Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 135536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
She paused, running a hand down her shirt as if she could soothe away the pain. “I found her blue and stiff. She still looked asleep. Angelic and comfy. Just…blue.”
Her sister died of SIDS.
It made sense now.
Her fascination with the subject. Her tunnel focus on infants. The first death she’d ever witnessed—a tragedy of magnificent proportions—carved a different person out of her.
And she begged me to help fight this demon.
But I had my own ghosts to slay.
“Romeo.” She perched her hands in my lap, gazing at me with defiance, with pain, with rawness—but, I noticed, not with tears. “Please. Help me do this for Victoria. She passed away, but her legacy can still live on.”
It killed me to do this to her.
To deny her something so profound and important.
So uniquely Shortbread.
I fingered her jawline, tilting her chin up, pushing through the lodge in my throat. “You may donate another wing to whatever children’s hospital you’d like. Money’s no issue. But forming a lobbyist group is out of the question.”
Dallas rose slowly, inch by inch.
I held my breath.
“You’re a coward.” She spoke with a voice void of emotions, her expression blank. “Luckily, you’re my coward. I know your weakness now, Romeo. And I fully intend on using it.”
Days after Dallas detonated a truth bomb in my study, she shimmied into one of her many Chanel gowns, shackled on expensive jewelry, and swiped her favorite red lipstick across her pouty lips.
Shortbread flipped me the bird as she passed a security camera on her way out and slipped into the back of Jared’s Maybach, going out for the day.
From my corner office in Costa Industries, I dialed Alan, the trained martial artist I’d hired to tail her.
“My wife left the house. See to it that she is safe.” I wondered if the lie sounded more convincing to him than to me. “Don’t forget to text me where she is and whom she is with at all times.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where is Jared taking her now?”
“Looks like she’s headed toward your office, sir.”
My treacherous, good-for-nothing heart thumped out of whack in its bony cage. I sized up the picture of Shortbread I kept on my desk for appearances’ sake.
Did you somehow discover I secretly manipulated the sudden congressional support for your crib bumper ban?
Are you on your way to thank me with a sexy number under your dress?
Dumping my engraved pen over my documents, I reclined against my backrest, laced my fingers together, and tapped them against my lips.
I supposed enough time had passed since my last lapse to grant me another taste of her.
The ease in which I snatched the remote to the glass shade and rolled the curtain all the way down in advance should have clued me in to my increasingly poor judgment regarding Dallas.
Unfortunately, my brain didn’t take the hint.
In lieu of using my brain cells to do something productive like work, I wore down my gum and tidied up my already pristine office space.
As though neatness was something she appreciated.
When ten minutes became twenty, I began to ponder the eternal question—what the fuck? Yet, calling Alan and nagging him about my wife’s whereabouts was beneath me.
Perhaps they’d hit traffic. Gnarly car accidents were not out of the ordinary in my neck of the woods.
Plenty of foreign envoys protected by diplomatic immunity, whose extracurriculars included running over people as if it were a GTA assignment.
When twenty minutes turned into thirty, my fingers itched to call Alan. As it happened, my phone danced on my desk, his name appearing on the screen.
I picked up. “Yes?”
“She reached her destination, sir.”
Impossible.
Had she truly reached her destination, she would be on her knees under my desk, sucking my cock.
“Is that so?” I smashed my gum between my molars, rightfully wary, given the sovereignty with which Shortbread conducted herself. “Where is she, exactly?”
“She just walked into Le Bleu. Got a street-facing seat on the balcony and a bottle of champagne. Looks like she’s waiting for someone.”
She sure as all hell wasn’t waiting for me.
Le Bleu was a two-Michelin-star restaurant right across from my building. In fact, Bruce’s office offered a direct line of sight into the place.
Two things became immediately clear to me:
1) This was another power move on Dallas’s end, designed to piss me off.
2) This was the last time she would tamper with my life.
There’d be no more second chances.
No wiggle room for negotiation.
“Check if there’s paparazzi nearby.” My jaw locked around my gum.
I’d bet my entire personal wealth and right testicle there was.
Alan cleared his throat, taking a moment, presumably, to search. “Yes, sir. There is. Across the street.” Another company’s headquarters all but kissed the Costa Industries building. Licht Holdings. “Sir, someone is approaching her. I’m going to hang up and initiate a video call, so you can—”
“No need.” I stood, shouldering into my coat. “Let me guess—tall-ish man, blond hair, and busted-up nose, sporting a tailored suit and zero charisma?”