Page 58 of Break Me: Smith and Belle

Their eyes met for just a moment, something unspoken passing between them. Edward rose from the leather wingback and cautiously handed me the baby. I held Penny like a life preserver, reminding myself that she was the reason I needed to let them take care of this. Then he turned and walked to his brother.

“If…“ Alexander said.

The only thing any of us knew was that we had no idea what to expect. We’d seen too much to assume this would end happily.

“I know,” Edward said when his brother couldn’t finish. He clapped one hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I’ve got her.”

Alexander’s throat slid, a tight smile flashing over his face, before he turned and nodded for Georgia to follow him. I didn’t have to ask what he had meant. The message had been clear. Alexander knew that he was walking into the unknown, and he did so willingly. He also knew the risk that came with that. If he didn’t return, Edward would be there for Clara. There was never really a question of that. But hearing him say it was what Alexander needed to hear. Despite everything that had happened and the sins that might never be forgiven, they were brothers before all us.

We watched them disappear. I tried to tell myself they would all walk back through these doors tonight—that our nightmare was finally over—but I knew better than to think my life was that simple.

“What did Alexander tell you?” Edward’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “When he whispered in your ear?”

I realized they had been talking about something while I thought about Edward and his brother.

“It doesn’t make sense much, unless…“ Brex paused as if puzzling it. His eyes moved toward the cake waiting on the table with its single red candle still lit. Wax had melted down its side and puddled on the frosting in a pool of crimson. “He told me to watch Mrs. Winters.”

“Why?” I asked, confused enough to be distracted from what was happening on Thornham’s dark grounds.

His eyes lifted and met mine. “Because she’s the Thorne baby.”

27

Smith

It wasn’t Margot. I blinked, checking to see if the night was playing tricks with my eyes, and when they refocused, I finally saw it. She had been there the whole time, under our noses. I’d been too preoccupied with Belle and the baby to really look at her.

If I had, maybe I would have seen the truth. It was so obvious now. In a lot of ways they looked nothing alike—except for the dark hair. A wicked smile carved its way across her lips as I stared, a smile I’d never seen on her face before. A smile I had seen Margot wear so many times.

But it wasn’t Margot.

“Nora,” I said her name in confusion. There was a split second of relief. She was alive. Belle had nothing to do with her disappearance. Margot hadn’t framed my wife for murder, like I’d believed all afternoon. But she wasn’t the naive nanny she’d played. She wasn’t a stranger that we’d welcomed into our home. I’d known her all along. I shook my head and called her by her full name—her real name. “Or should I say Honora?”

“Miss me?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. She sashayed across the frosty grass, looking nothing like the woman I’d trusted to care for my daughter. That didn’t mean she was a stranger, though. There were remnants of the girl I’d known years ago, but Honora Pleasant had been a shy child, ten years her sister’s junior, and as awkward as Margot was graceful. “I lost a little weight, got a little taller. I’m older, obviously. I don’t know why I was worried that you would figure it out. Then again, I’d always been told you were smart.”

I shook my head as a swarm of little moments invaded my brain. The picture of Margot in my desk that had appeared after she came to work for us. Nora had asked if she was my sister. She’d practically handed me the information. My fingers fumbled for the mobile phone in my pocket but I didn’t dare take it out.

“You’re seeing it more now, aren’t you?” She laughed and the sound bounced around the night. “I was a little offended. But then, you never gave two shits about me. You only had eyes for her. Just like you only have eyes for Belle now.”

“Belle is my wife,” I growled.

“So was Margot. But you forgot her, too.” She swirled her finger in the air before pausing it to point at me in accusation. “Everyone was expendable to you. Margot. Hammond. I’m surprised you showed up at all tonight. It was my final test.”

“Test of what?” I pretended to be interested—part of me was—while trying to get my bearings. I listened closely for other movements, something to indicate that she wasn’t alone but the night was still.

“Love,” she sang the word. “I kept waiting for you to betray Belle. How could you resist a hot nanny? Even her business partner said so. I overheard it when we went to lunch. “She reached to pluck a single leaf from a nearly naked tree branch. “And then when Belle was acting so strangely, when she put your precious daughter at risk, I thought that would be the end of it. But you stood by her. You never cared as much for Margot. You passed her around. Let other men fuck her. Let Hammond manipulate her.”

“She let him do that,” I corrected her. “Margot never did anything she didn’t want to do.” Somehow Nora had reimagined her sister as a fucking saint, but the truth was Margot was as twisted as all of us. She’d always burned a little brighter, though. She’d flown a little higher. Just like Icarus.

“That’s what you think?” Nora snapped, her face contorting with feral rage. “Did you ever read her journals? Did you even bother to look through the things you sent to our mother after she died? It was just a box with an unsigned note...”

“I was young.” But I knew it wasn’t an excuse. After Margot’s death, I’d been shaken to the core. Our marriage was nearly over before she’d been killed. We both knew it. Neither of us gave a fuck about making it work anymore. We were both more interested in money and what it could buy us. When she died, I closed the door to our bedroom and effectively shut her away. It was easier than asking myself if I was responsible for what had happened to her.

It was easier than admitting what I’d already known. I was.

“She was leaving you. She called to tell mother, but she got me instead. I was too young to understand and she was crying so hard. All I could make out was one thing. She told me, ’Nora, never let love break you.’“

“Margot didn’t love me,” I said in a sure voice. Everything I’d learned since her death pointed to that fact. I’d discovered her connection with the man who had warped my life into a nightmare. She had been planted in my life like a weed. I was lucky she hadn’t taken me down along with her. “We were just kids, playing a game.”