Do I argue? Of course I do. I want boots on the ground, searching for her myself, but even I have to admit that Adrian has a point. I’m probably overreacting.
An hour later, spiraling and obsessing over how small and fragile she looked in the hospital bed… remembering the look on her face when I admitted that I lied about being her husband… I’ve lost my fucking mind.
She’s gone. Or she’s dead. She’s left me. She’s not coming back.
It echoes on a refrain through my broken brain. Logically, I know that it’s too soon to know if any of that is true, but it could be, and that’s enough for Dallas Collins to convince himself that he’s lost his one true love for the second time.
For thelasttime.
I pound on the windows. Spit froths at my mouth and I wipe it with the back of my hand. I howl in rage. I pace. I throw a punch at the wall, desperate for some relief. I’d beat myself bloody in my private gym if I thought that would help, but I stay in the front room, only marching to the living room to peer out on Harmony Heights below, hoping I can find a wispy head of dandelion fluff hair among the madness, before I throw open the penthouse door again, hoping she’ll be standing right there.
Only she isn’t, and I squeeze my phone, willing it to ring. Willing it to be Adrian, saying he found her, or Bas, or even Lucy on a payphone, letting me know she’s okay…
The first time the phone does ring, it’s Derek with an update.
He has no idea what happened. Going through every camera, there are a few ‘maybe’s, but no definite identification of Lucy on tape. He thinks she wore a hoodie, covering her trademark hair, and slipped out. He’s had his whole team scour the Fortress. If she’s hunkered down on one of the floors, she’d be a kick ass hide-and-seek player because no one can find her.
I tell him to keep looking and hang up in case she tries to call and can’t get through.
And then, not that much longer after, Loni calls, and if she had been an ordinary secretary and not Adrians’ beloved wife, I might’ve bitten her head off when she interrupted my panicked pacing to remind me that there was a council meeting that I was already five minutes late for.
Council meeting?Council meeting? What the fuck do I care about acouncil meetingright now?
“Cancel it.”
“Dallas—”
“You heard me, Loni. Tell ‘em I’m busy. Tell ‘em that their stupid fucking meeting can wait. Tell ‘em that I’ll get marriedwhen I’m good and fucking ready, and if they don’t like it, the windows right there. Okay?”
So maybe I did bite her head off a little bit. I’m sure Adrian already warned her what’s going on, and she’s only doing the job that I hired to do because, damn it, I didn’t trust anyone else to have such constant access to me once I became King.
“I can,” she begins, her tone careful, “but considering what’s going on… I thought you should know. It’s Matthew who called for this meeting. He’s brought about eight of the old guard with him. I saw Oliver… Stephen… Giorgio…” The men who were in Jack’s inner circle, the highest level of the old guard. They’re all waiting for you in your office. And Matthew… he says he wants to talk to you about the game you’re playing with Lucille Fairchild.”
No.
There is noLucille Fairchild.Even after she agreed to marry Julian, she never took his name. She sure as fuck never went by her full name. She was Lucy Wright then, she’s Lucy Wright now, and if I have it my way, the only other name she’ll have is LucyCollins.
But Matthew Greene… another corporate lawyer who works alongside Desmond St. James’s old man, he’s smart. He knows what he’s doing. I have no doubt in my mind that he used that name on purpose, that he’s aware what name Lucy goes by.
He wantsmeto be aware that he knows she’s back in Harmony Heights. That I have her—or that I did—but that, in the eyes of the Order, she belongs to Julian Fairchild, dead or alive.
My jaw goes tight. Every inch of me wants to give Loni a message to pass along to Matthew that I’ll surely regret when my mental state is better and I have Lucy back with me safe and sound.
But he used her name. He wants my attention.
He fucking has it.
“Tell them I’ll be right down.”
TWENTY-ONE
BLOOD OATH
DALLAS
Iknew Loni was good with numbers, but she was spot-on. When I throw open the door to my office, I count eight different members of the old guard hovering around Jack’s desk like vultures. Two of them have claimed the visitors chairs. The other six are huddled, probably shit-talking me since they all clam up when I walk into the room.
The men in this room are smart. Ruthless.Cruel.I’m the youngest by at least twenty years which means they all have at least twenty years of navigating their way through the upper echelons of the secret society on me.
