“Always, Snitch.”
I lifted my eyes to his. He was already watching me, blue eyes open in a way that made my heart ache.
I realized I was still holding him, and I quickly let go, stepping away, focusing on the floor. On my bare feet.
“Let me know what you really want, Snitch.”
“Okay,” I said, voice catching on the emotion in my throat.
When I looked up, my doorway was empty.
Twenty-Four
GRAY
* * *
Crowne Industries’ eastern HQ is headquartered in New York. It’s a towering silver skyscraper in the heart of the financial district. My grandfather split his time between California, London, and New York.
His assistants glanced at me when the elevator opened, went back to their work, then did a double take.
“Mr. Grayson!” My grandfather’s first assistant rushed up to me. Grandpa had two assistants, an older one with graying hair, Tory, and a younger one.
The younger assistant tended to rotate with the year and newest sexual harassment lawsuit. Tory had been with Beryl for most of his adult life.
“We’ve missed you,” Tory said. “The air around here is…”
Crushing. Demoralizing.
“Different,” she provided. “How long are you back for—”
“Grayson.” My grandfather’s voice cut her off and she froze, clearly not expecting him to have gotten out of his seat.
“Grandfather.”
I followed him into his office, past two petrified assistants.
He took a seat behind his massive desk, the New York skyline behind him. I fell into the wingback opposite.
“I’ve enjoyed the interviews,” he said. “You look like quite the happy family.”
Silence ticked on.
Smug fucking bastard.
“I can’t remember the last time you came to work,” he finally said. “If you’re coming for my throne, I know you’re not prepared to sit on it. What are you going to do? Take it and let the castle crumble?”
“I don’t want your fucking throne,” I gritted.
He leaned forward, chin on the tips of his fingers. “So why are you here?”
“To bargain. I’ll give you what you want. A puppet. I’ll take the photos. I’ll show up to the meetings. I’ll play nice. I’ll stop fighting.”
“And what do you want?”
“Her alive. Out of this world. Safe. That includes from West du Lac. If anything happens to her, you know what I’ll do. We both win. She’s gone; I’m here.”
“And how do you propose we do that, Grayson?”
“I know you wouldn’t have gone through with this wedding unless you had enough dirt on du Lac to fill a fucking graveyard.”
He arched a brow. “You want me to go against our new family?”
There was only one person Grandfather ever looked out for: Grandfather.
“She’s gone before Christmas.”
“I’ll need your assurances. You…” My grandfather tapped his fingertips. “Have a history.”
“I’m willing to do whatever you need.”
He leaned back, rubbing the salt-and-pepper shadow on his jaw. “It’s time to take your place by my side, Grayson, but you’ve always been weak. Soft.” I clenched my jaw as his eyes drifted over my shoulder. “Tory is getting too old to look at. Start by firing her. Then show up for work tomorrow.”
I stood up, ignoring the sludge in my stomach.
I put Story in this mess, and I would get her out of it, no matter the cost to me.
STORY
* * *
After Grayson left, I stayed in bed, trying to ignore my craving for suckers. It’s not fair. It’s not fair that I crave Gray on a chemical level.
He’s in my bloodstream.
Tears bubbled in my eyes, hot and fucking uncontrollable. I ripped open my bedside nightstand, determined to smash all the suckers, when my eyes narrowed on the bottle left on top. Prenatal vitamins.
When did he manage to leave that? Was Grayson insane? Did he want the entire world to know I was pregnant?
“Angel?”
I slammed the bottle into my drawer too fast, and caught my fingers.
“Ow, fuck.” I grasped my hand, but moments later West was there, taking it into his, examining the throbbing red tip. He thumbed tears that had fallen before I’d slammed my finger, a question in his eyes. I looked away.
“Thanks for letting me sleep in my own room,” I said, anything to kill the butterflies in my stomach.
His brow furrowed, jaw tight with some emotion.
“Story Hale, I want you to want to be in my bed.” His eyes dropped to my lips, and the air shifted, charged.
I swear he wanted to kiss me.
My own eyes dropped to his lips. Lips I’d never kissed, not even when we’d had sex. I’d imagined it, imagined what those plump, kissable lips would feel like against my own. Would he be rough? Tender?
His eyes met mine, waiting for something I couldn’t give.
My lips parted, but no words came out.
A second later, he said, “I think you’re fine.” He stood back up, like nothing had happened, but I’d been blown over by a hurricane.
There was a sandstorm in my chest.
West was being too nice, and it made me feel…wrong. Wrong that Grayson had been on the floor last night. Wrong that I’d been craving him. Wrong that I’d just thought about kissing West.
Wrong.
It felt as if I was both cheating on the husband I’d promised I didn’t love, and the man I’d promised to hate.
“I wish I could stay and spend the day with you,” West said, “but I have work.”
“It’s fine. I’ll just spend the day here.” Hiding. Pretending I’m not in Crowne Hall. That this isn’t my life.
“Angel…You’re a du Lac now.”
My eyes met his. “So?”
“They’re expecting you in the sunroom. I won’t force you to go, but the harder we push, the more they push back.”
He checked his watch and, without another word, left me to ruminate on waiting for me in the sunroom. No bells on the wall to let me know they needed tea or cucumber sandwiches, but my husband telling me to meet my…in-laws.
In a daze I went to my closet.
I knew what they would be wearing, and none of my nun clothes would be appropriate. Still, I pulled out a white lacy blouse and black skirt.
Downstairs, women sat in sateen chaises and chairs around Tansy Crowne. The sun was soft, and it looked like a Victorian painting. I paused in the doorway, feeling like I should lower my eyes and wait to be called in.
“Story,” Tansy called for me. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
One by one their heads turned, gaze falling on me.
The only seat available was on a chaise next to Lottie. With knots in my stomach, I took it. They resumed the conversation, ignoring me with an ease only the rich could. They spoke of the impending holidays, of Thanksgiving a few weeks out.
The knots in my gut twisted like a rag with water.
It was black tie and I had nothing to wear.
A servant named Jane, with blonde hair and brown eyes, brought out a tray of fruit with “gourmet” dipping sauce that was basically diluted sugar water. I remember the highly trained chef rolling his eyes every time it was requested.
I reached for a thinly sliced pear.
“Oh, you’re not going to eat it plain, are you?” asked Lottie’s friend Pipa, tilting her head.
“We can’t expect her to know the difference,” Mrs. du Lac said.
Around me soft snickers rose.
I dragged the end of my tongue across my top lip.
“It doesn’t really do anything. We only make it because you request it…” My heart pounded so loud in my chest it roared in my ears, but I smiled sweetly, as if I wasn’t David standing up to Goliath. “But I can’t expect you to know the difference.”
Silence fol
lowed.
Jane looked me in the eyes, and for the first time in months, her gaze wasn’t filled with hate. Almost…respect? Then she quickly left.
For the following hour I said nothing, drinking my tea, but a foreign sense of power filled me. Until whispers started up at my back between two gossiping socialites.
“She’s the one,” one of them said. “The Cinderella.”
“I heard Grayson punched his grandfather because of her.”
Shock rippled down my spine. Grayson was the one who hit his grandfather?
“Grayson has been working hard,” Lottie said loudly, and I wondered if she’d heard them. “He stayed up all night working in his office, and he’s gone to work with his grandfather this morning.”
My hands shook with my tea. I tried to focus on the beautiful flower blossoming in the amber liquid. He’d been with me all night. In my bedroom.
“They’re calling her the Stepsister Slut too,” someone whispered behind me.
“That makes sense.”
I stood, and once again, everyone’s eyes came to me.
“I forgot something,” I mumbled.
“Why doesn’t she just have one of the servants fetch it?” I heard as I entered the hallway.
I can’t do it anymore. I can’t hide who I am. I can’t hide my baby. I’m not going to have her born to someone like me.
Sitting next to Lottie.
Lying.
“Story?”
No.
Not now.
I kept walking, ignoring Grayson.
“What’s wrong, little nun?”
“Go away.”
He grasped my arm, spinning me. “Something’s wrong.”
How did he know? How did he always fucking know?
“Everything is fine. Go away.”
His thumb applied the slightest pressure above my elbow. Something weighed on his shoulders. I could see it in his heavy lids. The suit he was wearing was all wrong, not Grayson.
“What’s wrong with you?”
His brows rose. “Me?”
The soft laughter from Tansy’s solarium drifted to us.
“Did you hit your grandpa?” I asked.
Grayson was the only one I could ever talk with. Who was I going to talk to about poetry and my uncle? West? Who was I going to worry about my pregnancy with? Once again, Grayson and I were tangled in secrets.
Maybe he wanted to tell me everything, like I wanted to tell him.
Or maybe that was wishful thinking.
I pulled my arm from him.
“He threatened something that didn’t belong to him,” he said. His blue eyes traveled a slow path down my face to my collarbone, where his locket lay, the one I couldn’t take off no matter how hard I tried.
I took a step back and his hand shot out, gripping the locket, holding me in place.
“Let me go.”
“I will,” he said, voice rough.
His fist curled tighter.
“Was there no scenario where you didn’t marry her? Where you and I lived happily ever after?”
The minute I said it, I wished I could take it back, but in that moment I wanted nothing more than to know how I lived happily ever after with Grayson Crowne.
More than being pathetic.
More than anything.
He gripped the locket, eyes pinched. On me. “There was.”
“Why didn’t you choose me?” I asked. “What does she have that I don’t?” The words tumbled and fell from my mouth, jagged pieces of my already broken heart.
His eyes slashed to mine. “I’d do anything for you.”
“Except leave your wife.”
His jaw clenched, as if he was holding something back. Finally he said, “I would do what I had to do to keep you and the baby safe.”
I shoved him off, walking to my wing. I was so weak. So pathetic. I rubbed my forehead with the palm of my hand, trying to think clearly even though every time Grayson was around me my thoughts clouded into white fog.
A hand snatched my wrist. “I’m getting you out of this world, little nun.”
I looked over my shoulder at Grayson. “You had that chance. You’re not the man I depend on anymore.”
“You can’t honestly tell me you trust West?”
No, I don’t, but I could say, “I don’t trust you, Grayson Crowne.”
He reeled. “What? You’d trust him over me?”
I swallowed. I don’t know who to fucking trust. I’m in a bed of snakes, and they’re all begging for my wrist.
Grayson was the one man I trusted above all, and he’d shattered that trust.
I tried to yank my wrist but he held on tighter, blanching the bone.
“You realize how ridiculous this is, right? It doesn’t add up. He’s a snake.”
“What’s so crazy? How someone like him could want to give everything up for someone like me and then actually go through with it?”
His shoulders tensed so much I could see the muscles twerk in his golden neck.
“Or why someone like me would go back to someone like him? How pathetic and weak I am?”
Something flickered in his eyes. Regret maybe. The emotion clouded and muted in this shadowed hallway.
When he spoke, his voice was his signature stone. “Both.”
I pulled at my wrist again, furious. He dragged me to him, my hands slamming against his chest.
“Did he hire you guards?” he demanded. “Get you a girl? Get you anything? You’re still wearing your nun clothes.”
“I’ll hire them myself,” I all but spat. “I’ll get everything myself.”
He looked at me with pity. “You only have a couple million dollars. Some of which I’m sure you’re allotting for the child—which you don’t need to do,” he added the last part, giving me a dark, possessive look that went straight to my gut.
Of course I needed to do it.
I couldn’t trust Grayson, as much as my heart said I should.
“A full-time bodyguard costs anywhere from fifty to five hundred dollars an hour,” he continued. “Ours are thousands. We employ only the best ex-special ops. You can’t have someone watching you twenty-four seven, which means you’ll need at least two, but I want you to have ten.”
“Ten,” I gasped. “I’m not some princess.”
“That was my low number,” Grayson said. “At least a million for them.”
“A million?” I blinked. “A million dollars? That’s almost all my money.”
“Not including room and board, food, airfare, etcetera.”
“Being rich is so expensive,” I whispered.
He pushed a curl from my face, behind my ear, jaw clenched tight.
“Let me hire them if your fucking husband won’t do it.”
I liked the way he said husband…his usually apathetic voice catching on a snarl. It fed something wrong inside me.
“No,” I whispered. “I’m not getting in debt further.”
“I’m not going to ask you to pay me back,” he growled. “And I’m not going to sit back and let you get hurt.”
I used both hands and shoved him, shoved him so hard I stumbled a few feet backward into the hallway.
“Fine. I’ll ask West.”
His jaw twerked, and when he spoke, it was through clenched teeth. “Fine.”
Twenty-Five
GRAY
* * *
The sun hadn’t even cracked the horizon when I was heading out for work.
“You’re going in to work a lot,” Lottie’s sleepy voice called to me. “Are you going to be back before sundown tonight? It’s only a few weeks before Thanksgiving—”
“Will your brother make sure Story is ready for the holidays?” I asked the thing that had been sticking in my side like a thorn.
Lottie’s face dropped. She worked her mouth, before shaking her head. “No, I doubt he realizes what she needs to be prepared for.”
I cursed.
She’d be eaten alive.
I was in the foyer when a weak voice stopped me.
“Mr. Crowne.”
It was a servant with blonde hair and brown eyes. Before Story, I would have had her fired for even daring to talk to me, let alone look me in the eyes. But I paused.
She looked away.
“If anyone finds out I did this…I don’t think how they’re treating Story is right.”
That piqued my interest, and I joined her in the shadowy corner.
“You should know,” she said quietly, “that a few months ago, a servant named Ellie stole a picture when she came to dress Miss Hale. I heard she sold it to a newspaper.”
I quirked my jaw. “What picture?”
“I—” She looked over her shoulder. “I don’t know. They said she made her sign something. But she said it’s coming out tomorrow. Please don’t tell anyone I told you. If anyone finds out…I’ll be like Story.”
Before I could ask any more questions, the woman dashed off, running down into the servants’ quarters.
I should have gone into work, but I spent the morning calling every outlet I knew, until I found it. The one about to decimate her.
It was mine.
It was my fucking secret.
The headline was a photo of Snitch with the title The Real Cinderella Killed Her Mother. She held the photo I’d taken of her, the green ink fresh next to her stony glare.
When my mom died, I wasn’t sad. I was relieved.
This place wasn’t safe anymore. The walls I’d built had eroded. I had enemies on all sides, and they were going after Snitch.
If Story wouldn’t let me take care of her, I would do it secretly. Our love is a precious thing. Only safe in the dark. In the cracks. In the places people cannot reach and harm.
There’s only one way to stop a story from printing.
Give them something juicier.
STORY
* * *
I don’t sleep anymore.
I stay up, writing letters to Atlas, thinking about Grayson even though I keep trying to hate him.
When there was a knock on my door early in the morning, I wondered if I was dreaming.
Forbidden Fate Page 17
