Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 66732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
I hear the words, but I refuse them. “You didn’t answer my question. Does Ethan make your heart beat so madly? Does Ethan make you forget everything but him? Because I doubt it.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“So you’ve said.”
“I love him!” she says, stunning me into silence for the second time this night. She pushes away, and I let her because I’m processing her words.
“You don’t. You can’t.”
She walks toward the elevator, which is gone, so she has to call it again. “I don’t know why I came here. I have no fucking idea.”
“Because you know you’re making a mistake marrying him.”
She pushes the button, cursing when the elevator doors still don’t open.
“The other night, I felt sorry for you, you know that?” she asks.
“No need, sweetheart.”
“I thought how sad you were all alone in the world,” she says, realizing her purse is lying on the floor near me and stalking across the room to get it.
I slide my hands into my pockets, so she doesn’t see the fists I make.
“But you know what?” she asks, stepping up to me as the elevator dings and the doors slide open. “Maybe there’s a reason you’re alone, Silas. Maybe you deserve to be alone.”
She stalks toward the elevator. The doors are already starting to close, and she has to hurry.
“You’re not marrying him,” I tell her.
“As if you get a say!”
“What just happened, you think that’s normal? You think you can feel that with one man and marry another?”
“Feel what?” she asks, whirling on me. “I feel nothing for you but contempt.”
“Lie.”
“Whatever you think about the Foxes, they have been nothing but good to me. Throughout it all, they’ve treated me like their own.”
“Don’t you wonder why?”
She gestures around the penthouse. “For a man who so hates money and those who have it, you sure have plenty of it around you, don’t you, Silas? Look at this place. Look at the Rolex on your wrist. Hypocrite much?”
I tense my jaw.
“I’m going to save my father’s legacy. What you said Sullivan will do to the company? I made a deal with him. So, you’re wrong, yet again. He’s not the devil you try to make him out to be.”
“Is that right? You finagled a deal out of that man?” Because the only way Sly Fox would make a deal with anyone is when it benefits him.
“Yeah. And if they didn’t think of me as their own daughter, given all that’s happened, what my father admitted, don’t you think Ethan would have walked away from me by now considering I have no money, nothing to offer them to raise their status since that’s all you think they want or care about? He has nothing to gain by marrying me. Nothing. And I have everything to gain by the union.”
“You’d only marry for love, O. I know you. And you don’t love him. You just want to hurt me by saying it.”
“How can I hurt you? You’re a solid wall. You’re bitter and resentful and—”
“You do not fucking love him!” I stalk toward her and she backs away so quickly, I force myself to stop, to keep some distance between us.
“It’s none of your business,” she says. “I’m none of your business.”
I scrub my face, think. She’s lying. She doesn’t love him. I know it. I know it deep in my fucking gut.
“He refused to let me sign a prenup. A show of trust. That’s who he is, Silas. Who they are. So, as you sit here all alone in your penthouse and think about how much you hate the Foxes and how much you hate me, and how much everyone falls short of your high and mighty bullshit standards, think about that. Think about who the true hypocrite is.”
“No. No, you—”
“I’m going to marry Ethan Fox.”
“You’re not.”
“And there is nothing you can do about it. Nothing!”
“If you think that’s true, then you don’t know me.”
“I used to think you were some kind of hero growing up, you know that?” she says, voice sad, tears streaming. “But heroes break. And you’re broken, Silas. You’re so broken that you’ve become the villain of your own story.”
We stand like that for a minute until she finally makes a move and disappears into the elevator. The doors slide closed.
She’s lying. She doesn’t love him. She can’t. And maybe she’s right about me. Maybe I have become the villain of my own story. But if that’s true, it’s Sullivan Fox who made me that.
I turn away from the elevator, pour myself another whiskey. I shake my head as I drink it down, because she has no idea. I don’t speak empty words. I don’t say shit just to say shit like her pretty boy does. She’s not marrying him. Period. The end.
Her perfume lingers and her words filter into my brain. And as I process, I focus on just one thing. Just one part of what she said.