Page 170 of The Contract

I swear to fucking God.

“There’s another video, Damien.” I hear Marcus slide the laptop across the polished wood table. The soft clicking of keys blares around the room.

I don’t want to fucking look at it because my goddamn heart is breaking apart in my chest.

“Damien.” Marcus’s voice is a warning.

Finally, I turn my head, my eyes dead as I take in the scene unfolding.

Coldness creeps back over the empty cavity that I freely let Elena warm up. Like a pathetic fucking moron.

It’s a café I know well. Only two blocks away from my penthouse. I stop there all the fucking time.

The timestamp in the corner of the screen nearly makes me implode. The final tendrils of my dead fucking heart snap, leaving nothing within me.

It’s less than an hour after I left her in my bed.

Adrian is sitting in the corner, and it’s clear he recognizes someone.

Elena walks up to the table and gives him something. The pathetic ball cap she’s wearing is a ridiculous disguise.

It’s almost insulting.

She leaves, and he follows her.

The recording ends. Just like every fucking feeling I developed for her since that night she walked into my restaurant.

Another manipulating woman I dove headfirst into.

My jaw clenches so tight it aches, but I barely feel it through the rush of white-hot rage flooding my system.

The betrayal is suffocating.

I was going to tell her tonight. I was going to give her everything. I was going to tell her I fucking fell in love with her.

And the whole time, she’s been in on this. From the very beginning.

Adrian.

Elena.

Two names I’ll carve into my mind, branding them with the promise that they will pay.

For every second I spent believing in her.

For every night I lay awake, thinking about her.

For every fucking moment she made me feel like she was mine.

I turn from the window, my entire body coiled so tight I feel like I might snap.

Marcus watches me carefully, his expression unreadable. “What do you want to do?”

My chest rises and falls, my breath slow and controlled despite the inferno raging inside me.

“I’m going to find out what she gave him.”

I meet his gaze, my voice dark, lethal.

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