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“So, just to be clear, this is over?” Kristen stumbled next to me as I led her downstairs and out of my premises.
“Sharp as a fucking spoon,” I muttered.
I wasn’t against taking mistresses, but I could no longer risk a high-profile affair. And as Kristen was a hungry journalist, everything about her screamed scandal.
“You know, Wolfe, you think you’re so untouchable because you had a lucky streak. I’ve been in this business long enough to know you’re too conceited to get much further than you are today. You’re a real piece of work, and you think you can get away with even more.” She stopped in front of the door to my house.
We both knew this was her last visit here.
I smirked, shooing her away with my hand.
“Write the piece, sweetheart.”
“This is bad publicity, Keaton.”
“A good Catholic summer wedding of two young, high-profile people? I’ll take my chances.”
“You’re not that young.”
“You’re not that smart, Kristen. Goodbye.”
After I got rid of Miss Rhys, I went back to my study to dismiss Bishop and White before I made my way to the east wing to check on Francesca.
Earlier this morning, her mother showed up at the gate holding some of her daughter’s possessions, screaming she wouldn’t leave until she saw her daughter was okay.
Although I told Francesca that whatever she didn’t have time to pack would be left behind, pacifying her parents trumped teaching her a valuable lesson about life.
Her mother was blameless in the situation.
So was Francesca herself.
I pushed my bride’s bedroom door open and found that she had not returned from her wanderings. Stuffing my fists in my cigar pants’ pockets, I sauntered across her room to look out her window.
I found her in the garden, crouching in a yellow summer dress, muttering to herself as she stabbed a trowel into a flowerpot, her small hands swimming inside a pair of oversized, green gardening gloves.
I cracked the window open, half-interested in the nonsense she was spewing. Her voice seeped through the crack of the window.
Her ramblings were throaty and feminine, not at all hysterical and teenager-y as I’d expected someone in her situation to be.
“Who does he think he is? He will pay for this. I’m not a pawn. I’m not the idiot he thinks I am. I’ll starve until I break him or die trying. Wouldn’t that be a fun headline to try to explain,” she huffed, shaking her head. “But what’s he gonna do—force-feed me? I will get out of here. Oh, P.S. Senator Keaton—you’re not even that good looking. Just tall. Angelo? Now he’s a gorgeous specimen, inside and out. He will forgive me for that silly kiss. Of course, he will. I’m going to make him…”
I closed the window.
She was going on a hunger strike.
Good.
Her first lesson would be about my apathy.
The blabbing about Bandini did not concern me, either. Puppy love could never threaten a wolf.
I made my way back to her door when a carved wooden box sitting on her nightstand caught my attention. I ambled over to it, the echo of her words from the masquerade bouncing in my head.
The box was locked, but I instinctively knew she’d taken out another note, desperate to change her fate. I flipped her pillows on a whim and found the note underneath them.
My beautiful, predictable, stupid bride.
I unfolded it.
