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“B-better.”
“That’s good.” Trying to control her emotions, she told Mary, “You fainted. Do you remember?” At Mary’s nod, she continued, “The doctor told us it was mostly due to exhaustion and the fact that your last meal had almost been fourteen hours ago.”
“I g-guess so.” She tried to recall the last time she had eaten and was stunned to realize that it was probably breakfast. After that, so many things had happened that she just forgot completely about eating, her only thoughts composed of finding a way—-
She squeezed her eyes shut.
She mustn’t think of that any longer, mustn’t think of anything that would remind herself of...him.Even now, the pain of tryingnotto think of him was so terrible it had her curling into a ball.
“A-Alyssa?”
Alyssa wanted to cry when she heard Mary’s choked voice. She knew, without the girl saying another word, what the young girl wanted to say. “I’ll keep my promise, my child. Just say the word.”
Her relief at hearing the words caused a lone tear to slip. “T-thank you.”
Stroking Mary’s hair, Alyssa asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“I want to go to a far away p-place. I want a w-way to f-forget.”
****
As Rathe was drivento the hospital Warren told him Mary was confined in, memories of Mary filtered through his brain, castigating him.
It was as if time had bloody stopped for him when he saw Mary lose unconsciousness.
He had run like hell towards her, but still he had been too late, the sound of her head thudding against the floor the worst thing Rathe had ever heard in his life.
He had fallen into his knees as he dragged Mary to his lap, his hand shaking as he stroked her face, his stomach churning at its sickly pallor.
When the crowd started inching towards them, he growled, “Stay the bloody hell away from us if you don’t want to be hurt.” His desperate gaze trained on Mary, he had pulled out his phone and called for an ambulance. The second call was to his security, and in moments they had surrounded Rathe, preventing anyone from getting near.
The appearance of a medical team rushing inside the ballroom had worked like a bucket of ice water thrown at the crowd, sobering them up and causing them to back away.
Mary had started to stir by the time she was moved to a stretcher, but the moment she had seen Rathe looming over her, it was as if a switch had gone off.
Before he could say anything, Mary had turned wild, trying to get off the stretcher so she could get away from him.
“Let me go, please. Please.”
She had sobbed the words over and over, and the sounds had left him ashen.
It had forced Rathe’s mother to stand between Mary and him, her voice firm and pleading as she asked him to stay away for Mary’s sake.
“I know this is hard, but I know you want her to receive proper attention. The only way for that to happen is for you to keep your distance from now.”
The memories made him want to smash every window in the car, his self-hatred reaching violent proportions.
Taking his phone out, Rathe clicked on theMessagesicon in hopes of having additional updates about Mary. Most of the recent messages were from Camilla, but one of the unread messages was from Warren.
He clicked on his father’s message, and his screen immediately displayed a series of screenshots of another person’s texts. Although no names were ever mentioned, it took Rathe only a short time to figure out that it was a conversation between Camilla and his housekeeper, Mrs. Emerson.
Rathe’s disbelief gradually turned into ice-cold rage as he came to appreciate how intricate the web of deception Camilla had wrapped around all of them.
Every step had been planned, every word she uttered a lie. Everything she did was contrived to make Rathe and Mary see her as a harmless third party, when in fact she and her father had been the traitors in their midst.
Suddenly, everything became clear. Why Wilson had told him of his parents’ pre-nup contract and pressured Rathe into signing him. Now, he understood how Camilla had played on his and Mary’s fears, causing a rift between them by convincing Mary it was better for her not to attend the party with him.
And the worst thing about it was the engagement, the Daughtrys’ coup de grace. If not for his parents exposing the truth about them, Rathe knew it was more than possible he would have remained blind to the two’s duplicity.
