CHAPTER SEVEN
The silk drapes in Kennedy Lockhart’s bedroom had been drawn shut for three days, casting the expansive, elegantly appointed space into a state of perpetual twilight. The air inside the room was stagnant, with the scent of unlit vanilla candles and the suffocating weight of grief.
Kennedy sat on the edge of the velvet chaise lounge situated near the bay windows, her knees pulled tightly to her chest, her chin resting on her folded arms. She wore the same oversized gray sweater she had put on the morning after the anniversary party, her hair tangled and unbrushed.
She looked like a ghost haunting her own life, disconnected from the sprawling, privileged world she had commanded so effortlessly just days prior.
The Lockharts had immediately closed ranks around her. Margaret, John, and Spencer had formed an impenetrable, fiercely protective wall, ensuring that the outside world could not reach her. They respected her need for silence, but they refused to leave her in isolation.
The door to her bedroom clicked open, the brass hinges silent.
Spencer walked in, carrying a small silver tray with a porcelain teacup and a plate of untouched toast. He set the tray down on the marble side table and took a seat on the edge of her unmade bed, studying his younger sister’s profile in the dim light.
"You haven't eaten, Ken," Spencer said quietly, his deep voice a gentle, grounding anchor in the quiet room. "You need to put something in your stomach. It’s been three days."
Kennedy didn't turn her head. Her hazel eyes remained fixed on the sliver of gray daylight bleeding through the gap in the curtains. "I’m not hungry, Spencer."
"I don't care if you're hungry. It’s physiological necessity at this point," Spencer countered softly, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.
When she still didn't move, he let out a slow, measured breath.
"Talk to me. Please. You’ve barely said two words since the morning Dr. Aris came.
I know you're drowning in guilt over what happened in that study, but this… this shutdown… it’s something else. "
Kennedy closed her eyes, a fresh, hot tear slipping down her pale cheek, soaking into the wool of her sweater.
Spencer was right. The guilt of the kiss, the shame of not walking away from a man who belonged to someone else when she had the fleeting, drug-addled chance to do so—that was a terrible burden.
She knew she would carry the weight of that moral failure for the rest of her life.
But that wasn't what had broken her spirit so deeply.
"He thought I drugged him," Kennedy whispered, the words rasping painfully in her dry throat.
Spencer’s jaw tightened. "I know he did. He was out of his mind, Kennedy."
"It doesn't matter," she said, finally turning her head to look at her brother, her eyes swimming with a devastation so heart-breaking, it made Spencer’s chest ache.
"Spencer, we grew up with him. I have known him since I was born. He’s six years older than me.
You and Ryder are the same age, you were always a team, and I was always the little kid tagging along.
I was the one dragging all of you into the mud, pulling you into trouble, hiding in the stables when we were supposed to be at formal dinners.
We spent our entire childhoods together. "
"I know," Spencer murmured, holding her gaze.
"I can understand him loving Olivia," Kennedy continued, her voice trembling as the dam finally began to break.
"I accepted that. I could even understand him constantly taking her side over mine. Every time she felt intimidated, every time she felt insecure, he blamed me. He would pull me aside and scold me like a child, telling me to back off, to shrink myself down so she could feel bigger. I hated it, but I rationalized it. I told myself that love makes people blind. He’s protective of her, so he just stopped seeing me clearly.
That hurt, Spencer. It really hurt. But I could live with it. "
She uncurled her legs, dropping her bare feet to the cold hardwood floor, her hands gripping the edge of the chaise so tightly her knuckles turned white.
"What I cannot live with is the fact that his first instinct—his immediate, certainty—was that I am a criminal," she sobbed, the sound tearing through the quiet room.
"If he had screamed at me for kissing him, if he hated me for not walking out of that study, I would have accepted it.
I would have taken that anger because I deserve it.
But to look at me, after more than two decades of history, and genuinely believe that I slipped a narcotic into his drink just to ruin his relationship?
To believe I would sink to something that evil? "
Spencer stood up, crossing the short distance between them, and sat down on the chaise beside her. He wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders, pulling her against his side.
"Kennedy—"
"It means he doesn't know me at all," Kennedy wept into his shirt, her voice muffled by the fabric.
"It means all those years we spent together meant absolutely nothing to him.
I knew he didn't love me the way I loved him.
I even accepted that maybe he didn't really like me as much as he used to.
But to think my character is that rotten…
to think I am capable of a felony against him?
It broke me, Spencer. I don't know how to exist in a world where Grayson looks at me and sees a monster. "
Spencer held her tightly, pressing his cheek against the top of her head. He let her cry, his own eyes darkening with a fierce, protective fury directed at the estate next door. Grayson Ashford-Wale had inflicted a wound so deep that it had severed the very foundation of Kennedy’s identity.
"You are not a monster," Spencer told her, his voice a low, fierce vow in the quiet room. "And I will not let him treat you like one. We are going to get the truth, Kennedy. I promise you."
***
Less than a mile away, in the sprawling, glass-walled office of the Ashford-Wale penthouse suite, Grayson was living in a purgatory of his own design.
The sun was shining brightly over the Rhode Island coastline, reflecting off the ocean in a blinding display of summer perfection, but Grayson hadn't looked out the window in days.
He sat behind his obsidian desk, staring blankly at the glowing screen of his laptop.
Spreadsheets containing billion-dollar projections blurred together into meaningless gray lines.
His cell phone vibrated violently against the glass surface of the desk.
Grayson flinched. He looked down at the caller ID.
Olivia.
A sickening knot formed at the base of his throat, threatening to choke him.
It was the third time she had called today.
He had ignored the first two, just as he had spent the last three days manufacturing desperate, hollow excuses to keep her at arm's length.
He couldn't face her. Every time he pictured her sweet, open face, her trusting blue eyes, his mind immediately overlaid it with the brutal, violent memories of what his hands had done to Kennedy Lockhart in the darkness of the study.
His hand hovered over the phone, trembling slightly.
The guilt was a living, breathing entity inside his chest, eating away at his sanity.
He knew he had to tell her the truth. The moral code he had built his entire life upon demanded it.
But the sheer terror of seeing the light die in Olivia’s eyes, the dread of watching the woman he loved look at him with revulsion, paralyzed him.
The phone stopped vibrating.
Grayson let out a ragged breath, dropping his head into his hands. But a second later, the phone buzzed again, this time with a text message.
Olivia: Grayson? Are you okay? You’ve been so quiet. I’m getting worried about you. Please just let me know you're not sick.
Grayson squeezed his eyes shut. He picked up the phone, his fingers stiff and clumsy, and typed out a response.
Grayson: I’m so sorry, Liv. I’m not sick. The fallout from the anniversary party has been a logistical nightmare, and I’ve been trapped in board meetings back-to-back. I’m overwhelmed. I promise I’ll make it up to you as soon as I can breathe again.
He hit send, tossing the phone across the desk as though the device itself burned him.
It was a lie. A pathetic, cowardly lie. He was the CEO of a global empire; he could delegate a party cleanup with a single phone call.
He was hiding, drowning in a toxic cocktail of his own guilt, his anger toward Kennedy, and the terrifying, creeping suspicion that he had no idea what was actually happening.
The doors to his office suddenly swung open, hitting the rubber stoppers with a loud, aggressive thud.
Grayson’s head snapped up.
Ryder strode into the room, his usual easygoing demeanor vanished. He looked lethal. In one hand, he carried a thick manila folder; in the other, a digital tablet. He didn't bother greeting his brother. He marched directly to the desk and slammed the manila folder down on top of Grayson’s keyboard.
"Read it," Ryder commanded, his voice vibrating with unfiltered rage.
Grayson stared at the folder, the blood draining from his face. "Are these the results from Dr. Vance?"
"Read the damn paper, Grayson."
Grayson reached out with a trembling hand, flipping the cover of the folder open. He scanned the dense medical terminology, his eyes catching on the highlighted red text at the bottom of the page.
Positive: Class 4 Synthetic Aphrodisiac / Hallucinogenic properties present. Unregulated compound. Extreme toxicity.
Grayson stopped breathing. The letters seemed to swim on the page.