Page 11 of Love Her

He’d casually mentioned what kind of car I had. Then there was a comment about my favorite color—deep green, same as the dress I had on. He brought up a bakery I frequented across from Corvo, Eumie’s, dropping it so nonchalantly that it took me a second to realize what he was saying.

He’d been given a dossier. Of course, he had.

I smiled and nodded at his charm, but my stomach twisted every time he spoke.

I had to let him take the lead, and to be honest, he was better at lying and deflecting than I was—a fact I filed away for later.

But I could feel people’s opinions of me fading. My presence in the room diminished with every passing second, eclipsed by the senator’s confident façade.

I wasn’t Lia anymore. I washis.

“That’s enough,” Marcus said, when I reached for another glass of champagne. He was right—although that didn’t stop me from hating him.

I decided to use that as my excuse to leave, standing from the table we’d been ensconced behind. “This has been quite the night. I think I need to go home and sleep it off.”

“Should I drive you?” he offered, standing too.

Me? Be alone in a car with him?“I’ve got my own driver, thank you very much.” I stepped away and he grabbed my wrist, same as Rhaim had earlier in the night.

Except Rhaim knew the scars my sleeves hid beneath them.

“We do need to talk, Lia. Soon—and in private. I want to know who I’m getting married to.”

“Hmm. Did my owner’s manual not include my social security number?” I said, my first barb of the evening—and he seemed surprised.

No one had warnedhimI had claws.

Because no one thought I had any.

Except for maybe Rhaim—unless he was just another fucking liar. “I need to go home,” I repeated, everything about the evening hitting me at once. I picked up the hem of my skirt, wondering if I could rip it off and run away.

“Of course,” Marcus said, but then continued to stand there, waiting for something more.

From me.

To pretend that I’d been included in all of this.

For a second I was nine again, being told to “Go kiss your uncle” when he visited, and no one else knew what he did to me those nights.

My choices in the present narrowed down to throwing up, pushing through, or breaking a champagne glass to cut his throat open.

Only the thought of carnage—and the knowledge deep down that I was capable of it, even if no one else believed I was—saved me.

I shifted back into the demure thing that everyone else wanted me to be, swallowed the surge of bile rising up my throat, and rose on my toes to plant a kiss on Marcus’s cheek.

Then I wheeled and headed for the stairs afterwards, the weight of his gaze as bad as a hand until I disappeared. Upstairs, I grabbed my coat, the heavy fabric grounding me for just a moment—until my phone buzzed in my pocket.

I fished it out, frowning at the unknown number.

A single text waited on the screen.

A time and an address.

5

RHAIM

Isabelle’s apartment hadn’t changed.

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