Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
I don’t sleep.
After Gabriel leaves, I stand on the balcony for a long time, watching the city lights blur through tears I refuse to let fall. The wind is cold up here—fifty-four floors of cold—but I barely feel it. All I can feel is the hollow ache in my chest where Gabe used to live.
He said all the right things. Made all the right promises. And I believe he meant them. In that moment, standing in front of me, he meant every word.
But moments pass and promises fade. And I’ve spent my whole life learning that the people who love you are the same people who hurt you most.
My father loved me. In his own twisted way, I think he really did. Maybe still does. And look what that love cost Gabriel. Cost us.
So, yes. Gabriel loves me. I don’t doubt that anymore. But love isn’t always enough. Sometimes love is the dark thing that destroys you.
I close my eyes, blocking the view when I’m trying to block my thoughts. Trying to simply be.
Turns out, just existing is harder than it sounds.
Eventually, I go back inside, and I wander through the rooms, too restless to sit, too exhausted to stand.
The kitchen is stocked with things I don’t want to eat.
The bar is stocked with things I probably shouldn’t drink.
The massive flat-screen TV offers a zillion channels of nothing I want to watch.
I try anyway.
I curl up on the leather sofa, wrapped in a cashmere throw as I flip mindlessly through channels without seeing any of them.
News—too depressing. Reality TV—too vapid.
A romantic comedy that makes me want to throw the remote because the couple on screen is fighting about a forgotten anniversary instead of, oh, I don’t know, whether one of them is going to murder the other’s father.
I turn it off.
Silence is better. Much better.
Except it’s not. I’m completely at loose ends. The penthouse feels too big. Too empty. And the silence is pressing in from all sides like something physical.
On top of all that, I keep glancing at my phone, waiting for what? Gabriel to text? To call? To tell me he’s changed his mind, or I should change mine, or that somehow in the last hour he’s figured out the magic words that will make all of this okay?
There are no magic words. I know that. But I keep hoping anyway.
I think about calling Harper and pouring out everything to her—the fight, the apology, the impossible choice Gabriel is asking me to make. She’d listen. She’d probably even have something wise to say, or at least something sarcastic enough to make me laugh.
But it’s late, and she’s probably still in New York, dealing with her own crisis, and I don’t want to be the friend who interrupts someone else’s crisis to whine about her own.
So I sit. And I stare at the ceiling. And I sip whiskey and consider a bubble bath and try to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do now.
Do I believe him?
The question circles through my mind like a shark, restless and hungry.
He said he’d choose me. Choose us. Choose the courts over blood.
But I’ve heard promises before. My father promised to protect me while he was plotting to kill the man I loved.
David promised our engagement was just business while he was falling in love with me.
Even Gabriel. For those first two years he gets a pass. But once he was fully entrenched at The Beast? Once I’d moved from Connecticut to the Monarch so I could learn the business inside and out? Once he was literally just a few blocks away?
And still he stayed silent?
Honestly, it makes my heart hurt.
Of course, if my father hadn’t tried to kill him—hadn’t made him believe I was in on it—well, of course, he’d have come back.
Is that what’s making me so pissy? That he lost faith in me?
I shake my head. I just don’t know anymore.
Except I do. At first, yes. That stung. His hatred. His fury. And all directed against a woman that wasn’t really me.
That about killed me, that lack of trust.
But we got through it.
That was the hard one. Now? Well, I’m okay with him believing my dad deserves to die. God knows, I believe that myself. But thinking he should die is a lot different than playing executioner.
And so long as Gabe means what he says—so long as he doesn’t take off like a vigilante to take out my father before the law can handle it—well, then I think we’re good.
I hope so.
On the whole, I don’t ask the world for much. But I’m asking now. I want him back. I want him to work through the trauma that’s eating him alive. To push past all those hurts he never should have had to bear and didn’t deserve.
I think he can. I hope he can.
But that’s the thing about trauma. It doesn’t care about fault. It just...is. And Gabriel’s trauma has teeth. Has claws. Has a beast living inside it that wants blood.
Can he really keep that beast leashed? Could anyone?
I don’t know. And not knowing is the worst part.
At some point, I must have dozed off. Now my neck aches from sleeping at an awkward angle, and my mouth tastes dry and bitter.
My phone chimes with a text, and I snatch it up. Harper.
You there?
I tap out a reply—Here. You still in NYC?
Her reply comes fast.
Can you come down to the parking garage? Stuff to carry. Save me from multiple trips?
Not my idea of a fun morning activity, but I’m hardly going to say no. Besides, I need to move. I’m all stiff from falling asleep on the sofa.
I drag myself off the couch, still wearing yesterday’s clothes. I don’t bother changing. Don’t bother checking my reflection. What’s the point? It’s just Harper.
I grab my phone and keys, pausing briefly to look at my reflection in the entryway mirror. My own exhaustion stares back at me. Dark circles under my eyes, hair tangled, skin dull and pale.
Gabriel would tell me I’m beautiful anyway. The thought makes my chest ache.
The ride down takes forever. Fifty-four floors of piped in music is cruel and unusual punishment. For what condos in this building cost, there should be a live orchestra right there in the corner.
The elevator opens onto the parking garage, and I step out into concrete and fluorescent lights and the smell of exhaust and damp asphalt.
“Harper?”
My voice bounces off the walls. No answer.
I walk deeper into the garage, past rows of expensive cars that belong to the building’s other residents. BMWs and Mercedes and a Tesla or three. Nobody else is around. Too early for anyone to be leaving for work, too late for anyone to be coming home from a night out.
“Harper, dammit where are you?”
Still nothing.
I pull out my phone and send a quick text—I’m going back up. Meet me there, and we’ll ride back down together.
I know there’s a guard at the gate, and I consider asking him to check all his cameras and tell me where she is, but it’s a long, circular walk. And even though I’m sure it’s only paranoia, I’m getting a little creeped out.
That’s when I see him.
A tall man, stepping out from behind a concrete pillar. I take a step back. Then another.
“Ms. Hart.” His voice is almost polite. “Your father would like a word.”
My blood goes cold. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“I’m afraid that’s not optional.” He gestures toward a black SUV idling near the exit, its windows tinted dark. “We can do this quietly, or we can do it loud. Your choice. But you’re coming either way.”
I think about screaming. About running. About the self-defense moves Gabriel tried to teach me, back when the most dangerous thing in my life was a handsy investor at a gallery opening.
But this guy’s a professional, and even if I screamed, who would hear me? It’s not yet five in the morning in an empty parking garage. By the time anyone responded, I’d already be gone. I need to buy time to make a plan.
“My father sent you?” I ask, stalling. “Sterling Hart?”
“Please come with us.”
It’s the us, that catches my attention, and that’s when I feel something hard press against my lower back.
There’s a second man. And he has the barrel of a gun pressed right against my spine.
“Like I said.” The tall man’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Not optional.”
The gunman guides me toward the SUV, one hand on my elbow, the gun still pressed to my back. My mind races—looking for options, looking for escape routes, looking for anything that might give me an advantage.
There’s nothing.
The SUV door slides open. Gun Guy pushes me inside. The other one zip-ties my wrists before I can even think about fighting back. As if I would. Gun.
“Hand over your phone,” Gun Guy says.
I consider saying I left it upstairs. But they’ll search me anyway, and the punishment for lying will be worse than the punishment for compliance. “Back pocket.”
He roughly pushes me forward, pulls it out, then drops it on the garage floor. Then he stomps on it. Hard. After that, he shuts the door, circles around to the driver’s seat, and starts the car.
The engine roars to life, and I fight the urge to vomit.
But as we pull out of the garage into the gray morning light, I hold tight to one absolute certainty—Gabriel Grimm is going to burn the world down looking for me.
I just have to stay alive long enough for him to find me.