?” I tighten my hold. “Goddamnit, Whitney. You don’t think I would put an end to Harrison fucking Lockwood?”
“I didn’t feel guilty for a fucking second about killing Gerald.” Her eyes are wild as she grips my wrist. “But you're going to hand me over to those fucks on the Council. Once they execute me, then who protects Sloane?”
“You really think that I’m letting you go anywhere? That I’m letting a single person touch you? That I’m willing to go a single day without what’s mine?” I laugh. I make sure it sounds harsh and bitter. “God, you got that one wrong, kitten.”
“You didn’t go against the Council before—”
“I know you want me to regret that. And I do regret that I didn’t have you, that you had to suffer Gerald in your bed for a single fucking night.
But we would both be fucking dead. Now, I am in the position to give you the goddamn match to burn Harrison to the ground, kitten.
” I release her throat and catch her jaw instead, forcing her eyes to meet mine.
“Now tell me exactly what happened. Every fucking detail. And don’t you dare leave anything out. ”
She’s shaking so hard she can barely speak. “Harrison came to me a month before Gerald died. He told me about the arrangement.”
My jaw clenches. “What arrangement?”
“Gerald had promised Sloane to Victor Ashworth. He told Victor she’d be his when she turned eighteen.” Her voice turns cold. “Harrison said he could make it go away if Gerald died, and that he would buy me at auction and then I’d be able to pay him back for helping me.”
“And you killed Gerald.”
I’m not upset about that revelation at all. In fact, I’m hard as fuck. There is even more fight in this woman than I realized, and I’m hungry for her.
“I was desperate. Victor is seventy years old with three dead wives, and my husband was selling our daughter to him.” Her hands curl into fists. “Harrison made it sound like he was helping me. Like we were in it together.”
“What did he actually want?”
“To take control of the trust that Gerald had set up for Sloane.” She lets out a sharp breath. “Then when you outbid him at the auction, he had to find another way to get the money he wanted.”
She grips my thigh. “If you expect me to feel bad for killing Gerald, I don’t.”
The fiery woman from twenty years ago is right in front of me. God, I’m fucking obsessed with her.
“I wanted him to suffer.” Her chin juts out. “I wanted him to feel his body failing and be too stupid to realize that it was me.”
The bastard deserved it. She won’t get an ethics or morals lesson from me. All she has to do is tell me who she wants dead and I’ll help her do it.
My wife is a fucking killer.
“And Harrison covered it up.”
“He paid off the coroner to skip the full toxicology. Harrison made sure the autopsy report said drunk driving.” She meets my eyes. “But he made me go with him and recorded our conversation with the man and kept proof of my involvement. That’s what he’s using to blackmail me.”
“What did he threaten you with?”
“Execution by the Council.” Her voice drops. “And if I didn’t cooperate, he said he’d marry Sloane himself, whether I was dead or alive. That he’d fuck her and convince her to marry him.”
The bastard is so fucking dead. I hope he’s enjoying the last couple of days he has on earth, because he’s going to die, and it’s not going to be quick.
“Watch this.” I release her and retrieve my phone from my pocket.
I pull up the security footage from Harvard.
I scroll through multiple angles of the entrances to Sloane’s dorm, the library, and her walking routes.
I stop at the view of the library where she’s sitting at a table.
Surprisingly, Thorne is there with her, too.
Good to see that he’s checking in like he’s supposed to.
“What is this?” Whitney’s eyes go wide, and I let her take my phone.
“I put security on your daughter the day of the auction.” I swipe through the feeds. “Thorne oversees it personally. That’s her there in the library with him now. If Harrison were to approach Sloane, or anyone else for that matter, I would fucking know about it.”
She’s staring at the screen. “You’ve been protecting her this whole time?”
“I told you on our wedding night I’d protect Sloane the same as my sons.” I take the phone from her and toss it aside on the bed, then grab her by the throat. “I’m not the one who fucking lies.”
“I didn’t know—”
“Well now you goddamn do.” I tighten my hold. “Once this is resolved, you won’t lie to me ever again. I can’t promise I’ll be so lenient if you attempt to pull any more of your secret bullshit.”
“I’m sorry—”
Her eyes are red, and her cheeks are wet with tears.
“Are you really?” I scoff. I can’t help it. This is a game I’m tired of playing with her.
“I swear, Dane. I would end Gerald one hundred times over, but it’s been killing me to keep this from you. If I had seen any other way—”
“You’ll beg for my forgiveness later. And believe me, Whitney, you are going to fucking beg. You are going to spend so much time on your knees crawling and pleading to be my good little kitten, you are going to forget how to fucking walk.”
I release her and reach across the bed to grab my phone again. I want everything behind us, and that means I have to tell her what I’ve been keeping from her. I pull up another file on my phone. “I didn’t want you to know this part, but that was before I knew you were the one who killed Gerald.”
I hand her my phone showing the pictures of Sloane. They are candid shots of her in various bathing suits and in her underwear while she’s sleeping. Some of them appear to date back to when she was twelve or thirteen.
“Gerald was trafficking underage girls under the cover of one of his businesses. He paid for them, shared them with business associates, then disposed of them.” I swipe through the evidence while she holds the phone.
“These photos were found in Roland Whitmore’s files after he died.
You might remember his widow, Briar, trying to escape.
These pictures are what Gerald was using to command the highest bidder for Sloane amongst the sickest fucks in the Ravens, and if you hadn’t killed him, he was going to let Victor have her before she turned eighteen. ”
“Oh my God.”
My wife is shaking, and I want to pound my fist into someone’s face for upsetting her. Gerald’s already dead, but Harrison would fucking do.
“I had no idea.” She’s crying beside me. “This is fucked up. Those poor girls. Oh, Dane! Sloane . . . she doesn’t know—”
“And she never will. I already had Fox scrub every bit of information we have found, and we will scrub Victor’s files, too. I have a plan to end him. He won’t be around much longer, I assure you.” I grab her jaw and stare into her wet blue eyes. “You will both be safe.”
She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it and swallows before trying again. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. None of this changes the punishment that’s coming to you for not coming to me in the first place.”
“I was afraid—”
“Of the wrong fucking person.” I lift her and settle her trembling, naked body on my lap. “Now we’re going to fix this my way, like we should have done weeks ago.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re going to kill Harrison.” I seize her ass hard. “There isn’t a chance in hell I’m going to allow him to keep breathing.”
“You want me to help?”
“I want to watch you kill him, kitten.” I fist my hand in her hair and yank her head back. “I want to see what you look like when you make the life drain from his eyes.”
Her pupils dilate. Her breathing changes.
“Tell me something, kitten.” I release her hair and run my hand down her throat. “When you were poisoning Gerald. When you watched him suffer. How did it make you feel?”
She freezes.
“The truth, Whitney. We’re done with the lies.”
“Powerful.” The word comes out as a whisper. “It made me feel powerful.”
I press my palm against her throat lightly. “Did you get wet thinking about what you were doing to him?”
Her face flushes. “Yes.” Her eyes meet mine. “After every dose I gave him. I’d go to my room and fuck my vibrator thinking about how good it was going to be when he was gone.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Whitney.”
I’m so hard it hurts. I just might give her that vibrator back so she can show me.
“I felt alive for the first time in years. I had control. I had power. And every time I poisoned him, every time I watched him get weaker, I knew that I was the one who caused it.”
I kiss her so fucking hard. She moans against my mouth, clawing at my shoulders to hold me there, kissing me back.
When I pull back, her lips are swollen and her eyes are unfocused.
“My bloodthirsty little wife.” I bury my fingers in her hair. “Do you have any idea what hearing that does to me?”
She starts clawing at my zipper. “Dane—”
“This is what we’re going to do.” I rise from our bed. Cradling her against my chest, I carry her to the bathroom. “We need a plan for how Harrison is going to die.”
I set her down and then spin her so she’s facing the mirror.
“Look at yourself.” I grip her hips from behind and lick along her right ear. “You’re going to watch how much you enjoy planning his death.”