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“Mr. Filmore, please, one more question before you go.”
“Yes?”
She looked up at him, her words wooden. “Have they discovered anything more on who was responsible for my brother’s death?”
Mr. Filmore shook his head, a glimmer of actual compassion sparking for a second in his dull grey eyes.
She offered him a slight nod and he exited the study.
Laney couldn’t bring herself to stand and escort him out, not that he waited for her to do so. The man knew the business of bereavement. Knowing when to leave.
She stared at the gleaming mahogany wood of her father’s desk. One of the very few things she’d refused to sell over the years.
What had her brother just done to her?
The Box of Draupnir.
Damn the thing.
The very item Morton instructed her seven months ago to—under no circumstance—ever give up.
He’d told her that, time and again, to keep it safe at all cost. To keep it in her possession—against life or limb.
No matter what.
{ Chapter 4 }
Standing in the hallway, Wes stared at the slight edge he could see of Laney’s elegant profile, her honey blond hair pulled severely into a chignon.
No tears, but the way random shivers attacked her shoulders, her torso slightly swaying on the chair, she was in shock.
His mouth pulled into a tight line and Wes reached down into the frozen wasteland of his chest and pulled up a bitter streak of spite.
Time to strike.
He stepped into the study, his boots passing the line of discolored wood where an Axminster carpet had once sat. She truly had sold almost everything of value in the house.
His heels clunked along the floorboards, echoing against the empty bookshelves until he stood next to Laney, looking down at the woman that had once been his betrothed.
She didn’t look up at him.
She knew exactly who stood next to her and she wasn’t about to acknowledge him if she could help it.
“Mr. Filmore told you?”
“Told me what?” She shook her head slightly as her gaze remained on the desk. Her face had gone ashen, the small circles of pink on her cheeks that usually brightened her face absent. The black mourning wear hanging from her drooping shoulders only highlighted the pallid tint of her skin.
Skin that should be red, pulsating, livid.
She should be screaming at him.
Screaming at what was in Morton’s will. It was the only reason he’d come in here, to revel in the disgust that should be overtaking her. Instead, there was no reaction. Not in her eyes, not in the words flying from her mouth.
Wes stepped around to the front of her, his fingers tapping along the fine mahogany grain of the desk to draw her attention. “Mr. Filmore didn’t tell you? Morton’s will stated it quite clearly.”
Her eyes unfocused, she looked up at him, the green flecks in her amber irises barely visible through a thick sheen of unshed tears. “Stated what clearly?”
Blast. The solicitor hadn’t told her.
