Chapter 39
TROY
Work. Hunt. Sleep. Repeat.
I try to return to normal, to the things I was obsessed with before Sage arrived and turned everything upside down. But nothing feels right anymore. Not even slitting warm throats, feeling the blood release, like a pressure valve, and then watching the light flicker and die in their eyes.
Mundel observes me with something too close to disgust; he hates that I’m like this, but fuck him.
I’m his employer; if he doesn’t like it, he knows where the door is.
Kathy makes annoying comments about how empty the house is now, how barren the kitchen is, and gives me that look…
the one that says I’ve disappointed her.
I can’t tell Kathy where to go, so I avoid her.
It’s not like we had a thrilling conversation before all this.
I did the right thing, letting her go.
Allowing the songbird to fly from her cage, before I could destroy her completely, was a mercy. My darkness would have swallowed her whole.
And as soon as I found the letter in Darrow’s things, I knew what it was: a letter from Nell.
Extracting myself from Sage, I left her sleeping under the bed and found a flame to heat the paper, making the words burn into the page.
I knew then who she was and that she had lied to me.
She’d been lying to me for weeks, all the while looking me in the eyes and pretending she wasn’t who I thought she was.
After disappearing without a word, after letting me think she was dead or worse, she came back and pretended not to know me.
I trusted her, was starting to, anyway. All that push and pull between us felt real, but it was just a game to her. It always has been. That I trusted her; I believed her innocence. But it was all a lie.
She was Nell all along.
That’s why I couldn’t stand at the altar with her and go through with the deal she manipulated me into for her father.
All I could see was red, taste was bitterness.
If I had gone through with it, I would have kept my monster in check just enough to see it through, and when everyone had left, I would have tied her up pretty with her own garters and slit her throat while I made her sing for me.
That’s why I left.
I would have fucking killed her.
And she would have realized just how much of a monster I really am.
Days pass, and the anger dissipates to a dark loathing of myself instead. I have to ignore how cold the halls feel now that she’s gone and throw myself into work.
At least I have work.
Ben, the traitor, still sleeps outside her old room, pacing the halls looking for her, whining.
“She’s not coming back,” I tell him.
He doesn’t believe me.
“She was a lovely girl who deserved better than you,” Kathy decides to lecture me about a week later.
“That’s why I let her go.”
But her expression says she doesn’t believe that for a second.
“Right. Well. Dinner’s at seven if you want it. Though I suspect you’ll be in your office pretending to work while you drink yourself stupid.” She leaves before I can respond to that.
Richard calls, but I don’t answer, even when his lawyers send new documents. I don’t bother to sign them. The marriage was the lynchpin of our arrangement. Without Sage as collateral, the whole deal crumbles….
Which means I’m losing Grayfleet.
The estate my family built, the home they died in, and the land I bought back at inflated prices to have something of theirs again, is going back to that fucker Richard.
I should care.
But I don’t.
I was never going to keep it after I found the evidence I needed.
After Crazy Roy told me, when I eventually managed to hunt him down, that Nell did hire his boat, but not one in London.
One in Fleet. I knew she had been lying to me about where she had seen the documents, and that looking around Southwark for her was a waste of time.
She lied to me. It was always Grayfleet.
Richard’s excavation company snapped up the property after the fire; of course, that was where he’d kept everything.
That was the only reason I bought it at the auction, paying a ridiculous price to have it there and then, no delays.
Her disappearance was linked to this cursed place.
Only when Richard found out who’d bought it, a foreign billionaire throwing money around, he thought that he could worm his way into my good graces with his ridiculous marriage proposal.
It turns out he was looking for the evidence too.
Fuck it.
I turn off my phone and shove it in a drawer. Anything urgent can come through Mundel.
About five days after the non-wedding, Mundel brings me the papers that make it official. “If you don’t respond to Richard’s attorneys by Friday, the sale reverts. Grayfleet goes back to him.”
“Fine.”
Mundel stares at me and then huffs. “I’ll arrange for the movers to come tomorrow, then shall I?”
“You do that.” I don’t look up from my laptop.
“Are you really going to let this girl distract you from the plan?”
“It’s just a house, Mundel.” What’s the point of having Grayfleet if she’s not in it? What’s the point of any of fucking things these days?
“She was just another whore.”
“What did you say?” Now, I look up, not fucking amused. “Say that again so I can cut your tongue from your head.” The only reason I haven’t yet is that I need him more than ever. He’s the reason my business deals haven’t gone south yet. Maybe that’s why he thinks he can goad me into a reaction.
“Thank fuck, you’re still in there. But snap out of this goddam pussy energy now because I have shit to do.” Mundel snarls, and then he stalks out.
I go back to pretending I’m fine.
Two weeks pass, and I’m still fine, but I’ve thrown myself into work that doesn’t involve this house or her and her damn family, and Mundel stops complaining.
But really, it’s anything to stop thinking about the way she bites her lip when she’s nervous, the way her pink tongue darts out begging me to kiss her when she’s concentrating hard—that crease in her brow when she’s mad at me, even.
The chirpiness of her voice, no matter how horrible I may be to her.
Her goddam beautiful pussy just asking to be devoured… .
Fuck, there I go again.
Honestly, all I need is to walk past a vase of lavender, and I’m ready to get on my boat, find her, and drag her back home. There was a day I actually got halfway across the lake, until I cut the engine.
I should hate her.
And I need to stop using that word should because every time I do, I think of her, then I want a drink, and then that turns into a bottle. Before long, Mundel has banned me from video calls and external meetings until I start shaving and turning up for work sober again.
Two weeks turn into three, and I stop doing anything I should be doing.
The phone rings with unknown numbers, and I ignore them.
The messages pile up, but I don’t care to read them; there’s nothing anyone can say that will bring her back.
Kathy continues to bring me meals I don’t eat; they all taste like cardboard anyway.
Mundel brings reports, but I barely skim through them; nothing seems to catch my attention.
At least Ben has stopped waiting by her door.
At least, he’s given up.
That’s when I realize, I haven’t. And I need her like blood in my veins. Without it, I’m slowly turning into a corpse.
“I’m going after Richard.” The words come out flat and final.
If I can’t have her, then I’m going to kill the bastard who took her from me.
I should have killed him years ago, but I was keeping him for last; he was the reason I was breathing, living, going through the motions.
And now, he’s the reason I can’t fucking function anymore.
I’m going to carve him six ways from Sunday.
And I’m going to enjoy it.
Mundel looks up from his tablet. He’s playing that stupid fucking game again, Roadkill Crossing, or whatever the fuck it is. “Oh, when?”
“Tonight. I’ve let this drag on long enough.” I pull out my case of razors, all six since the seventh is in the damn lake. “The deal is dead. Grayfleet is gone. Nothing is holding me back from cutting him to ribbons.”
“Don’t you think we should plan it like the others?”
“No.”
“What about…”
I turn away before he can say her name. I don’t want to hear it. Can’t.
“She’s out of the way and safe, that’s all that matters.” I know she went to her friend’s house in Whitechapel. I have a satellite that can take aerial shots, and a few days after she arrived, I caved in and looked. She was fine, walking on the common with a friend. She doesn’t need me at all.
I’m shoving my weapons into my bag when my phone buzzes. This time, I look at it. It’s another missed call from an unknown number.
It rings again.
I’m about to silence it when a text comes through.
This is Laine. Sage’s friend. Pick up your fucking phone.
My blood goes cold.
I call back immediately.
“Finally!” I don’t know Laine, but her voice is edged with panic. “I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks!”
“What happened? Is she alright?”
“Gone. Her father took her.” The words hit like a storm, turning my world upside down.
“A week after she arrived, some men just showed up at my house and took her. I called her house, and her mother said Sage was having a breakdown and needed to come home. I would have sent Jaxon, but he’s away for work.
My cousin is detained. You’re the last one I could think of. ”
“Address?”
“Now you get the urgency? Seriously? You bastard, you don’t deserve—”
‘Address, now!”
She reels off the address in Templevale. “And Troy—” Her tone is scathing. “If anything happens to her, I’m holding you responsible.”
My vision distorts, chest closes in, and I want to bolt cut the fingers of the fuckers that thought they could put their hands on her.
“You think she’s hurt.”
“After she read that letter, after she learned the truth,”—Laine seethes down the phone—“she thinks she’s crazy, and so do her parents. They’ve locked her up before.”
Rage engulfs me.
I don’t even remember hanging up.
“Is it time to go hunting?” Mundel is already standing, pulling on a pair of black leather gloves.
“Change of plans.” I head for the door. “We’re not hunting Richard tonight.”
He pauses. “Then where the hell are we going?”
I don’t look back to see if he’s following. “To get my bloody wife back.” If she’ll take me.
The Lovett estate in Templevale is two hours away, but she’s already been there two weeks where anything could have happened.
I drive, and Mundel sits in the passenger seat and calls me all kinds of fucked up things when I almost crash, driving way too fast, reducing the time it takes to get there to one hour and 27 minutes.
But of all the horrors that I could have imagined, nothing prepares me for what I see when I walk into that house.
And I’m a dark-hearted bastard at that.