But she had never taken herself for a fool.
Someone gullible who could be tricked so easily.
She wished those thoughts weren’t echoing in the back of her mind. She wished, in the nearly hour-long drive it took to get back to the townhouse, her anger had simmered down, and she would at least be able to see reason when she asked what the hell had he been thinking?
But the more she thought on it, the hotter Karina’s blood had boiled until frustrated, anguished tears burned at the back of her eyes, though she was careful not to let a single one fall.
Tears were a weakness.
And Uilleam had always been able to use weaknesses against a person. He practically made a sport out of it.
Hadn’t he used hers just as easily? So much so that she hadn’t realized he was doing it until it was too late.
During the drive, she had thought she would be happy at the sight of the townhouse—of something they shared and were meant to become more in—but just looking at it brought back the differences she only attempted to ignore.
In this life she’d wanted for herself, she lived modestly within the means afforded to her by the paper. Everything about Uilleam, from the homes he bought to the cars he drove, were all grand in comparison.
Larger than life almost.
That was how he seemed.
So far above the clouds that he could be watched and admired but was too far away to actually be touched.
She wanted to right wrongs while he wanted to make more of them.
The impossibility of what they were had made her think maybe they were fated—that there could be something amazing between them because they fit like two puzzle pieces.
Now … now, she knew how wrong she had been.
She should have known better.
Karina went to open the door when Uilleam finally parked, but he reached for her before she could, his hand clasping hers. “Let me explain.”
It was tempting to just yank away from him—to completely ignore whatever he thought to say next because, in many ways, it wouldn’t make a difference. Not only would she still be out of her job, but the story she had been working on was completely dead as well.
It was far too late now to try to right any of that, and as she stared at him across the seat, she wasn’t sure she actually wanted him to.
“There’s no excuse you could possibly give me that would justify what you did.”
For a moment—just a moment—he seemed at a loss for words. As if whatever answer he’d been about to give was no longer adequate. Or one that he knew she would never accept.
Before he could gather his thoughts and try again, she yanked her arm free and quickly moved out of reach as she opened the passenger door and stepped out.
Fury made it impossibly easy for her to walk across the uneven ground toward the front door without stumbling. It even had her stalking into the living room before Uilleam had made it up the front steps.
It was worse, those feelings currently churning inside her. Because she was angry with him, and if she thought yelling or cursing him would help the way she was feeling, she would have screamed her voice hoarse. But it was too late for that now.
And even as she was angry with him, some small part of her couldn’t forget the way he’d looked apologetic back in the truck, and she hated herself for having that weakness. For caring at all about how he felt when he had betrayed her and then lied about it.
She hadn’t even had the opportunity to learn from him rather than the insufferable woman she wished she could physically harm. She wouldn’t be able to forget it anytime soon.
The sound of the door closing echoed, the sound forcing her to confront the man she only wanted to ignore. But when Uilleam wanted her attention, she always gave it.
“I warned you,” he said, his hands now in fists, his eyes narrowed.
As if she were the one who had done wrong.
As if she were the one to blame.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Are you the victim here, Uilleam Runehart? Please,” she snapped with a wide gesture of her hand, “enlighten me.”
“I warned you,” he said again as if she hadn’t spoken, “not to do anything with the information I gave you. You deliberately diso—”
“You don’t have a say or an opinion about what I write and who I write about.”
He tapped a finger against the countertop, the rest of him remaining alarmingly still. “I do when it comes to what I’m building.”
The thing that had kept him away for so long.
The thing that had him up until the wee hours in the morning before he slept for a handful of hours before being back at it again the next day.
The thing that had been consuming him over the past few months.
“You truly don’t get it, do you?” she asked, sounding disturbingly calm for how she felt internally.
As if a storm was twisting and turning inside her and there was no escape.
He opened his mouth to speak but seemed to think better of whatever he’d been about to say. “This was in the works long before you stumbled onto it.”
“So was Gaspard,” she shot back.
“It’s not the same.”
“How the hell is it not the same?”
“Because he wasn’t important,” he said impatiently. “He was merely a pawn—”
“Then what was I?” she asked, her heart stuttering at the thought. “I don’t doubt that you knew I was a part of it since Camilla first gave me the assignment.”
He remained mute, gaze still on her.
“You lied to me.”
“No,” he answered as if this was the one thing he wouldn’t accept. “I never lied to you.”
“No, you just omitted. Evaded. Which is still lying.”
And now that she thought back on it, had she not been so blinded by her need to finish the story as quickly as possible and her love for him prevented her from seeing things clearly.
He’d manipulated her.
“Answer my question.”
“Karina—”
“Answer! I want to know. What was I? A pawn? A bishop? A quee—”
“You were what I needed you to be at the time,” he finally answered as if she had ripped the truth right out of him despite how much he didn’t want to say it.
And somehow, those words hurt worse.
As if she hadn’t mattered at all.
She was just meant to be another unsuspecting victim in their grand schemes.
“If it makes you feel better,” he said, daring to take a step closer to her. “Call me an asshole, then let me fix this.”
Karina could do nothing but stare at him. He was ... there were no words.
But it was at this moment that she knew this was the man he was. Something dark and formidable hidden behind a beautiful smile. She hadn’t been foolish enough to believe she could change him. She’d just underestimated the monster that lived and breathed inside him.
The man who was willing to do anything to get what he wanted.
He’d shown her, more than once, but she’d elected to ignore it because she loved him.
Now … now, she had a choice to make.
“I’ll give you an hour,” he said as if he was doing her some great favor. “However you want me to fix it, I will.”
But he didn’t understand.
It wasn’t just because of the ramifications of his actions—she knew he could fix that—it was the broken trust between them.
Because what was built on lies could never last.
This could never last.
It would never work.
She watched him as he turned and left, venturing out the front door and closing it behind him. How he didn’t look back.
Remembering how he could go from guilty to defensive in a matter of seconds.
She couldn’t do this, not right now. She needed time to think and get away without his interference.
It was time to leave.
It was impossible f
or her to bask in her misery the way she wanted.
She couldn’t properly drink the way she craved, not when her thoughts were going a mile a minute, and she kept forgetting she even had a drink in her hand. Then on the heels of it came the wretched realization that she would have to wallow in this.
Because it wasn’t just a distant memory.
That her pain was real and nearly too much to bear.
And it … was over.
All of it.
The job she had loved. The life she had built for herself through sheer will alone.
It was all gone in the blink of an eye because she had been foolish enough to fall in love. She’d believed in it too much.
It was time, she realized as she swiped away a tear, to move on.
To let this side of her go and drift away. She needed to face the reality of it all—that her job at the Post was no more, and her relationship … she couldn’t stand the sight of him at the moment even as she missed him with every fiber of her being.
Now, she did actually finish her drink, swallowing down the burning alcohol until her throat went numb and the glass was empty. Nearly to the second she slammed it down onto the bar top, her phone buzzed anew, Uilleam’s name lacerating her heart.
For once, she didn’t eagerly take it in her hand. She didn’t answer the call with a smile and a warm feeling in her chest.
She let it ring. And ring some more. And ring until the sound tapered off.
But even as she was afforded a few seconds of silence from it, it started right back up again.
Pushing away from the bar, Karina stumbled to her feet, no longer trying to contain all the confusing, conflicting emotions she felt. She let them all wash over her until they were all she knew.
Until everything else replaced the hurt she felt.
Even as she turned her back, heading for the door, she could still hear the echoes of her phone ringing as it sat on the bar top counter next to her empty glass.
It was time to leave, she reminded herself.
The cab was already waiting for her outside, and as much as it hurt, she refused to look back at that townhouse, knowing just looking at it would make her want to stay.
Swiping away a tear, she slid into the back seat, fisting her hands in her lap.
“Where to, Miss?” the cabbie asked, glancing at her through the rearview mirror.
She also didn’t miss the way his eyes seemed to lower as he looked beyond her face to where her shirt was plastered to her chest from the now heavily falling rain. Electing to ignore that, she searched through her purse until she found her wallet, unzipping the back pocket and reaching in for the card inside.
One particular card that she had never thought she would end up using.
The last thing Isla had given her before she had left for New York.
“Just in case,” she’d said as she had scribbled down an address Karina hadn’t recognized. “It’s always important to have a backup if you need it.”
She wasn’t sure exactly what she would find there—she hadn’t thought much about the card until this moment—but considering where her night seemed to be going, there was no better time than the present to check.
Rattling off the address, she rode in silence the entire journey there, lost in her own mind, wishing she could think about anything other than those last few moments of the fight with Uilleam.
She wished she could get the expression he’d had out of her head.
That she didn’t know everything she did.
“Miss?” the cabbie repeated, barely managing to keep the irritation out of his voice.
She could understand his confusion, considering her current state, but she also knew that if their positions had been reversed, she wouldn’t have been nearly as impatient.
Because she enjoyed helping people.
Because despite everything else, she was surprisingly good at it.
She saw the good in people … even when they didn’t deserve it.
Trying not to let that thought consume her, she rattled off the address, resting her head back against the seat as the cab started to move.
Her heart was thumping so heavily in her chest, she wasn’t sure how long they had been driving before she finally deigned to look out the window at the blurred image of the city. Another day, she might have appreciated the view of the rain and the way the droplets slid down the clear window, but tonight it felt too much like the way she felt inside.
She didn’t realize they had circled the same block three times until he called out, “Listen, lady. I’d love to help you out here, but I got a living to make, and I ain’t gonna—”
Pulling out her wallet, she opened it, eyeing the cards she had tucked away. She considered charging her ride to one of them until she got to the one tucked away in the back. One she hadn’t touched since she arrived in New York.
Truthfully, she had no idea how much money sat in the account it was connected to, not to mention the sheer amount of interest she’d earned over the many years she’d gone without ever spending a dime from the balance.
And in her quest to reinvent herself, she’d wanted to pay her own way instead of using the blood money her mother had offered her in exchange for joining the family business.
There it was, just sitting at her fingertips … but before she could let the impulse take her away, she moved right on past it and grabbed a hundred-dollar bill and passed it through the opening in the partition that separated them. “I’ll pay you double if you wait for me here.”
He held the money up to the light, checking the corner for the president’s face. “See ya when you get back.”
The building was so dated and tiny, she was surprised it was still open this late at night, but the man behind the counter—who seemed as old as the establishment itself—all too happily allowed her inside once she gave him her name.
He welcomed her out of the cold, briefly eyeing the cabbie who was still idling at the curb.
Though she was sure she had never met the man before, he seemed to know her as he immediately stepped off to the right to grab a mangled metal box protected by a standard key lock.
It was only then that she noticed a small picture resting on top—her picture.
“Your sister says you’d come pick this up,” he said slowly and carefully, holding the picture up beside her face to double check.
Despite the night she was having, she almost smiled.
No one would ever suspect this man of hiding something for someone like her sister.
“Thank you.”
He gave her a moment alone to open it, finding another key card as well as a brochure for the building she assumed the key belonged to.
A condo in Upper Manhattan.
With one last thank you to the shop owner, she left again and gave the cabbie the new address, sitting up and paying attention this time as they drove through the city.
She tipped him well once they arrived at the hotel, heading inside and out of the rain. With the key card clutched in her hand, she bypassed the front desk entirely and went for the bank of elevators.
Since she was a little girl, Karina had always thought she knew herself best and had everything there was to know figured out about what she wanted and where she was going.
When she walked out of her mother’s home the first chance she got, she hadn’t been thinking about anything other than stretching her wings and learning how to fly on her own.
To figure out whether everything she had been told and taught were just lessons from a woman of a different time.
She hadn’t expected this.
Not one single bit of it.
Karina blinked as the elevator doors opened on the thirty-sixth floor, revealing a long hallway with a navy blue runner spanning down the length until it reached the door of Unit 3605.
She wasted no time at all pressing her key against the center before shoving down the handle and pushing the door open.
As far as she could see once
she turned the lights on, no one was home, but it was also clear that whoever lived here had been there recently. She could still smell the lemon in the air.
With restless energy and nothing but time on her hands, she ventured around the rather large apartment—from the spacious kitchen to the living room with its tall ceilings and even longer drapes, and finally into a bedroom with a perfectly made bed and fluffy pillows.
It was beautiful and probably cost a fortune, but it was also empty. Even with all its pretty furniture and the impressive views, it didn’t change the fact that the silence was deafening.
And most of all, Uilleam wasn’t here.
He didn’t even know of this place or any way to find her in it.
For once, she was out of his reach.
Her heart leaped into her throat at the sound of mechanical whirring a moment before the door came open.
Uilleam, she suspected, her emotions all over the place, but before she could launch into him, she realized Uilleam wasn’t coming through the door.
Isla walked in with a surprised expression on her face as if she too were expecting someone else.
But when she took in the frazzled state of her, from the running mascara to the wild, untamed strands of her hair, her confusion melted away.
And maybe, just maybe, if she hadn’t looked at her as if she knew exactly why she was there, Karina might have been able to ignore the way her throat felt like it was closing up.
As tears stung her eyes so badly that she had no choice but to blink and let the first few fall. And once she started, she couldn’t bring herself to stop.
Isla didn’t say a word as she dropped her bag on the floor, not caring that it was expensive, and Mother might have blinked twice at the misuse.
They met somewhere in the middle of the floor, and before she even had a mind to do it, Karina cried.
Because she had been foolish enough to think that she was different to him.
Because she was foolish enough to love and want him still …
29
Syn
White Rabbit Page 29
