“Did you? Or were you too fucking young, and he knew that, and he took advantage anyway? Jesus, Eva, this is about your honor.”
“And what about yours?” The fury in her eyes pins me in place, which is an unsettling feeling for a person like me. I’m the one who terrifies people. I’m not afraid of her—never Eva. But we’re skirting dangerously close to secrets that might as well be in a locked box in a locked room in a locked house on the other side of the continent. You’d have to be fucking foolish to go there. “What about what they did to you?”
“What about it? You can’t expect the Constantines to learn two lessons at once.”
“They hurt you.” Eva looks like she wants to throw herself across the couch and hug me, which would not be welcome in this moment.
“They hurt you worse,” I say.
“Debatable.” She looks away from me and into the fire. “We could just forget about all this. Move on with our lives. Never think about the Constantines again.”
Maybe that’s possible for Eva. Maybe she can trick her mind into forgetting everything about Lane Constantine and how much he pretended to love her. I don’t have that luxury. We were both wounded by the Constantines, Eva and me. But only one of us has a set of inescapable reminders. Even if I never came back to Bishop’s Landing again, even if I never set foot in Manhattan, I’d think of those fuckers every single day.
A quiet minute passes. “Is there anything I can say to convince you to give this up?”
“No.”
“At least you’re honest.” Eva hands me her empty Diet Coke can and stands up, stretching her arms over her head. “Am I going to see you at dinner?”
The dinner in question is a Morelli family dinner, hosted like clockwork by our mother. The purpose of these dinners is to let our father pretend he still has any power now that Lucian has taken over Morelli Holdings.
“Yes.”
“Promise? It’s never any fun without you.”
“It’s never any fun. But yes. I promise.” I won’t stop what I’ve put into motion with Phillip Constantine, but I will sit through dinner, if that’s what she wants.
I walk Eva to the front door and see her into the car that’s waiting in the drive. Usually, when she looks this tired, she stays over in one of my guest rooms. I let her redecorate two of them last year. It took her three weeks, and she seemed happy the whole time.
She waves to me through the back window. They’re tinted, so I can only see the ghost of movement there. I wave back. She pulls away.
The night air is bitter and clear. In a very fucked-up way, it feels better through my clothes than the heat of the fire. After the sound of Eva’s car fades, there’s nothing but wind through the bare branches of trees in the front courtyard.
A text comes into my phone from one of my people in Bishop’s Landing.
She’s left home. Heading toward the city.
Haley Constantine isn’t going to wait the full twenty-four hours.
It was generous of me, to give her so much time when I wanted to bundle her into the back of my car and bring her here. She was so afraid. That fear would have been fucking delicious in a small space. I would have taken my time undoing the buttons of her coat. Haley, in that ridiculous hat and one mitten, though I might do it right there against the wall.
I should have.
But something about the trembling bravery in the middle of all that fear made me...
Not soft. Never soft.
Patient. It made me patient. I’m already far more patient than people give me credit for, which is by design. But tonight I outdid myself. Because—fuck. I want to see what’s underneath that coat. What’s underneath her clothes. My hand should have been at her neck already. It would feel so soft. So vulnerable.
Soon.
I saw the terror in her big, blue eyes. I saw the relief there, too, when she realized that all I’d done to her father was talk him into signing his life’s best work over to me. I saw how determined she was to stand in front of him.
No, she won’t wait until the sun rises tomorrow. She won’t wait, because a night at home in her bed, all safe and warm, would make a girl like Haley lose her nerve.
A gust of wind trails through my sweater and my shirt. My back hurts less now. It’s easier to ignore when I’m so fucking excited.
My new Constantine toy will be here shortly. And then we’ll play games.
6
Haley
My headlights cut through the night on a snowy, tree-lined road. It’s past midnight. A long drive. The lights from New York City are dim on the horizon in the rearview mirror.
Crystalline snowflakes hover by the dashboard. My breath is a white cloud.
I feel like I’ve been driving for years. The road rises over a ridge and a gap in the trees opens to reveal a wrought-iron gate set between two stone pillars.
Rick wasn’t happy when he saw the neighborhood where I left my car. He insisted on following me to the highway. And then he bailed, because what else was he going to do? Run me off the road and kidnap me?
Not a good look in front of the Constantines.
The gates swing open, and panic surges up and up and up. Leo Morelli is probably stalking the halls of his house, waiting for me to arrive, for the cage to close around me.
My arrival at the end of the long driveway, at the head of a snow-dusted circle drive, cuts off thoughts of cages and traps.
Because Leo lives in a castle.
Towers. Spires. Crenellations lining the roof.
This is not some McMansion in the suburbs. I’m not even in the suburbs. This place has grounds. It must have cost a fortune, being this close to the city and seeming so far away. When I come to a stop on the drive, my car is facing the most enormous detached garage on the planet, the same antique royal style as the house. It looks like it could have been stables in the distant past. It has four doors, but I bet there are more than four cars inside.
On the front of the castle, stone blocks surround huge front windows warm with light. That kind of light is a trap. It doesn’t mean the man inside is warm, or welcoming, or anything but lethal. Two security guards wait at the bottom of a wide staircase leading up to a landing, and the door.
Some of the Constantines talk about the Morellis like they’re not powerful, like they’re not a threat, but I don’t think that’s true. I think the men with guns aren’t even close to being the most dangerous people in the house.
Two exterior lights make those men and their rifles into silhouettes. My fingernails hurt, and I look down to discover I’ve been digging them into the steering wheel hard enough to leave marks through my mittens. I tug them both off and toss them onto the front seat.
No delaying the inevitable.
I leave the car running and step out into the snowfall and put a hand to my eyes, temporarily blinded by my own headlights.
God, I wish. I wish it weren’t too late to stop my dad from going to that meeting. I wish it weren’t too late to explain to him that his family is right about the Morellis, even if they’re not right about his inventions. Too late, too late, too late. We’re already here.
“Miss Constantine?” one of the men calls.
“That’s me.” This is a horrible parody of a dinner reservation. They call my name. He’s ready for me. My heart beats fast and light, as if it’s not powerful enough to actually pump blood. One thought after another crowds into my mind. I could pretend to faint. I could pretend to die. Instead I’ll have to pretend to be brave.