I want to break her apart from the inside out.
I want to keep her safe.
I want to fucking worship her.
But…Your heaven doesn’t belong in my hell.
When we can’t breathe anymore, we both pull back, temples together, breath mingling, eyes glassy.
She doesn’t let go of me, and I know I’m squeezing her ass so hard there’ll be bruises, and my dick grows even harder, imagining it.
Mine, mine, mine.It’s impossible, but it won’t leave my head.
Yet the woman from over the summer, with the latex, and the stench of decay in my nose, and the blood on my hands, and the way I fucked her so hard I nearly broke her? Yeah. I can’t do that to Sloane.I won’t.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
LYDIA
“My people went to his house, tried to trace his phone, but we’ve got nothing. It’s like he’s fucking disappeared.” Berlin paces in front of me inside Astor Memorial’s private waiting room, Eve sitting opposite me in the plush blue chairs lined along the white walls.
We’re the only ones in the room, and my brother is just down the hall. Nothing has changed with his condition; nothing has changed with his prognosis.
“Lydia. It’s not good.”Dr. Mitchell’s words angered me, and it was Berlin and Eve who both dragged me out here.
The doctor wasn’t on shift when Lynx and Hawthorn came by, and all of my guards in this building claim they didn’t go into Lele’s room. They assumed because it was my uncle—and therefore, Lele’s uncle—the men were allowed in.
I’ve told them this is not the fucking case.
Fox is outside the hospital entrance doors, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. If anything, it feels as if everyone is fucking with me.
I attempted to scry on my bedroom floor after I got home last night from the marina. But nothing save for my own reflection peered back at me.
“He was here two nights ago.” The word are torn from me through clenched teeth.
Berlin stops before me, then kneels down. He knows better than to touch me, but his familiar eyes hold mine.
“But he didn’t touch him, Lydia.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
Eve is watching us. I brought her here because I trust her as much as I’m starting to trust anyone: Not at all. But she’s strong, and she claims she knows the type of person my uncle is proving to me.
“No, it shouldn’t,” Berlin says, placating me. “But it means he was showing Hawthorn Leary proof of something.”
My lips part, but my heart races, and I find I don’t have anything to say as my mind tries to puzzle out exactly what Berlin’s implying.
“Last night…” I’ve already told them both about what happened at the marina. “Storm didn’t know who killed the boy at the top of the stairs. And he said…” I close my eyes tight.
My mind flickers to Fox.
I clench my jaw.
It all seems to pop into place.
When I open my eyes again, I don’t look away from Berlin. “Someone killed Indie. The girl I only wanted drugged.” As payback to the chemist who made the product that fucked with my brother. As a message to Storm so he’d understand exactly how he fucked me over. “And I followedFoxto her house, where he dropped her off. Brought her inside. Said he’d given the pills to her.” Too many, but not enough to kill her.
