Page 146 of Heartless Sinner

My fingers trembled as I flipped to the next page. Part of me already knew what would be there.

I prayed I was wrong.

The words were barely readable. Letters slanted into each other. Ink blotted across the page. One sentence had been scratched over so violently that I couldn’t make it out.

Near the bottom was a small hole in the paper.

I brushed my finger over the tear.

He’d pressed the pen down hard enough to rip straight through the page.

My stomach dropped.

This one will be about me.

Conrad Fucking Kenward!

That’s the motherfucker who helped plan the assassination attempt on my father, along with five other men in Congress and the Senate.

The man who wanted my entire fucking family slaughtered.

The man who, only weeks ago, shook my hand, who had dinner with my family, who I thought maybe, just fucking maybe, would be my father-in-law one day if I kept falling for his daughter.

My family trusted hers with our lives.

I trusted Daphne with mine. With my sister’s.

Did she know?

No. No fucking way.

She’d never do that to Adelina or me.

Conrad was just questioned and said Daphne nor her mom were involved. I believe it. That doesn’t mean I’ll ever trust her again. That I ever want to see her again. Daphne Kenward is dead to me.

She might not have pulled the trigger. Nor did her pussy-ass father, who paid someone else to do it. But she’s a Kenward, and anyone with that blood in them cannot be trusted.

And what would people think if I did take anything further with her?

I’d look like a fool, fraternizing with the enemy. Career fucking suicide.

Never again will I risk anything for a girl. Having sex with her in The Oval Office could’ve screwed me for the rest of my life, but I didn’t care because I wanted her so damn bad.

That lust is over now. I’m glad hatred has taken it over.

If I had it my way, every Kenward would be shot, taken out, just like her father wanted to happen to my family.

This was it.

The moment the boy I’d fallen for became the man who hated me.

I checked the date even though I already knew it.

The same day my father had been arrested.

Brooks’s fear had been fresh. His anger even fresher.

I understood that. It still didn’t make Daphne Kenward is dead to me hurt any less.