Page 108 of Shattered Souls
“You had a part of me,” he says, gesturing toward the bracelet I’m still wearing. “I wanted a part of you.”
I arch an eyebrow. “You could have just asked. Instead ofsnoopingthrough my room.”
His lips twitch in a semblance of a smile. “Says the girl currentlysnooping.” He gives a casual shrug. “Thought that might be weird. What with you being my sister and all.”
“Stepsister.”
“Same thing.”
“I don’t think it is,” I argue with a genuine laugh.
“Besides,” he continues. “I like the idea of you not knowing.”
“You realize I spent weeks searching for this. I assumed one of the girls from school nicked it from my locker during gym.”
“I’d apologize…”
“But it would be a lie.” I roll my eyes, unable to control the muscles along my lips as they quirk upward.
Unrepentant, he merely shrugs before we’re interrupted by the pinging of my phone. Scrunchie still in my hand, I move over to my bedside table. I find my phone on the charger and subtly cast a glance at Grayson’s way, knowing he must be the one who retrieved it from where it fell on the floor after our first sexcapade and put it on the charger while I was sleeping.
Plucking it from the table, I settle against the head of the bed and check my notifications. The top one is a text from Royce. Surprised, I open it, wondering what he would have to message me about. Anything urgent, and he’d have come upstairs, and anything else could probably have waited until breakfast.
Reading the text, my mouth goes dry.
“What’s wrong?” Grayson asks. His body heat practically burns as he leans closer.
The phone slips from between my fingers as I lift my head to stare into those depthless eyes. “Lydia escaped.”
We’re no longer in the eye of the storm.
29
LYDIA
The driver gives me a final wary glance in the rearview mirror as I tap my phone against his card reader and hustle out of his germ-infested cab. It’s no fucking wonder he was giving me weird looks, with my hair a mess, makeup smeared, and my hands fucking bound.
Huffing, I awkwardly yank my dress down, stumbling in my heels as I march toward the front door.
I’d beenterrifiedwhen those men had appeared out of nowhere on my way home after a night out with the girls, thrown a rancid sack over my head, and tossed me unceremoniously into the back of a van. I thought I was going todie!
A high-pitched laugh bubbles up my throat, and lifting one hand, I tenderly touch my face. My cheek smarts from where that little bitch slapped me, and steam billows from my ears.
How dare she.
How fuckingdareshe!
That Ruthless character… How long has my daughter been using her wiles to wrap him around her finger?
And Grayson! Just wait until his father hears who he’s in bed with.
That little harlot!
She isn’t content to simply steal my husband; she has to sleep with the entire student body at Halston U.
And she has the nerve to tell meI’mdead toher?! Well, we’ll just see about that. I have no idea what she and her little friends had planned before they rushed out of there but thank god they did. They left in such haste that they didn’t ensure the door was closed behind them. All I had to do was wait. The fools that they are, they underestimated me. Did they think I’d sit quietly in that chair and let them talk to me that way? Treat me with such disrespect? Once the thump of music was loud enough to cover any noise I might make, I snatched my purse from the corner it had been tossed into and hauled ass out of there, careful to keep to the shadows until I was out front of the club and able to blend into the crowd until I hailed a cab.
Now? Now I’m fuming. Vibrating with rage at the audacity of that little bitch. I’m so sick of her innocent act. So sick of her destroying my carefully laid plans. I’m going to make herwishthat stupid idiot had hit her with his car.
