I thought Marcus was one of those good things, but right now I had no desire to hold on to him at all.
Using every last ounce of brain power, I peeled back my phone case, took out the fortune cookie fortune I’d had in there since my very first night in New York, the picture of me, Mum, and Harriet, and tossed my phone right into the water.
And as I watched it sink, falling amongst the pennies, I took back everything I said about today.
Because now I wanted nothing more than for it to be a dream.
chapter twenty six
why did she always want to run from me?
She heard everything.
Every. Damn. Thing.
That was what the teary look in her eyes said as I spun around to find her standing behind me, listening to every lie that was falling from my mouth.
I told Cora it was Oscar so she wouldn’t worry, but it was a No Caller ID, and with the software I’d embedded into my phone, those calls were supposed to be redirected. So when I saw that this one had gotten through, I answered. And whoever he was had made it clear the second I answered the phone that he was somewhere, watching me.
The voice in my ear let out a low chuckle. “Have fun with that one, mate.”
Then the line went dead, right at the same time Cora’s eyes raked over me with all the disappointment and sadness she could cram into the swirls of brown, before taking off and bolting out of the alley. I was quick on her heels, not thinking twice before pumping my arms and following after her.
But luckily for her, I ran straight into foot traffic—what looked like a school trip leaving the gallery—my entire lower half surrounded by tiny people dressed in the same matching green uniform.
I kept my eyes on her as best as I could, watching her take off down Millbank. I slowly barged my way through the crowds and went after her, but she was quick. Too quick for me. I spun in a circle as though that would help, frustration nipping every nerve ending in my body. I raked my hands through my hair and groaned as my knees bent.
“Fuck!” The word ripped through my chest.
If she’d heard everything, then I was done for. And I knew she wouldn’t listen if I got to tell her it was all lies. It had taken this long for her to finally trust me, and all that work, all that time and effort proving to her that I wasn’t the man who’d had this position before me, had just been set alight.
But when her name slipped out of him, I threw up my shields.
Although now, knowing Cora had heard all the ways she wasn’t important to me, I was in two minds about whether I should have just dared him to come after her and done everything in my power to protect her.
But it scared me. If this asshole knew everything about me, knew how to hack my systems and ruin me, I had no doubt that he’d find his way to Cora. And losing her sounded scarier than losing Romano right about now.
I’d been wandering London like a crazy person for hours trying to find this girl, but it was as if she’d simply vanished. It was already sunset by the time I’d tracked her phone to a little square of green near Westminster, finding it swimming in a fountain.
Why did she have to be so fucking smart?
I’d lapped the hotel. Twice. No sign of her.
I reached out to Oscar to see if there was a way he could sneak into the CCTV in the area and set up a team to find her. He said tracking down a fly would've been easier, but still, he tried. And even with twelve people scouring London via security cameras, we were no closer to finding her.
Frustration had burnt me out hours ago, and now I was in my room, the world outside pitch black. I was running on nothing but fumes and that shot of adrenaline when I remembered she was out there.
It felt so stupid now. I didn’t want to pretend that Cora wasn’t meaning more to me every day I was around her. Because she was. She was as good as my sunlight.
Fuck.
She had to be close. She had to. It was like whatever internal radar I had for her was telling me I wasn’t far. I just had to think.
What made this even harder was that her friends had gone dark too. Practically taken over the hotel one minute, thendisappeared the next. And because of one of her stipulations, I couldn’t track them.
“You’re my bodyguard, not theirs,”she’d said.
That was fine. But right now, that boundary felt like a knife to the chest.
