AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Besides, if Thomas is about to execute me, I absolutely do not want Raleigh to see it.
“The truth,” Iris scoffs. “That’ll be something.” She turns sharply on her heel and starts marching up the street. “Come with me.”
For the second time in my life, I find myself escorted through the Warwick estate as a prisoner. This time, though, Iris and Raleigh take me into the depths of the house to a closed door, which I have to assume belongs to Thomas’s office. Iris taps twice at the door, then opens it halfway before turning to me expectantly.
And I turn to Raleigh.
I don’t kiss her, no matter how badly I want to and how much she needs me to. Instead, I give her a single nod. “The truth,” I repeat, and step inside the room.
I hear her try to step after me, but Iris must hold her back, because when the door shuts behind me, I’m alone in the room except for Thomas Warwick, sitting behind his heavy desk.
He’s tanner than he was the last time I saw him, his neat hair more burnt gold than blond. His European honeymoon definitely treated him well, though there’s no sign of material bliss on his icy face. Like a king sitting on a throne instead of an ergonomic office chair, he leans back, arms on either armrest, glaring down his nose at me.
“Sit down, Derrick,” he orders. It galls me to obey, but there are more important things than my pride on the line right now. Like my life, and Raleigh’s happiness.
I take a seat in the chair set before Thomas’s desk and, because I know we both have to be thinking about the last time one of us was at the mercy of the other in their office, I joke, “Looks like our roles are reversed this time, Thomas.”
Not a muscle twitches in Thomas’s face. He’s so still that if he hadn’t spoken before, I’d think I was sitting before a very well sculpted wax figure. Finally, though, he opens his mouth to speak again.
“Walk me through your thought process,” he says, as if I’m an employee who’s made one fatal mistake too many and is about to be mentally tormented before being thrown out of the company. Though, since I was once on his payroll, that’s almost exactly what I am.
I’m also remembering why I went behind this man’s back nine months ago for the sake of my career. He’s goddamn insufferable. “Thought process?” I repeat, pasting a banal smile to my face.
“Your thought process,” Thomas confirms, “behind kidnapping my sister and removing her from my city.”
I’m tempted to let my teeth grind together, but I force my jaw to remain relaxed. “I was under the false impression that she might be in league with Silver, a street gang leader who’s been-”
“I know who Silver is.”
I force my smile to widen. “Of course you do. Anyway, because I’ve been trying to determine his whereabouts for months, I… detained your sister for questioning.”
Thomas’s expression doesn’t change, but something passes through his eyes that raises the hairs on my neck.
“I quickly determined she wasn’t really involved,” I go on, “but by then Silver already had his eye on both of us. We were pursued, and I determined that the safest place for us was-”
“For you,” Thomas interrupts.
My hands, folded neatly in my lap, twitch. “I beg your pardon?”
“The safest placefor you. The safest place for Raleigh ishere.”
“It’s not the place she wants to be,” I say, before my good goddamn sense can stop me.
Thomas’s head tilts, just the slightest bit, making him look more like a bird of prey than a man. He was enraged before I entered the room, but now I’m sure he’s made up his mind tonever let me leave it. And since I have minutes to live, I do what I told Raleigh I would.
I tell the truth.
“I understand why you don’t approve of my methods,” I allow, “but at no point did I mean your sister harm. I wanted answers, and when I figured out that she didn’t have them, we worked together. When we were in danger, my priority was her safety. When I took us to that farmhouse, I did it because I knew it was the best thing for me, for her-”
I close my eyes briefly, sending one more apology to Raleigh in my mind.
“- and for our child.”
For a long, deathly silent moment, Thomas doesn’t react. I know he’s armed, and I brace for the gun to appear, for the last thing I see to be the flash of a flying bullet. But when Thomas stands, his hands are empty.
I suppose he could decide to finish what he started when he left my face a bloody mess nine months ago.
“Give me a single reason to let you leave this room alive,” Thomas says, his voice so low I feel it more in my spine than I hear it in my ears.
