Page 2 of Corrupted Queen

Only problem? It wouldn’t be hard for Gabriel to find me there.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say.

“It would be great. Thinka all the things we could do together. So much fun.”

“Clara, have you been drinking?” I ask, frowning.

She pauses, clearing her throat. “I’ve been going through a rough time,” she admits, but quickly changes the subject. “What’ve you been up to?”

I expected Clara to have a million questions for me when we finally reconnected, but“What have you been up to?”didn’t make the list.

Clara doesn’t know that Harry’s father is a mob boss, or that Gabriel detained me in his home just prior to being kidnapped by Andrew Walsh. I only told her in the texts that I had left Gabriel’s, and that I was worried he would come after Harry and me. Surely, that would make her a little curious?

She’s not in her right mind, I reason.

“I’ve just been keeping a low profile,” I say.

“Right. ’Cause Gabriel’s looking for you.” She snorts. “I told you that guy was bad news.”

Clara had misgivings about Gabriel from the second he sent someone to my place to conduct a paternity test, then showed up and swept me off to his mansion for safekeeping. At the time I just thought he was a reclusive and evidently paranoid billionaire. I didn’t realize Harry had a target on his little back.

“It wasn’t all bad,” I manage to say, voice thin.

In fact, it wasn’t even mostly bad. For a hot second, I thought that I loved Gabriel. He was an attentive, affectionate father. Toward me, he was sometimes cold, sometimes distant, but he often surprised me with his capacity for tenderness.

Not to mention the fact that he rocked my world in the bedroom. He was a charming, intelligent enigma.

But my search to fill in all his blanks led to discovering that he was keeping a secret from me—the secret of my father’s murder.

Gabriel saw my fact-finding mission as a disrespectful and blatant betrayal. He locked me away and warned that if I didn’t start toeing the company line, then he was going to take Harry from me for good. I guess he was worried about me discovering that it was actually he who murdered my father—a respected state prosecutor who presumably committed the grave crime of getting in Gabriel’s way.

“Not all that bad? You’ve been on the run from him for the past month,” Clara mutters.

“Yes, well. Life is complicated sometimes.”

She probably thinks I’m insane for defending him, but the last time I saw Gabriel, he turned himself over to Andrew Walsh in exchange for mine and Harry’s freedom. This earned him three gunshot wounds. Hence my conflicted feelings.

Gabriel Belluci is a criminal. He killed my father, held me captive, and will probably take my son away from me if he ever finds me.

He also saved my life at the risk of his own. It’s a hard line to walk.

“Clara, I’m really worried about you,” I continue. “Are you still seeing that Killian guy?”

“Yeah,” Clara answers. “So?”

“So, you haven’t been to work in over a month and now you’re drinking again. You’re telling me he has nothing to do with that?”

I can pinpoint the start of Clara’s decline from the moment she met her new beau. Something about the stuff she told me about Killian never sat right. He sounded controlling and manipulative, and Clara grew more and more distant. Now she’s obviously drinking again, and I have a feeling I know who helped boot her off the wagon.

“Vacation,” Clara slurs simply, as though that answers everything. “Speaking of, you should come take a vacation at my place.”

“I already told you, Clara, I don’t think it’s a good idea …”

“Really, Alexis,” she persists. “You should leave wherever you are and come to my place right now.”

There is a desperate edge to her voice that makes my hair stand on end. I leave the bathroom and go to the window. There is a black SUV in the parking lot that wasn’t there before, and as I watch, two men in black suits get out and head toward the office.

I hang up the phone, hissing swear words under my breath as I shove the few clothes and toys littered around the room into my bag. Gabriel must have tracked me to Allentown somehow and then used Clara’s phone call to trace my exact location. Here I was thinking my best friend had finally started to come to her senses.

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