Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74581 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74581 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“Perhaps. And you’re right, though you did say your mother was a pastry chef. It seems her fine pastries weren’t the only delicacies you have a taste for.”
He leans over and brushes a lock of hair off my forehead. The tender touch unnerves me, it seems so unlike him, but I remember the way he protected me in front of the others. It seems Constantine is a complicated man.
“I have a taste for many fine things,” he says in a low, raspy voice. He drags the pad of his thumb across my cheekbone. It’s warm and calloused, but the touch is so intimate, a thrill of fear skates down my spine. Holding my gaze, he traces the edge of my lips with his thumb.
I want to kiss it. I’m not sure why.
He cups my face, but his eyes are masked.
“Why would my father frame you?”
I’m not lying here in bed, naked, at his mercy, and chatting about cheese and olives.
He sits up straighter, an instant reminder of the imbalance in power here.
“You believe me, then?”
“I don’t think you’re lying.”
“You don’t think I’m lying, but you can’t say you believe me?”
“Why would I believe a man who broke out of prison and kidnapped me over the man who raised me?”
I need more evidence. More proof.
There was way too much truth in the tone of his voice when he threatened me, his hand on my neck. I haven’t caught him in a single lie.
I won’t say he’s lying to me, but I need way more evidence for proof.
His eyes hold mine for long moments before he responds. “Because of the two of us, only one of us will protect you.”
“Why would you protect me?” I whisper. I shake my head. It’s clear enough to me that if he was framed, he’d want to get out. It’s clear he has the power and connections to do so. It’s also clear that I was an easy target for him to use to get out, and he at least initially believed that I had something to do with a conspiracy against him.
But it isn’t clear why he cares for me at all.
He doesn’t answer my question.
“I am not a good man, Clare. To tell you so would be a lie. And I do not lie. And I’m telling you the truth when I repeat: your father is a liar, and he would hurt you. The woman I was engaged to died because of him. Why, I don’t know.” He leans in. “I will find out. And it will go far, far easier for you if you help me instead of hinder me in this.”
It’s a proposal of sorts, I know it is. He wants to know if he can depend on me, if I’m someone he can rely on. I don’t know how to respond at first, because I need to find out more information. But I’m also naked and tied to his bed in a sex club, so I’m hardly in a position to negotiate anything.
“You’re asking me to betray my father.”
“I didn’t ask you to betray anyone. I’m asking you to help me find answers.”
“But you’ll demand things from me, and you’ll use what you can find to get to him. You’ll kill him.”
At first, he doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t look away. He leans closer to me, bracing himself on his hand by my side. I can smell the masculine scent of the soap he used. Like him, it’s potent and powerful, and it does unexpected things to my body.
I swallow hard. My breathing’s labored. My pulse races.
“Killing your father would be a mercy, Clare.”
He wouldn’t kill him, then. He’d torture him first.
I stare at him, mouth agape, unsure of what to think. My mind is cluttered with thoughts that unnerve me, and the least of my worries is my current state of affairs.
If what he tells me is true… though he has no proof of my father’s guilt and I have no proof of his innocence… my father killed an innocent woman. Brutally. It’s an unforgivable sin, one he deserves to be punished for.
I can’t reconcile the father I know—the professional elite who plays golf on weekends—as the man behind the murder. He wears argyle socks.
It can’t be possible.
It can’t.
But why else would Constantine insist on his own innocence? Why else would he break me out of jail and assume I was in cahoots with my father?
I can’t cave so easily. I shouldn’t believe what he says so readily.
“How does your father treat you, Clare?”
I look at him, surprised by the question. “What?”
“Does he hurt you? Or are you special to him?”
I look away. I don’t like this topic of conversation, but there’s no point in going mum now.
If I wasn’t cuffed, I’d shrug. I try to appear nonchalant. “He isn’t a bad father. He doesn’t… hurt me. Well, physically anyway.”