Page 83 of Carte

I shook my head, “I don’t factor in this. This is all about you, and what’s best for you.”

“The hell you don’t,” she frowned. “If you don’t want this kind of life, you need to tell me. I will not lose you so I could continue to sing. I don’t need the tours, the press, and all that comes with this. I can be happy singing in Elite once a month for twenty people, just as I am now.”

I stood up, crossed the room, and came to her. Slipping my hand under her wild, brown hair, I palmed the back of her neck. Leaning down, I kissed her softly. “I don’t factor, Dynamo because I’ll follow you wherever you go. If you want to travel the globe, performing night after night, going to galas and having press conferences, I’ll be there. And if you want to sing at Elite, or dive bars, or only in the shower, that’s where I’ll be.” I squeezed her neck, “I don't care what you do. All I care about is that you let me be with you.”

I stood back up.

“I love you, Warden.”

“And I’ll love you until the end of my days, Dynamo.” I went back to the couch. “Now, finish getting ready so you can blow the roof off in this joint, and then I can take you to bed and fuck you till you’re too exhausted to move.”

Harley’s cheeks flushed as she turned and got back to getting ready.

A beep sounded next to her and she turned her head, looked at the tablet on the table, next ton her elbow and frowned.

“That’s weird,” she muttered.

“What?”

“It’s Cassie’s tablet. She never goes anywhere without it. She says it’s her command center since all the dates and notes are on it. Stuff that she needs to inform me of, places I need to be at, social media stuff she does for me, and so on.”

I’ve seen Cassie rolling her eyes at the device at least hundreds of times, grumbling while she was tapping on it. “Maybe she needed a break from it.”

Harley picked it up, swiped across its screen, and pressed on it. A second later, her face lost all color.

I was on alert in an instant, “What?”

“I-she-Cassie-” Harley stuttered.

“What’s wrong?”

Her grey blue eyes slowly raised to mine, they were full of horror. Horror and fear. “There’re receipts for the stuff she purchased in here. Receipts for the gifts. Gifts like I got. There’s also an invoice for the pictures being edited to be in black and white. And then processed and printed. Hundreds of them. And then, there’s also this.”

She turned the tablet to me.

On the screen there was a picture of the two of us, walking down the hallway clearly after the show. Harley’s face was turned up to mine, a big smile on her face. Her hair was wilder than usual, but also stuck to her face and sweat there. My head was tipped down to hers, a smile on my face. I was caught in mid-sentence. Neither of us was looking where we were going. It was clear, we didn’t care. We were together.

I remembered that night. It was the first night we came back the second time. And it was the first time Harley sang my song. The one she wrote while we were at the cabin. The one that broke all my barriers.

It was the happiest I’ve been in a long time.

However, the picture wasn’t showing that.

It was in black and white.

And there was a big red X mark across my body.

And the words.

She’s not yours. She’s mine. Were written under it.

My entire body turned to stone.

Fuck, we were wrong.

I knew there was a great possibility that someone from her team was behind all of it. But I never suspected it could be a woman.

It all screamed of a man.