Page 52 of Break Me: Smith and Belle

It wasn’t a choice. It was a threat. One of us had to take the fall for Nora’s murder. One of us had to admit defeat. It was an easy call to make. I was never meant to have this life, but, at least, I would finally be able to set my wife free from the veil of madness that had been thrown over her head.

The Thorne baby. Belle. All traps laid to slow me down. My enemy had been distracting me while setting up the final board. Now that an audience was gathered, it was time to stage my final defeat. I should have known all along that my sins would cost me Belle. Believing in love, in salvation, had left me vulnerable to an opponent I had never seen coming.

24

Belle

“You can’t avoid him forever,” Edward reminded me. He placed a stack of design books on an empty shelf while leveling a serious gaze at me. He’d managed to convince me to spend some of the frantic energy building inside me on doing something productive. Smith had seen to finishing the interior of the Bless offices, but only I could put on the finishing touches.

But my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t see a point.

“I won’t.” It was better to leave it at that. I’d seen the look in Smith’s eyes earlier—I didn’t know what he was planning, but I suspected I wouldn’t like it. He had shut me out before when he felt he had to take matters into his own hands. “I don’t know how to stop him.”

“I’m guessing he would say the same about you. I don’t know how you two wound up together. You’re both too stubborn,” he said.

I paused, resting against the desk Smith had only given me over Christmas. I was supposed to be starting a new life here. He’d given me this space to build Bless, and now I never would. “I don’t know why we’re bothering with any of this.”

Edward continued finessing a frame on the wall, ignoring my point entirely. He didn’t bother to turn around as he shook his head. “Because you have an empire to run. A few weeks ago, you were worried about going to Paris and scaling up operations to meet demands,” he said. “Why don’t you focus for a little while on how much you’ve accomplished?”

“Because it doesn’t feel like much of an accomplishment at the moment,” I admitted. “What does it matter if I’m behind bars?”

“Alexander won’t let that happen.” It was the first time that Edward had said his brother’s name since his arrival.

“Now you’re on their side?” I flicked the end of the pencil, sending it rolling onto the floor.

“I am always—and have always been—on your side,” he said firmly. “But trust me, sometimes we are our own worst enemies.”

“And this is one of those times?” I guessed.

“Promise me that you aren’t planning to sneak away and turn yourself into the police.” He moved in front of me, forcing me to meet his eyes. When I didn’t speak, he clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “That’s what I thought. They aren’t going to let that happen. I’m not going to let that happen.”

“What about what I want to happen?”

“Do you remember that time that I wanted to wear Gucci to the Ambassador’s Ball?”

I nodded. He’d decided that a statement needed to be made, but, actually, he was tired of wearing tuxedos. “I would never have let you go through with that.”

“Exactly.” He reached down and took my hands in his. “It’s my job, as your best friend, to keep you from making stupid mistakes.”

“Really?” I arched an eyebrow, but didn’t pull away from his grasp. “Because I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes lately.”

“Well, I can’t be around all the time,” he teased. “You’ll just have to stop sleepwalking.”

And murdering people, I thought miserably. I was about to say it out loud when Smith walked through the door. Edward glanced between the two of us before dropping my hands.

“Mrs. Winters made lunch,” Smith told us in a clipped tone. “You better head inside before she explodes.”

I straightened to follow Edward, but Smith caught my hand. “A moment, beautiful?”

Edward paused as he waited for a signal from me. I nodded once, so that he knew it was okay to go.

“I’m sorry,” Smith said as soon as the door closed behind Edward.

I flinched, physically surprised that he’d come to apologize.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” He asked when I continued to stare.

“I’m trying to decide if you’re really my husband.”