Chapter 32
JAMESON
“Get off the floor before one of the neighbors sees you,” I snarled.
Skylar lifted her arm and held out her hand.
Ignoring the gesture, I turned and walked back into the apartment, sipping from a tumbler of straight vodka.
“There isn’t anyone else in the building,” she whined.
I gritted my teeth and took another sip, letting the vodka burn my throat and soothe some of the rage Skylar’s incompetence inspired. “Then no one will hear you scream if I decide to drag you up by your hair.”
All I did in this hellhole was drink and rely on a woman too useless to do the one thing I’d asked of her.
“You’re a fucking asshole. You know that, Jameson?” she said, pulling off her high heels and using the doorknob to pull herself up.
Picking up her purse, she hobbled into the apartment and slammed the door.
I refilled my glass.
She put her heels back on and fluffed her hair. Looking in the cracked hall mirror, she ran a fingertip under her lower lip, where my slap had smeared her red lip gloss. She then pinched her other cheek to match the bright pink tone of the injured one.
Typical Skylar, to care more about her appearance than the fact that I had hit her.
Using the back of her hand to push aside several empty Chinese take-out boxes and old newspapers, she dropped her purse onto the kitchen counter and reached for the open bottle of vodka.
She held it up for me to see. “It’s bad enough you insist on hiding out in this squalid shoebox.
Do you have to drink this cheap crap, too? ”
I crossed to the kitchen and slammed my glass down. It shattered, slicing into my palm.
Skylar cried out as she grabbed a dishcloth from the sink.
I circled around the small island and placed my bleeding palm on her throat, just under her jaw.
She stumbled as I walked her back until her body smacked against the wall.
I leaned in close. “I wouldn’t still be living in this shithole if you had just done what I asked.”
She rose on her toes. “Jameson, you’re hurting me.”
“You’re lucky I don’t kill you,” I growled as I tightened my grip. Blood smeared over her pale skin and dripped down to ruin her crisp white shirt. “Red really is your color. Maybe I should bathe you in it.”
She wrapped her small hands around my wrist and tried to pry me free. Her eyes were wide, tears starting to pool in the corners. Terror almost looked good on her.
“It’s not my fault! I tried. He wasn’t interested.”
I stepped in closer. “You had one job. Seduce my brother.”
“I told you. I tried. He’s fascinated by that townie bitch, Madison. It’s all he wanted to talk about. He wouldn’t even look at me. How were we supposed to know he’d become obsessed with seeing her behind bars?” she choked as my grip on her windpipe cut off her air.
I moved my hand to her jaw, smearing her perfect skin with more of my blood. “You didn’t try hard enough, but you’re going to help me fix this.”
I stepped away from her, turning my back just because I knew she hated it when men didn’t look at her.
She clutched at her throat. “Yes, of course. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
“I wanted you to not fucking fail. I wanted you to seduce my brother like you were supposed to, so I could take my place as the Worthington heir and then maybe I’d bail your father out of the fucking mess he made.”
“But I—” she started whining and I cut her off. That sound was going to be the death of one of us.
“You clearly have forgotten what’s at stake here.
It’s not just my fortune that is on the line.
Tell me, if you fail again, what are you going to do?
You’re too old to model runways. They don’t like big fake tits.
Are you going to marry some seventy-year-old oil tycoon, bounce on his cock for a few years before he finally dies, just for you to find out he left all of his money to his children and not you?
Are you going to start an OnlyFans and sell that ass on the Internet, or are you going to do the truly unthinkable and get a fucking job? ”
Her bottom lip trembled, but the crocodile tears hadn’t spilled yet. She was slipping.
“I can see you in a cute little waitress outfit now. Tell me, how long before the Botox starts wearing off and those little wrinkles in your forehead come back? What about the crow’s feet?
How long will your fancy French skincare last before you have to go buy store brand?
What are you going to do when your pretty blonde extensions start smelling like the hot grease of the French fries you serve to working single mothers and their sticky-fingered brats? ”
That did it. She broke into thankfully silent sobs, tears running down her face. I gave her a minute to wallow in it, in what her future held if she fucked up again.
While she tried to get herself back together, I ran my hand under some cold water before wrapping the wound in a paper towel.
“What can I do? What do you need me to do?”
“You’re going to kill my brother.”
She blinked several times as her mouth dropped open. The moisture in her eyes was already drying. She was almost pretty like that, with her makeup messed up—lipstick smeared, mascara trailing down her face—and her bloodshot eyes making her green irises pop. “You want me to kill Pierce?”
“That has been the plan from the beginning. Make the world believe I’m dead. Kill Pierce and take his place.”
My mother never tired of telling the story of how I was born with my hand wrapped tightly around the umbilical cord…
which was wrapped around Pierce’s throat.
It was why the doctor wrenched him from her womb first, making him the heir, and me…
nothing. The second son. The spare. If only I’d succeeded then…
Skylar kept her back to the counter, circling me and escaping into the living room. She wrung her hands as she turned to face me. “Yes, but you were going to kill him. Not me! I can’t kill Pierce!”
I poured myself another drink. “You, my dear, are going to do exactly as you are told, or I’ll have to assume you are no longer of any use to me.
” I allowed the unspoken threat to linger between us.
“I don’t pay for things that are of no use to me.
So which is it, princess? Are you gonna get your hands dirty and kill my brother, or are you gonna get your hands dirty wiping up after middle class families? ”
She broke my gaze to stare at her palms. “I didn’t think you’d really go through with all this. I thought you’d…I don’t know…move on to a different plan. You are not actually planning on killing your own brother, are you?”
I smiled as I raised the glass to my lips. Taking a long swallow of the cheap, gasoline-like liquor, I said, “That is precisely what I plan to do.”