Page 172 of Theirs to Tempt: The Marriage Claim

Caleb remains behind me.

“Did you know?” I ask.

“Know what?”

“That this is where we’d end up.”

“No.”

“I did.”

He says nothing.

“Not specifically.” I close my fingers around the rings. “But I knew there was a chance she would hate us when she learned everything.”

“And you kept going.”

“So did you.”

“Yes.”

No defense.

No attempt to make himself less guilty than me.

Normally I would appreciate that.

Tonight I despise him for sharing the blame because I need somewhere to put the fury that is turning inward.

“We lost her.” My voice is stark, my words broken.

“And it’s our own fucking fault.”

Because for the first time since our partnership was formed in the gutters of Geneva, we’ve lost.

I don’t go to bed. I torture myself in the building’s workout room, take a cold plunge, spend far too long in the sauna, consume pot after pot of coffee till I’m blurry eyed. Then as soon as my club opens, I’m there, in the bar, alone, determined to drink myself into oblivion with outrageously expensive Bonds whiskey.

Nothing can make the haunted look in Sophie’s eyes disappear from my mind.

Around me, the club is offensively normal.

Men finish rounds of golf and complain about scores that do not matter. Someone at the other end of the bar laughs too loudly. A television above the shelves of liquor is tuned to a game I have not watched for a single second.

No one here knows that my entire life came apart in a penthouse kitchen sometime after midnight.

By the time the bartender places another glass in front of me, I’ve stopped caring.

I drink.

For eight years, I’ve known my next move.

When Adrian intended to marry Sophie, we removed him.

When Richard needed money, we made certain the right doors opened and the wrong ones closed.

When Sophie resisted the engagement, I put the ring on her finger.

When she resisted the wedding, I scheduled it.