AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Iris sighs again, setting her papers down in her lap. “I will be totally honest with you, Thomas. I never expected you falling in love to be so goddamn inconvenient for me.”
My head jerks back. I expected her to accuse me of being reckless again, but this? “Iris, this is hardly the time for jokes.”
She rolls her eyes. “Of course,” she says, sarcasm dripping from each word. “How indecent of me.”
“I’m serious,” I insist. “I’m not falling in love with Clara Speare.”
Iris waves a dismissive hand. “Don’t lie to me, Thomas. You’ve fucked her at least once.” I open my mouth to- what, lie? Make excuses? Demand how she could possibly know? But Iris plunges ahead. “Call it a woman’s intuition or a general’s, but don’t tell me I’m wrong.”
I want to say it anyway. Unfortunately, the only thing I can think of is the feeling of Clara’s head cradled against my chest while I desperately protected her body with my own. I told my men we wouldn’t be reactionary, but last night I’d almost thrown everything away to shoot Morgan Speare through the eyes after watching him aim a gun at Clara. There’s an oversized bandage covering a wound on my side from the bullet I took for her, for fuck’s sake. It was a graze, but I got lucky.
If I’d died last night, this war would have been lost before it officially started. Risking my life to save Clara’s when, strategically, letting Morgan shoot his niece dead in a room full of witnesses would have won me a great deal of moral clout, was foolish. The plan needs to be my priority, the game, my focus.
“I’m not bringing Clara into this again,” I say, neatly sidestepping her accusation of compromised feelings. “We’ll deal with Morgan head on. Then she can do what she likes.”
CHAPTER 24
Clara
I’m confined once again to my high security guest suite.
Iris’s face was blank and her tone professional as she escorted me here last night and told me I was being returned to the role of prisoner. Indefinitely. I could tell from the clench in her jaw that she’d prefer to wring my neck and be done with me, but she kept her hands to herself. The sound of the lock clicking behind me was louder than normal.
At least she spoke to me. When Iris met us in the garage, he left me in her care without a word to either of us. I tried to follow him- even if he couldn’t bear to look at me, I needed to know that his wound wasn’t too serious- but Iris placed a firm hand on my shoulder and kept me back.
I haven’t seen Thomas since he walked away. I don’t know how much pain he’s in. I don’t know how last night’s shootout will affect his plans with Derrick Lindman.
What I do know is that it’s my fault we’re in this mess.
It was instinct, bone-deep and shocking, that made me shove Thomas’s arm and ruin his shot. I’ve played it back a thousand times in my head, but it happened so fast that I can’t even remember the moment I decided my uncle needed to be spared. I just… acted.
Thomas will consider it a betrayal. And I can’t deny that it was.
The estate is mobilizing around me. I can hear the distant thrum of more footsteps above and below me, and through my windows I can see more people crossing the yard behind the house, heading to various other buildings. The armory, the barracks, the storage units. They’re preparing for war, one I failed to prevent last night.
My mind plays back over those last moments before the firefight again and again. My uncle pointing a gun at me. The blood spreading over Thomas’s suit jacket from the bullet he took for me. The sound of his heart beating beneath my ear, steady and even despite the war raging around us.
And that makes me think of how fast and hard it was pounding when we were alone in his car, and he was inside me-
I shake my head. Scrub my hands over my face. Will thoughts of Thomas taking me apart in impossible ways out of my mind. Remembering those moments will only make this harder. After last night, there’s no way Thomas will ever put his hands on me again. I failed him, I almost got him killed to save my uncle, and now the war he’s tried so hard to bypass is on his doorstep.
He… has no use for me anymore.
It’s absurd to think that I’m missing even being a tool of his now that he’s left me behind completely.
There’s a knock at the door of my room, and my whole body jumps. I’m on my feet and rushing for it before I remember it’s locked. The knock was just a warning that someone is coming in. Is it Thomas? Will I have a chance to apologize for the mess I’ve made before he ships me back to my uncle, deemed too much trouble to bother with?
But when the door opens, it’s Raleigh who steps inside, not her brother. I get a glimpse of Iris standing out in the hall before the door closes again. No sign of Thomas anywhere.
I haven’t talked to Raleigh since she stormed away from the breakfast table, berating me for taking part in her brother’s scheming. Now that things have gone so spectacularly wrong on that front, I have even fewer words to string together than I did then.
Raleigh leans back against the door, her arms hugging her stomach, as if protecting herself from me. A brown paper bag dangles from her pinky.
I’m tempted to cross my arms over my own stomach. We’re intimate strangers, blessed with insider knowledge about each other, and cursed by ten years’ worth of different experiences. I know her weaknesses, and she knows mine, but we don’t understand them anymore. We’re not sure what wounds are off limits, and which are waiting to be soothed.
A moment of silence passes between us. Then-
“I told you so.”
