Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Half the time I thought he chose to be blind, and he allowed himself to believe he was doing us a favor, saving us from heartache when the only thing he was doing was bartering those hearts.
“Oh, I bet it’s good.” She giggled.
“You don’t even know him.”
“Um, you realize you whisper his name at night in your sleep, don’t you? Last summer when we were on vacation in the Mediterranean on that boat? I had to listen to it all night long. Oh, Logan. Ohhh, Logan.” She moaned his name.
Embarrassment flushed my skin. “I do not.”
“Um, yes, you so do. Thank God your actual husband wasn’t there because it probably would have incited a murder spree.”
Worry filled my chest.
I could only imagine the type of anger that would incite in Jarek if he’d heard me calling for the one I belonged to in my dreams.
He’d likely not mention it, though. Admitting it would be a blow to his ego.
“I mean, who could blame you because Jarek,” Taylor continued. “Ew and gross and I literally just threw up in my mouth. And besides, I found your keepsake box when I was fourteen. There were letters and pictures in there. I know exactly what he looks like and Oh. My. God. He is delicious.” She rambled all of it so fast I almost missed the middle.
“Wait, you did what?”
My letters.
I’d hidden them in the floorboards in my bedroom at my father’s house, as if I’d buried my heart and my hope and my dreams with them.
My love and our secrets.
Because it had no space to flourish with the confines of the walls that had been built around me.
I could feel everything about her soften.
“It’s okay, Aster. I know you love him.”
My spirit trembled. “I don’t.”
I couldn’t admit it to her. Tried to deny it to myself.
Because I couldn’t allow it to sink in and take hold.
Those words were dangerous.
They desolated and destroyed.
“Then why are you there, with him? One call to Papa, and you’d be on the first flight home.”
I hesitated, warred, wasn’t sure if I should be honest with my sister or just lay it straight. I scooted over so I could sit on the edge of the bed. “I can’t stay with Jarek anymore, Taylor.”
Silence fluttered through the line.
Worry from her side.
Agony on mine.
She lowered her voice even farther. “You mean, like you’re getting an apartment across town, or you intend to leave him, leave him?”
Women in our family didn’t do that. When it came down to it, we didn’t make any real choices of our own. The fact my father had granted me this time was a miracle.
Defiance lined the words, old pain and disgust and hatred bleeding into the claim. “It means he won’t ever touch me again.”
“This isn’t going to end pretty, Aster.” Her voice went timid, and the mischief drained away when she pressed, “That’s why I’ve been trying to find a good time to call you in private. I heard Jarek freaking out in Papa’s office yesterday morning, talking about a pact that had been broken. Papa said something I couldn’t hear, then Jarek stormed out. I overheard Camden telling Lorenzo that he took off…I think he went back to wherever you are.”
Bile lifted in my throat.
Jarek would do anything to protect his unstable position. He was also a narcissist who would never admit he was the one who’d gotten himself there.
He’d pin the blame on me.
Pin the blame on Logan.
I pushed to standing. Every part of me was at war as I paced. Finally, I let out the plea, “I think I need your help, Taylor.”
“Anything.”
I hesitated, then whispered, “Are you still seeing Dominic?”
“If you mean getting some of those yummy O’s on the sly? Then why yes, yes I am.”
It was always, always on the sly because our father would kill her if he knew.
Dominic literally, and not in the way she used it.
“Before he does anything, he needs to get confirmation that Jarek is out of the city and there is no one guarding the house. If it’s clear, then I need him to get something for me out of Jarek’s office. There’s a large safe at the back of the closet.”
Taylor actually squealed. “Like…a covert, ninja mission in the middle of the night?”
She clearly hadn’t fully grasped the severity of what our family did.
“Kind of like that.”
“How do we get into the safe?”
“I think I might be able to figure out the combination.”
Jarek was almost superstitious in the way he used numbers. I prayed it would come out in my favor. I gave her the options of what I thought it might be.
“He’ll have to shut off the alarms to get inside,” I continued, “and no one can know he went in there.”
“What do you need?” Her voice dropped with the scandal, so on board.