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I can’t let him suspect anything’s happening between us. I will not allow Reece’s jealousy to be the literal death of him. According to him, that responsibility lies solely with me. My hands hold his fate. No one else’s.
I’m still trying to protect him.
Disgust dripping from my tone, I say, “If you can’t control your pet,” as if Reece belongs to him and not me, “can you at least take this somewhere else? He’s soiling my carpet.” Because clearlyI’mthe victim in all this for havingmyoffice bombarded,mycarpet stained. So veryfuckinghollow of me.
After eight years of being Lenox Debrosse, I don’t want to spend another second in her skin. If I could shed it like a snake right now, I would.
I’m not a snake though. I’m bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter.
Kordin studies me for a minute longer before glancing at his friend who gives a faint headshake, silently advising him not to engage.
Chief Hull booms, “Get him up.” To Kordin, he gestures to the doorway, letting him go first.
While a perfectly composed Kordin leads the brigade down the hall, Reece gets dragged out, sweaty, bloody, and winded, neither of them so much as sparing me a glance. In a matter of seconds, my office is as empty as the hole in my chest I could’ve swore didn’t have a heart either. Then Reece left, making me realize it did.
He took my heart with him and I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back.
Jumping on my laptop, I send out a company-wide email, informing every employee of Debrosse Investment Properties Group our CEO was just taken into custody by FHPD, as well as what he was arrested for. I also suggest anybody with information regarding the situation come forward immediately. If the police aren’t going to open a proper investigation, I’ll conduct one myself.
Next, I send a similar email to a few of the biggest news outlets in New York. Friend or not, with every journalist in the state breathing down his neck, Chief Hull will have no choice but to arrest Kordin.
Then, with hands so shaky I actually drop my phone twice trying to pick it up, I search the meaning of Sweet Peas.
Goodbye.
I hurry from my office, walking as fast as my stilettos can handle to the stairwell. As soon as I hear the door close behind me, I double over and I do it. I finally fucking do it. I scream. My hands on my ears, I let it all out, screaming at the top of my lungs. Even when my legs give out, and I fall to my knees and forearms, my nose an inch from the concrete as my mouth gapes open, I keep screaming. I scream until I feel hands on me. They’re pulling and rubbing and shaking and trying to get me to stop but I don’t want to.
I don’t fucking want to.
But I never get what I want, and eventually, my throat runs dry. My eyes, however, keep leaking long after I’m forced back into silence.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Phil soothes next to me.
Another man mumbles something, and surprised, I look over to find Kaisin on my other side. I only felt two hands but between the both of them, they only have two in working order. Because of Reece.
My throat yearns to scream all over again.
“Shouldn’t you be with your brother?” I ask Kaisin, my voice hoarse.
“He wanted me to be, but…” His head shakes.
This is what I’ve been preparing for—the stomach, the liver, the testicles.
Now it’s time to go in for the kill.
Using my lack of volume to my advantage, I croak out, “Did you know?”
Both men say, “No,” Phil’s more fervent than Kaisin’s. Whether he believed it was me or suspected it was Kordin, Kaisin must’ve had an inkling something was amiss or he wouldn’t have taken those photos and emailed them to himself.
Wiping my eyelashes—not under this time, but actuallyonthe mascara-coated hairs to smear the black around—I sniffle and sit up, saying as miserably as I can, “He’s been framing me. All along. Since just after our honeymoon. I feel like such an idiot.”
“No, no. He had all of us fooled, Lenox.”
Since Phil replies first, I focus on him, asking, “You don’t believe I had anything to do with it, do you?”
“What? No, of course not. It’s just… Look, speaking for myself, I regret not questioning Kordin’s rules sooner. Maybe we could’ve prevented things getting this far if we’d just been able to talk to you.”
“Rules?”
