My throat tightens. “I thought… didn’t you kill my stalker?” The word still feels unreal on my tongue.
He exhales, then sinks onto the chaise. “Yes. I think so. But Molly, there’s a reason for the party. This might tie into the price on your head.”
“I don’t want to come with a tag,” I whisper.
He doesn’t laugh. And that scares me the most.
“I’m buying all this for you,” he says after a moment. “The dresses. The shoes. There’ll be lingerie delivered, too. Sit.” His gaze sharpens. “I need to go over our story with you. I’ve changed it. So listen like your life depends on it…”
The party is not the kind I’d ever throw. I recognizea handful of faces…donors to the ballet, people who smiled at me from a polite distance, never seeing past the pliés and pirouettes.
Now they’re mingling with criminals. Declan’s people. Zelda Ortega’s people. Callahan’s people. People who run money, drugs, guns, corporations, charities—all with the same ruthless efficiency.
Declan was right. All I really have to do is smile and look pretty while he does the actual work.
I tell myself I’m using him. That I’m letting him play husband because it keeps me alive. That I’m not the first woman he’s charmed—and that I won’t be the last.
But I can’t quite make myself believe it.
As my bodyguard, my fake husband, and my keeper, he hasn’t done more than flirt lightly with other women. He’s all charm, in general, but focused like a laser on me.
In my head, the words on that note pop like bullets.
Bang Bang. I’ll shoot you down, Marlowe.
The stalker’s handwriting. The dead stalker. The man Declan killed in the park.
I don’t know how that note got here. And that makes it a hundred times worse.
“…don’t you think?” a male voice says.
I blink back to the present.
Declan is talking to a cluster of old, rich, thoroughly corrupt men who are probably on my mother’s mental list of potential husbands for me. They exude power and entitlement. They also make my skin crawl.
“He was just telling us about your honeymoon,” one of them says, smiling a little too much. “Quite the romantic gesture.”
“In London,” I say smoothly. It’s a city I know just well enough to lie about. And this whole elaborate story was designed to be an alibi that puts us out of the country at thetime of the truckyard shootout, so details would be important. “I couldn’t believe it. He surprised me with the tripbeforehe even proposed.”
I laugh lightly, hugging myself, letting the fantasy wrap around me like fog.
“I thought it was just a vacation,” I continue. “But we got there, he proposed, and… I’m boring you. I’ll let you talk business. I want to help my sister-in-law.”
It fits perfectly with the timeline Declan drilled into me. No one will press for specific dates, he said. If they do, they’re a problem because they’ll be trying to dissect the alibi. And we’re prepared for them.
The worst part is how easy it is for me to slip into the fantasy. To pretend this is all real. That we did take that trip. That he did surprise me with a ring.
So I do the smart thing.
I kiss Declan lightly. His hand rests warm on my back.
Then I scoot away.
I find Lucie in the living room where Tally is crawling under a table while Raff cheers her on.
“Need help?” I ask.
Lucie smiles tiredly. “Always.”
