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I want to watch you paint it.
From a bedroom, I bet.
Emerson’s expression changed when I asked him if that was all he wanted. I was already shivering, or it would have sent a new shiver down my spine. His eyes darkened, a certain fire catching there. Whatever else he wanted to do, it was dirty. Reckless, probably. I’ve never done that kind of thing. I’ve never gotten into the car of a practical stranger and let him take me to his house. I’ve never done the kinds of things I saw in his eyes.
If Leo sent security to bring me here over Emerson, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Yell at him, maybe. Be furious. All I did was stand in the street and talk. But no, no—I’m not going to go in angry. That won’t help anything. Though it does piss me off, not knowing what’s happening. I’m once again in the dark. I won’t be mad. I’m irritated. That’s what.
I take the steps at a jog. “Hi, Gerard.”
“Daphne.”
He opens the door for me and we both step inside. Gerard holds my purse while I take off my coat. “Did something happen? Is that why I’m here?”
“No one went to the hospital.”
I fake a glare at him. When Leo got home from the hospital, Eva brought me with her to visit. I told Gerard I’d hold him personally responsible if Leo went to the hospital again and I was the last to know about it. Leo and Eva laughed at me for making threats. I guess they were right. I didn’t make a good one. I was too specific.
“He’s in the den,” Gerard says. I take my purse back and drop it on a table near the coat closet.
To the den I go.
The second I step through the door, all my irritation dissolves. Leo stands at the window, the courtyard behind him. He looks like shit. Eva wasn’t kidding about how bad things must have been. His eyes look too bright, like he might still have a fever. I saw him like this once. I hated it then, and I hate it now, and the only thing to do is go across the room and hug him. He’s wearing a sweater. Good. He won’t be trying to go to his office today. He shouldn’t leave the house.
He bends down when I get close. Squeezes me tight.You should have let me come over, I want to say.
“Oh my god, Leo, you can’t just summon me here. I’m fine. You could have texted me to ask if I was fine.” Instead of the whole show outside my apartment. I thought the guards were going to confront me about Emerson. Insist on doing a background check or something. I let go of him, and he turns me around with his hands on my shoulders and takes me to the sofa.
Haley’s there with a blanket over her and a book in her lap. She sits up as I come closer and tucks the blanket in tighter, like a shield. She also looks like shit. A sheen of tears is in her eyes. We’ve talked a couple of times, and I like her a lot. She’s good. It’s not good that she looks like this. That they both look like this.
“Hey, Daphne.”
My stomach turns. I feel lightheaded, off-balance. Doomed, almost. This is what I get for wanting to know things. “Something happened.”
“Caroline sent one of her people here,” Leo says. He’s leaned forward in his chair, his hands clasped in front of him. My mouth falls open as the words sink in. Caroline Constantine already sent someone here to shoot him. That wasn’t enough? Images of a gun battle fly through my mind, but that can’t have happened—everything looked normal when I came through the front doors.
“Did they come inside?”
“No. They didn’t have to. Caroline’s people put together a plan to cause a diversion and distract my security while Haley went out to meet her brother.” Leo’s teeth snap together. His jaw works. He’s trying to be calm, and it’s not working. “They took her when she stepped outside the gates.”
The blood drains out of my face, and I can’t look at him anymore. I look at Haley instead. She’s watching me, toying with the cover of her book with her thumbnail. “Took you where?”
“Caroline’s house,” she says.
My brain refuses to work. I thread my fingers together in my lap. “I don’t understand. Caroline’s your family. She sent someone to kidnap you?”
It makes more sense that she sent someone to kill my favorite brother. Their family hates ours. This thing Leo has with Haley—it transcends that somehow.
“Yes.”
They sent someone here. To take her. And it would have had to be forcible, because she wouldn’t leave on her own. She stayed with Leo when he was shot. Eva told me she was absolutely covered in blood in the hospital waiting room. She hardly slept while he was there, or when he was sick. Whatever crazy shit is happening, she loves him. The specifics of what this means slam into me.They took hermeans someone, probably a man, put his hands on her against her will and brought her to Caroline.
“Did they hurt you?” Maybe I shouldn’t ask, but I want to know. I need to know what happened. I’m in the room now.
“No,” Haley says.
“Don’t lie.” Leo sounds like something hurts, which is to say that he sounds angry, but I know he’s not. He looks at Haley like he can’t bear what happened to her. It was more than what she said. My heart pounds.
“I’m not lying.” Her voice is soft.
