But it was Steven’s text that sent my brain short-circuiting.
British Babe: Thanks for last night. Sorry, I passed out, but I really enjoyed the show.
“No, no!” I gasped, slapping my hand over my mouth.
Pieces of memory came back in sharp bursts, exploding with images behind my eyes. I was going to seduce my fiancé. My world was rocked by my stalker. There was something achingly familiar about him, and when he made me come, I cried. And then—
I slapped a hand over my neck.
“I wish I could tell you it was going to get better, Mandy, but it’s not.”
There was little doubt in my mind that I missed the trial because of him. This was his revenge. He wasn’t here to bring me the happily-ever-after of my dark romance novels.
No…he was the devil, come to destroy my world and ruin my life.
Ignoring the big problem that was my job, I dialed a number. I cut off Nicole’s greeting with a strangled outburst. “Where is Vincenzo?”
“Um….” My sister was no doubt looking at her phone as if it was possessed.
Maybe I was.
“Nicole Karin Loring, answer me now,” I shrieked.
“It’s Messina, not Loring,” a deep bass corrected. “And my brother is with my dad.”
I slumped against the kitchen island. Boston—Vincenzo was in Boston.
“Where was he last night?” I demanded, still clinging to the delusion that I could make sense of the nightmare that was my life.
It’s all a bad dream. I have to wake up now.
“He was at Mama Ana’s Bar & Grill. We had a family dinner,” my brother-in-law supplied unhelpfully. “What’s going on, Amanda?”
Tears leaked from the corner of my eyes.
Oh, lord, I cried.Last night. If it wasn’t a dream, if I didn’t take too many sleeping pills, then I cried after the masked man ate me out.
“Nothing,” I wheezed. “Nothing at all. Just…goodbye, Cristiano. Take care of my sister.”
I ended the call.
The damn thing started vibrating a second later, but I ignored her call. This was a complete and utter disaster. While it was highly improbable that the masked man and he-who-shall-not-be-named were one and the same, it was just plausible enough to believe it could have been the case.
Dropping my head back against the counter, I squeezed my eyes closed. “This cannot be happening. Thiscannotbe happening!”
Villainous laughter cackled in the recesses of my mind. There was no escaping the present. I was caught. I had to play the cards I was dealt—and what a fucking shitty hand it was.
***
I had to kiss my promotion goodbye. Wednesday morning, I showed up at work early to hear the news that I’d been taken off the list for consideration for the senior partnership. One of the goons in HR asked if I really was serious about my path at Kirk & Wallace.
In the space of a single day, my hard work culminated in disaster. I was put on drafting that should have been doled out to a paralegal—maybe an associate. Not a junior partner. I tried to plead with Carter Lewis that I could still help on the case, attend the trial from the spectator’s bench instead of sitting behind the chairs in the courtroom.
He squinted at me with those beady eyes, and his chest heaved as he laughed.
Yeah, that was never happening again.
All because the stalker promised that it wasn’t getting any better.
