“You’re exhausted and wounded, and you needed it, ticking clock or not. Try not to undo my stitching on the way out the door, okay?”
I rolled my eyes but didn’t argue as he disappeared into the kitchen. The old me would’ve ripped the bandages off and stormed out to the car out of sheer spite. The current me — self-destructive, yes, but not completely idiotic — moved with care, doing my best not to strain the stitches.
Henry was in the kitchen when I shuffled in behind him, brewing coffee that smelled strong enough to strip paint. Lucia sat at the small table, her arm bandaged and her face pale, but she was awake. Her dark eyes met mine, soft with something that looked a lot like gratitude.
“Tesoro,” she murmured, reaching out a trembling hand. I took it carefully. “Grazie. For coming. For… everything.”
I squeezed gently.
“You’re family.”
Henry cleared his throat, sliding a mug toward me. When Lucia excused herself to rest, he pulled me aside in the hallway.
“She’s staying here,” he said quietly, voice rough. “Permanently. I’m done waiting for the world to stop trying to take her from me.”
The admission hung between us, decades of quiet longing finally spoken aloud. I clapped a hand on his shoulder, the closest we ever got to overt affection.
“Good,” I said. “She deserves that. You both do.”
He nodded once, eyes suspiciously bright.
“Now go get your own family fixed, kid, preferably before the clock runs out.”
Outside, the air was knife-cold. My breath puffed white in front of me as I slid behind the wheel of the black SUV and sat there for a second, hands on the steering wheel, forehead resting against the cold leather for a long moment while I caught my breath.
Chrissy had left. Lucia was safe. Vivian was coming. I twisted the key in the ignition and pointed the car toward the lodge, the engine growling like something feral in the dark.
Chapter
Thirty-Seven
BEN
December 22, 8:00 PM
The gravel crunchedunder the SUV’s tires as I pulled up to the hunting lodge, the place looking more like a forgotten relic than the fortress I’d hidden in for years. Night was settling into deep winter darkness fast, the Gulf Coast humidity turning the cold air thick and cloying, clinging to my coat like an unwanted memory.
My side ached from the stitches — freshly aggravated after the mess with Lucia’s husband — but I pushed it down. I wasn’t here to lick my wounds. I needed to know if Chrissy had come back, and if she’d found the letters Henry and I had left for her in the study. I needed to know if those eight pages of gutted confession had cracked through her anger, or if they’d just been another nail in the coffin of whatever we’d almost had together.
Only two days remained until Christmas Eve. Two days until Vivian waltzed back from whatever non-extradition paradise she’d fled to and claimed the Stonewood empire as her prize.
She’d been lucky enough that Henry and the police hadn’t been able to prove what Henry suspected about her tampering with my father’s medications, and it had officially been declared an accident, but the fact that she’d been living in a non-extradition country ever since my father died told me she was guilty, even if no one had been able to prove it.
My father’s trust clause was ironclad: I had to marry by midnight on the twenty-fourth, my thirtieth birthday, or lose it all to the woman who’d poisoned my father and nearly pulled the plug on me while I lay in a coma. I had no doubt she would have done it if Henry hadn’t intervened and stopped her.
I couldn’t let her win, not if I could help it. But more than the money or the land or my father’s legacy, I couldn’t stand the thought of losing Chrissy, not without knowing if she’d given me even a sliver of hope.
I killed the engine and stepped out, the wind rustling through the pines sounding an awful lot like whispers of all the mistakes I’d made here. The front door was slightly ajar, which set my teeth on edge. Henry had said the skeleton crew was locking up tight before heading out.
I shoved it open wider, calling out, “Anyone here? Hello?”
Silence answered me, thick and wrong. The foyer was trashed. The antique rug was flipped over at one corner, like it’d been kicked aside in a hurry. Vases lay shattered on the hardwood, porcelain shards glinting under the faint light from the windows. Drawers from the side tables hung open, contents spilled: old keys jumbled with notepads, a pen cracked and leaking ink in a dark pool. My pulse kicked harder. This wasn’t some random break-in. It looked methodical, angry, like someone had come through the lodge searching for something, or someone.
I moved deeper, boots echoing too loud in the emptiness. The dining hall was worse: chairs upended, tablecloth ripped and balled in a corner like discarded trash. In the kitchen, cabinets gaped empty, pots and pans scattered across the counters. No blood, thank God, but the air smelled like stale fury.
Lucia’s husband must have had a friend do this while Henry and I were searching for where he’d taken her. That had to be it. No one on the skeleton crew had contacted Henry about it. If they had, he would’ve told me, which meant no one who worked for me knew that this place had been ransacked.
Adrenaline surged, hot and familiar, drowning the ache in my ribs. If he’d had his friends do this here, what might they do when the police discovered him dead in a shipping container in cartel territory at the Mobile docks? That would be a problem for the local boys in the cartel to deal with, I supposed.
