Page 86 of Chandelier Sin
“They watch where I go. What I do. He was trying to protect me.”
Her confession crushed me.
“Leaving the property is a problem?”
She swallowed her grief. “There’d be consequences.”
“Right, you’d lose your allowance.”
“You know nothing about my life.”
“I don’t trust you,” I said. “No matter what you say.”
“That’s because you don’t have a heart.”
“That is correct.” I smiled down at her. “No need for a cardiologist after all.”
She looked anxious. “I’m trying to protect you.”
“Don’t come here again. Unless of course you’re accompanying one of your victims to the ER. Then you’ll have my full approval.”
“That’s unfair.”
I stepped closer, close enough for her perfume to envelope me.
I was fighting the need to touch her, to brush my fingers throughher hair, trying to wipe the memories of her even as she stood before me.
“You can’t win,” she whispered.
“The moment the deal goes through, I’m going to kick you and your husband out.”
A monumental task but cutting the head off the snake was the only way.
She suddenly looked even more fragile, as though unable to see a way through an impossible problem. “You believe you can do this. But—”
“Not only do I know,” I said, “but I won’t rest until every tormentor is gone. Including you.”
“I’m the only good thing there.”
“Your delusional episode is relentless.”
“You don’t know what you’re up against.”
“Apparently, neither do you.” I folded my arms. “Go back to your palace on the hill. Consider what we talked about.”
She looked defeated. It was a good look on her. I’d knocked the bitch right out of her feistiness.
“Meanwhile, if you want out of that toxic relationship, you know where I am.”
She flinched.
“If you need to have the last word, you can,” I continued. “But it changes absolutely nothing.”
She opened her mouth to speak and then thought better of it. Spinning on her heel, she walked away, glancing back once before heading out.
I watched until she was out of sight, shuddering at the thought she’d dared to visit me here.
If I hated her so damn much, why the hell was I still thinking of her, hoping she’d come back?
