Page 122 of The Contract

No.

All I have to say is no.

But the word lodges in my throat, stubborn and immovable.

Abandoning Mila isn’t an option. Neither is hitchhiking home at victim-of-another-senseless-crime o’clock.

I swallow hard. Then, against every screaming survival instinct in my body, I force a nod.

Desperate fucking times…

The velvet rope lifts. The door swings open. Panic claws violently up my chest—a caged animal thrashing for release.

His sweaty palm drifts lower, barely grazing the small of my back. Light. Almost absent. Yet the touch lingers like acid burning through my skin.

Mentally, I’ve already booked a scalding shower—a full-body exorcism complete with all the bells and whistles: coarse-grit loofah and industrial-grade bleach.

Gritting my teeth, I command my feet to move.

One step. Then another.

I just need to slip through that door, ditch Jabba, murder Mila for ditching me, and drown myself in enough tequila to permanently erase the memory of his hand inching dangerously close to my ass.

God, please let there be enough tequila behind these doors for that.

CHAPTER 41

Riley

The medieval door opens with an agonized creak, groaning as if it hasn’t tasted fresh air since the Crusades. I half expect a moat and drawbridge awaiting me on the other side.

I step through, the moron tailing closely—no doubt eager for another pathetic glimpse of my ass.

The darkness is immediate, heavy and thick and different to every other area of The Inferno I’ve seen. Haunted house aesthetics, eat your heart out.

Three steps in, and the air twists, laced with oranges, spices, and the nauseating, chemical burn of whatever god-awful aftershave my so-called sponsor drowned himself in.

I chance a glance over my shoulder.

He smirks back, teeth gleaming with all the charm of a carnival clown hiding a knife.

Fake candles flicker along the walls. Atmospheric in a way that’s warm and disturbing. The brocade walls? Smeared red like blood.

Either someone here has a hard-on for Anne Rice novels, or I’ve willingly strolled into a crime scene.

And still—because sanity checked out on me years ago—I stretch my hand, fingers gliding along crushed velvet ridges, yielding to the twisted compulsion Kennedy always mocked as my incurable need to touch shit.

It’s childish. Pathetic, even.

The texture grounds me—bumps and valleys pulling me back from the edge. Until I can breathe.

Hell, the splintered banister hidden in my childhood closet is probably still stained with enough blood to make a CSI unit take heed. A defiant nine-year-old’s fucked-up insurance policy, carving proof into wood just in case step-monster Jimmy finally decided to lock me in and throw away the key for good.

Not that it matters now.

Because tonight, by some miracle from whichever deity hasn’t completely written me off, I see a flicker of light at the end of this suffocating hellhole.

And standing dead-center, bathed in the ghostly glow of more fake-ass candlelight, is a woman so stunning, so obscenely flawless, she might as well be chiseled from marble—or worse, some creepily lifelike blow-up doll custom-made for a billionaire bastard with too much cash and the personality of a serial killer.

---