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His hands traveled to my ass and squeezed the cheeks before he let me rise again. “Worth every penny.”
2
GRAVE
I lay in bed with her in my arms, staring at the fireplace as my mind drifted. I had a lot of shit on my plate and nowhere to start, and I certainly couldn’t start now, not with Elise on my chest. A part of me wondered if I should just kill Kyle to make my life easier. A little hunch told me his story wasn’t over.
A light knock sounded on the bedroom door.
My eyes immediately flicked to it, my chest suddenly stagnant as my breath died in my lungs.
The knock sounded again, this time a little louder.
My butler would never bother me in the middle of the night like this—unless it was important.
Like life-and-death important.
I did my best to roll Elise over without waking her. Her eyes opened briefly, and she gave me a look of daggers for disturbing her. But she seemed to nod off again immediately, hugging a pillow instead of me.
I slipped on my sweatpants before I stepped into the hallway. “What is it?” I asked the question before the door was fully closed.
“Camille is here to see you.”
It took a solid two seconds to process what he’d said. “Why?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“It’s almost midnight.”
“She just said she needed to see you.” He dismissed himself and walked away.
I watched him go, my mind immediately jumping to my brother’s well-being. I entered the parlor a moment later, finding her sitting on one of the couches, her arms and legs close to her body as if fighting to stay warm. When I entered the room, she looked up at me with her green eyes.
I stared back. She’d been the woman in my life for years, and I could still read her like words on a page. I stepped into the seating area, taking the nearby armchair. “What’s happened?”
She didn’t speak.
“Tell me my brother lives.”
She gave a slight nod. “Cauldron’s fine. A lot better than I am, actually…”
My eyes shifted back and forth as I stared into her face, seeing the bloodshot eyes, the bags of skin that hung underneath them, the grayish color of her once brilliant complexion. She’d somehow aged fifteen years since I last saw her.
“He dumped me.” The words were so quiet I could barely hear them. Her eyes were down, either ashamed or wounded. “Just like that…”
I didn’t know what to say.
“The second he came home from Paris. As if he couldn’t get the words out fast enough.”
“He didn’t seem different to me.”
“Well, you weren’t stupid enough to tell him you love him.” She crossed her arms tighter over her chest. “It slipped out when we were having dinner. I didn’t even say it to him directly, just said it in passing, but that was enough to…to make him run.”
“What was his reason?”
“That someday I would get hurt…the way his mother did. At first, I thought his reason was sweet…until he said the next thing.”
“And what was that?”
