“Are you crying?” my grandfather asked, disgusted. I knew the hit that would follow that tone of voice, and welcomed it—welcomed anything other than this gnawing pain.
But steps sounded on the stairs, and the hit didn’t come.
My grandfather stepped back, annoyance tinging his face, as Charles and Keller St. Germaine came onto the floor.
“What the fuck are they doing here?” I rasped.
“They’re here to keep you company, until you decide to get back on our team. Of course, your guards are stationed at the end of your wing for company, as well. You’ll have until the Swan Swell.”
I looked between them. “The fuck is going on?”
“Did you really think while I was away, I didn’t have eyes on you?”
They weren’t there for their mother? They were his fucking eyes?
Of course, Jo wasn’t here. Just the two males, because of course my grandfather would never acknowledge Jo as anything other than a girl.
“He killed your fucking mother,” I spat.
“Oh, he speaks,” Charles said, glancing to his brother.
I lunged for my grandfather, breaking free enough to slam my fist into his jaw. In a second, I was pulled back, a vice grip around my arms.
My grandfather wiped his bloody mouth. “Don’t be a fucking pussy.” He reached down, thumbing the tears on my face, before slapping me. “You should be thanking me.”
He hit me again.
And again.
The pain was at least focused on the one spot.
I should have been there.
I should have died with them.
My grandfather stepped back, pulling a silver handkerchief from his suit breast and wiping my blood on it.
“When I’m done erasing the du Lac name from history, I’ll write ours in stone. There are a couple of kings in Europe who’ve really pissed me off.”
“You’ll start a war,” I said. “You’ll destroy our entire fucking family before you’re done.”
He paused his ministrations. “Maybe. Or maybe I’ll finally sit where I belong. We’re owed a dynasty, Grayson.”
We’re owed a dynasty. Our names should be written in stone.
My grandfather dropped the bloody handkerchief to the ground, his lifelong revenge realized, as he took one final step to becoming the most powerful man on the planet.
Sixty-Four
GRAY
The months faded into one another, and soon it was July. I lay awake every night in our bed, sliding my hands through the silky sheets. I felt Snitch in the moon, in the wind—I feel her.
If Story was dead, then why could I still feel her?
I only had West’s words for company.
West had the coin for months, while we looked for it, the fucker kept it. If he’d just given it to us, none of this would have fucking happened. My wife was dead and I only had the man’s—whose inaction led to her death—words for company.
What sick kind of fucking hell was this?
Some days, I hung it over the fire, waiting for the flames to lick it.
I never burned it.
I thought about how much Snitch would have loved to read it, the insight it would have given her.
It just sat on my fucking pillow.
West’s words haunting me from the fucking grave.
A light rapping on my door sounded, followed by my mother. “You haven’t come down for dinner in weeks.”
There was no bell in her voice, she wasn’t trying to manipulate me. I imagined my mother sitting alone in a hollow room, at an empty dining table that sat twenty. For once in our lives, both of our masks were gone. I saw my mother and her rotten heart, and she saw me and my thorny one.
I had a bottle of whiskey and suckers—that was all I needed.
She came to me, sitting on the edge of my bed like I vaguely remembered her doing when I was a child.
“There has to be some way,” her voice shook.
Tansy Crowne was scared, because Grayson Crowne, her rock, was cracking.
“There isn’t.”
She grabbed my hand, holding on to me, tight. “I can’t lose you, too, Grayson.” Her other, shaking palm touched my cheek. “Please don’t do anything foolish.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
Story made me promise not to destroy my world, but Story was gone.
The minute I got that man alone, he was dead.
And then I’d follow.
Midnight struck and I couldn’t sleep again. I saw her wide, walnut eyes staring back at me on the pillow, and then she vanished into smoke.
So with a bottle of whiskey in hand, I went to our room.
The guards at the end of my wing were curiously absent, and I was too drunk to care. I stumbled through halls until I got to the no-man’s-land between Gemma and Abigail’s wing.
Then I pushed open the door.
Since it was basically a glorified storage room, nothing really changed, and it had become a museum of our love. I walked over to the corner of the room, staring at the luxurious Russian rug, still with jewel-toned pillows still atop them.
Story had looked so small and perfect lying on them. Not innocent…open. No walls.
I took a drink to swallow the rock in my throat. The harder I stared, the more she took shape. Her slightly shaking hand as she undid the zipper at her side. The way her hazel gaze never strayed from mine.
“Perfect,” I took a long drink, closing my eyes. “Fucking perfect.”
“Excuse me—”
“Story?”
I spun at her raspy, quiet voice. Shadows stared back, cobwebs of silence. Slowly turning from the door, I took a drink.
Clang.
I jerked back, heart racing.
It was tea—not now, back then, when I’d stolen her into this room and kissed her. I could see it now, falling from her small hands as she reached for me.
A tea tray.
I walked like a zombie to the door and slammed my hand against the wall beside it, closing my eyes, trying to summon her with a memory.
I’d never seen anything like her eyes.
Her sigh, her—
Gasp.
I jerked up at her breathy inhale—spinning into nothing. Darkness. An oppressive emptiness. I dug my nails into the wall, taking another drink.
The shadows on the floor spun.
The waves crashed behind me.
Too little time. I’d had too little time with her. I squeezed the glass neck of the bottle, grinding my teeth. In that time, my grandfather had refused to let us be happy.
He couldn’t just leave us the fuck alone.
It was his fault.
It’s done. It’s over. I broke us. Let me go.
I spun to the window. She was a shimmering mirage, the only thing clear her heated gaze.
“Story, wait—”
I ran to the window, grasping at air, stumbling through fog and memories that vanished into smoke.
“You’ve waited so long…don’t you want it to be special?”
I spun around and the bottle slipped through my fingers, shattering. Stony hazel eyes, softened and vulnerable, stared up at me from the rug.
“Story—” She vanished like smoke. “Story!”
I couldn’t hear my scream past the memories falling on top of me like stones. I just knew it came out of me by the way my lungs burned.
You’re so goddamn perfect, you know that?
I fell on my knees, onto the broken shards. “You were so goddamn perfect.”
Sixty-Five
STORY
“You are so perfect,” I whispered. “Your dad would light the world on fire for you.” I held my and Grayson’s baby to my chest. Her eyes were scrunched closed, her small fist resting on my chest.
I didn’t think it was possible to love something more than I loved Grayson, but here I was, proven wrong daily.
She was my love for Grayson incarnate.
How does a princess locked in a tower, save a prince pr
isoner in his own castle?
Every day since I left Grayson at Crowne Hall, I thought about that question. How do I save Grayson Crowne? How do I save all of us? I was desperate for word of him, desperate to get word to him—but I had a debt to pay off first.
Until then, I was stuck here with no way to contact him.
No way out of the underworld.
I was told I’d nearly died. The head of the Horsemen, fucking Grim of all people, had saved my life. That if it wasn’t for him, I would have bled out on the beach before they could have even brought me back here to their doctor.
I owed my life to a man named after taking them.
But I knew if it wasn’t for Gemma, the Horsemen never would have been there in the first place. Somehow, she knew to call them.
The Horsemen had saved my life, and until I repaid my debt…I was stuck here.
In the underworld.
“Have you thought of a name for her yet?” Lottie asked.
I glanced at Lottie, who occupied the twin bed next to mine, then back down to my little girl.
I like the name Sonnet for a girl.
“I think Sonnet, at least, that’s what I’ve been calling her.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
“Have you?”
“No.”
It had been a little over a month, and while Lottie cared for her baby boy, it was with a distant look. Not without love, just…sad.
Our room had no windows, no furnishings save the stark twin beds—nothing. It was completely bare; it didn’t even have a mirror on the wall.
I think we were in the Horsemen’s lair—or, in a part of it. Everyone knew and had probably been to a party in the underworld, but those were not held where the Horsemen slept.
I don’t think they expected us here. If this was the underworld, it felt a little bit like Lottie and I were in purgatory.
I pulled the coin Grayson gave me out from under its hiding spot—my pillow—and held it between my fingers, the blood now crusted. For a month, I spun this coin in my hand.
“It fell from my brother’s hand,” Lottie said weakly. “Both that, and the locket.”
I looked over. “What?”
“He said, ‘Tell her I didn’t get anything out of this. Tell her this time I didn’t do it for me.’ I think he meant you.”
You’ve never done something for anyone if you didn’t get something out of it, have you West?
“I should have told you earlier. I just…” Her brow pinched. “Everything that happened, you know.”
All these months, West had it?
“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “None of this makes any sense to me. Why didn’t he use it?”
I’ve been thinking about his death a lot, because I don’t feel very much of anything. I think I grieved him all the time he was alive, and that night on the beach I finally stopped grieving.
I’m sad he died, because I’m sad he doesn’t get a chance to be a better person.
But I guess…I guess I’m happy he used his last moment to finally be better.
Lottie stared at the gold coin in my hand. “You know, my mother’s first love is the father of my child. I thought she was the only one who loved me. Do you know what she did when I told her it was Jack’s? I should have known then.” She looked at her child, still sleeping soundly. “It was the first time I’ve ever seen my mother flip out. I thought it was because I cheated on Grayson.” She sighed. “She flipped, and I mean flipped. She called me a whore and threw a crystal votive. I really should have known, because she looked me dead in the eye and said Jack could do so much better than me.” Lottie laughed, but it turned into a cry. “The next day, she was much more composed, she told me I had to keep it a secret, or I would ruin everything. Our family, the Crownes, and even Jack.”
Her soft cry turned loud and untamed. Lottie who hadn’t cried in the month we’d been here—not even a tear—was sobbing.
“They all used me. My baby was just another pawn on their chessboard.” She tilted her head, looking at her baby through her tears.
She laughed again, but it was bitter and wet through her tears.
“I still can’t be mad at my mom. What is wrong with me?” She practically screamed it. “Why can’t I hate her?”
Her baby started to cry, and Lottie pulled him into her arms, rocking him. “Everything we’ve done,” she said, breathing heavy. “All of it. Who were we before them? Would we still have become these people? They ruined me, they ruined West.”
Her eyes landed on her still unnamed baby, brows wrinkling as if picturing the future.
Ruined.
“They didn’t ruin you. They won’t ruin us.” I lifted the coin again, looking at it under the low light. “This fucking coin. It destroyed everything.”
“My brother is dead. There is no redemption for him.”
Tears wracked Lottie’s face. I climbed into bed with her, pulling her and her child into a hug. She sobbed into me.
I hugged her for everything they took from us.
For everything we lost.
Until her tears dried on my shirt.
I’d lost count of what day it was, I think Lottie and I both have.
“We’re going to have to leave this room at some point,” Lottie said weakly.
I eyed the black door that separated us from the rest of the underworld. “Yeah.”
Everything I know about the Horsemen was all rumor and myth, sort of like how the Crownes used to be, except with the Horsemen, every fact was twisted in fear and sex.
We had no plan for what to do when we left. We’d been recovering in this dark room with no contact to the outside world, our meals delivered through the door from a person we never saw.
I grasped the gold locket at my neck—Grayson’s heart, beating alongside mine. I had to think it was beating alongside mine.
Grayson sent me away, hoping I would stay away, but I couldn’t just sit and do nothing.
I couldn’t stop imagining what his grandfather could be doing to him. A man like Beryl Crowne with four coins?
Sonnet started to fuss, like she knew, just knew I was worried about Grayson.
Lottie watched me, resting on her side in her twin bed. “You’ve had that look on your face every day since you woke up.”
I glanced at her. “What look?”
She exhaled. “Like you want to take on Beryl Crowne.”
“You want a happily ever after of your own, don’t you?” I asked.
Lottie stared at her sleeping baby. “I’ll settle for just knowing what I want.”
Like clockwork, the door opened, and two meals were placed on the ground.
Lottie stared at them. “I’m so fucking sick of being a prisoner.”
How does a princess locked in a tower, save a prince prisoner in his own castle?
You tear the castle to pieces.
You blow up the world keeping them trapped.
My eyes slowly drifted to Lottie. Months ago, I never would have even considered asking. Maybe that was why we were so trapped. I’d considered her one of the iron bars, but Lottie was one of the four keys to getting out of this world.
“Lottie…I have a favor to ask you. But I don’t think you’re going to want to say yes.”
Her eyes lifted at my voice, just as there was a knock at the door.
Sixty-Six
STORY
Grim tilted his head, eyeing us. Behind him, his Horsemen were shadows barely visible beneath the low light. Only flashes of them were visible—a tattooed forearm or a hand thrumming along a knee.
They were like a boy band that drank blood.
I held Sonnet close to my chest. Maybe it was meant to be that I ended up here in the underworld, like those old heroes in ancient sagas who had to travel deep into the dark undead before they realized their purpose.
Before they could come back to their lover. That’s what I hoped, at least, because in those sagas…they all got to go back.
“I need your help,” I said.
Grim leaned over, making faces at Sonnet. “You already have quite a debt, sweet Storybook.”
It didn’t slip my notice that as he discussed what I owed, he was being cute to Sonnet. My current debt.
It was a threat.
I swallowed. “You and I both know I can’t pay you anything if I stay stuck down here forever.”
He paused, finger frozen in front of Sonnet, then he stood to his full, towering height.
“Did you finally let them out of the fucking room?”
I froze at the voice, temporarily forgot everything, forgot I was bargaining for my life, and ran to her.
Gemma Crowne.
“Where is Grayson? How is he doing? Is he…” I couldn’t even get the words out. Every horrid thought I’d had of him, every fear caught in my throat like barbs.
I was desperate like a mouse for crumbs. As if it were a shooting star in the sky, I saw her pity, and then it vanished, replaced with that pouty, unaffected annoyed Gemma Crowne air.
“I haven’t talked to him,” Gemma said, blinking, bored. “Because I haven’t left here in a goddamn month, because suddenly I’m what, your fucking maid?”
My brow creased. “You stayed here? For us?”
She pulled out a cigarette. “Someone had to deliver your meals.”
“Careful, sweet Story, Gemma only looks like a princess because she traded her heart to a witch, right, Rich Girl?”
Gemma exhaled smoke, eyes drifting to his as the smoke left her lips. “Bite me.”
A small, ruthless, barely-there smile curved his cheek. “You’d like that too much.”
I swallowed every sharp, barbed emotion that wanted to know even a crumb about Grayson, and turned back to the head of the Horsemen, squaring my shoulders. “Sneak us back into Crowne Hall.”
Lottie squeaked. “Back in? Is this the favor you wanted? Because…you’re right. I don’t like it.”
“We have to do it,” I said, turning back to Lottie. “It’s the only way to save him, to save all of us. I think it’s fate. Our destinies were always meant to cross, because we were always meant to destroy it. Destroy Crowne Industries and Du Lac Enterprises.”
Destroyed Destiny (Crowne Point Book 4) Page 33
