Chapter 56
SKYLAR
“It’s been a full day. There’s nothing on the news. No ambulance. No hospital. Nothing. Why?” Jameson demanded as he threw one of my Waterford glasses across my living room, the crystal shattering against the wall.
Bringing him here was a mistake. My mother had given me those glasses.
A set of twelve, wrapped in tissue paper, tucked into a box she’d carried on her lap the entire flight back from a trip to London.
The last things she’d touched before she died.
I watched the crystal detonate against the wall and said nothing.
But I couldn’t stand that dingy hovel another minute. I needed my own space. Some semblance of control. What I hadn’t counted on was how little control I’d actually have once I brought him here.
We’d been here since last night. Sixteen hours of Jameson checking his phone, scanning news alerts, pacing grooves into my floors. The plan was simple: Pierce collapses, he’s rushed to the hospital, the news breaks, and I play the devastated almost-wife at his bedside.
None of it had happened. Not a single headline. Not a whisper.
“Calm down,” I said. “If they’d taken him to the hospital, it would have made the news by now. A Worthington in a coma? That’s not something you keep quiet. Unless the family is controlling the story before it breaks. They have the resources.”
“Twenty-four hours and nothing? Not a single goddamn word?”
The muscle in Jameson’s jaw hadn’t stopped twitching since he’d started pacing. I’d seen that twitch before, in other men, in other rooms. It always came right before the asking stopped.
He took two steps toward me, the kitchen island between us, and pressed his hands to the polished marble. Skin blotched red, eyes bloodshot, the tendons in his neck pulled tight. He looked like a man on the edge.
“If you’re lying to me, if you failed me again, I swear to God there is nothing that will keep you safe.”
“I swear I didn’t fail you. Check the vial; it’s in my bag.
I gave him the poison. I watched him drink it.
He slumped over in his chair. The glass fell out of his hand.
I left him there.” I made myself hold his gaze.
Looking away was the same as bleeding in front of a predator.
“Then I sent that mousy girl to find him. Told her he might do something reckless. She ran straight to his side.”
Jameson stared at me. The silence was worse than the shouting.
“Tompkins is probably waiting for word from the doctor before he calls. Unless...”
“Unless what?”
“Madison. What if she got in the way?”
“How?” Jameson took a slow step left. I mirrored him right.
“Pierce had her arrested for murder, then made sure no competent lawyer would touch her case. She would hate him. If she found him unconscious with no one around, who knows what she’d do.
Maybe she called her own people. Maybe she moved him somewhere before Tompkins could find him.
That would explain why there’s been no hospital admission, no news. ”
I’d checked every news feed twice while Jameson was in the bathroom.
Nothing. No breaking story about Pierce Worthington hospitalized.
No anonymous tips, no society column whispers.
A man that powerful didn’t slip into a coma without someone noticing.
Unless he hadn’t. Unless the poison hadn’t worked the way Jameson promised it would.
Jameson tipped his head back and laughed.
“You think some little townie bitch had it in her to drag a grown man out of that house? She was nothing. Just a pretty face. She was so mediocre, I couldn’t even get it up for her.”
I bit back the obvious question. Then why were you with her? But I already knew the answer. She wasn’t for wanting. She was for using.
We’d been circling for three minutes.
I was running out of kitchen.
“She didn’t do it. This was you failing a simple task.”
“No. I gave him the poison exactly as you told me to.” Each word was a small, careful thing. “Let me call the house. Ask to speak with Pierce directly. If he answers, we’ll know something went wrong. If he doesn’t...”
Jameson leapt over the counter.
There was no warning.
No escalation.
One moment the island was between us and the next his hand was around my throat.
My fingers locked around his wrist. His grip tightened. My lips went numb.
“Please,” I choked out. “Please.”
He leaned close. “This is a kindness. Nothing compared to what I’m going to do to that brother-fucking cunt and the thief who stole my inheritance.”
Black at the edges of my vision.
I thought, absurdly, of the glasses. Of my mother’s hands wrapping each one in tissue. Of all the things I had traded away. Just to end up here, in this penthouse I’d clawed for, dying at the hands of a man I’d chosen.
A knock at the door.
Jameson dropped me.
I hit the floor and pulled air in, each breath a raw scrape.
My head throbbed.
I couldn’t feel my fingers.
“Get the door,” he said, and walked into the hallway.
I fumbled upright. Crossed the room and opened the door.
“Ms. Yarwood?” The man’s eyes went to my throat and stayed there.
“Sorry,” I said. “Chopping onions.” I wasn’t sure if that whole tear thing was true but that was what they said on television.
He handed me an ivory envelope. The thick cotton stock the same weight, the same texture as the invitations I’d ordered for my own wedding, years ago, before Pierce decided I wasn’t worth the trouble of keeping.
The Worthington crest was embossed in gold on the seal.
He left. I stood in the doorway and stared at it.
Jameson yanked me back inside and ripped the envelope from my hand.
“You are invited to the engagement party of Mr. Pierce Worthington and Ms. Madison Hastings,” he read. His voice was very quiet. It was terrifying. “Black tie. Dinner at seven.”
He crumpled the invitation in his fist and raised it to my face. “What the fuck is this?”
If Pierce were in a coma, there would be no engagement party. The invitation meant one of two things: either it had been sent before the poison took effect, or Pierce Worthington was very much awake.
“The invitations must have gone out before I poisoned him. Let me call the house.”
My hands shook as I dialed.
“Worthington Residence.”
“Tompkins, darling. There must be a mistake. There can’t really be an engagement party tomorrow.”
A pause. A sigh.
“There is no mistake, madam. Will you be bringing a plus one?”
I hung up.
Jameson stood across the room, teeth bared, skin mottled.
Eleven Waterford glasses left on my shelf.
My mother’s hands. And all the things I could not take back.
There was nowhere to run.