Page 7 of Break Me: Smith and Belle

“I don’t actually live in a castle.”

“Trust me, this place is no castle.” A hellscape would be a more apt description.

“What the hell is going on here, Price?” Georgia demanded as soon as we were in my study. She begrudgingly took a chair on the other side of my desk.

Instead of joining her, I unearthed a bottle of Scotch from behind a stack of boxes. I found two tumblers from the offices I’d kept in London before marrying Belle. They were filled with dust, so I wiped them out with my shirtsleeve.

“You sure know how to treat a guest,” Georgia said dryly as she watched me with a smirk.

“Getting soft on me?” I asked her. “Accustomed to your meals being delivered on silver platters at the palace?”

“A girl has to have standards.” She accepted the Scotch despite her commentary. “You look like a man that needs this drink. That’s never a good thing.”

“You’re here with information,” I reminded her, taking the seat across from her and staring into my own glass of amber liquid. “You tell me if I need this drink.”

“What was going on out there?” Georgia asked.

I knew better than to think I would get her to talk before I came clean myself. Georgia wasn’t the type of person who needed to spill a secret. She could hold on to one forever. I might have asked her to look into Thornham’s history, but that didn’t mean she would do me the courtesy of sharing what she found. Especially not if she felt as though she could use it as currency. It was how she operated. It was how we operated. Transactionally.

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“You have a full bottle of Scotch. We have time for a long story.” Georgia might be abrasive, but I’d known her longer than any one else in my life. More than that, I’d grown to trust her.

I filled her in on the last few weeks worth of events, leading slowly to what had happened this morning. Georgia said nothing as I spoke, but her eyes narrowed as I finished my story and she sat down her glass, looking unnerved. I’d never seen her so obviously rattled.

“You can see what I’m up against.”

“Maybe I am getting soft,” she muttered. Georgia had changed since she’d gone to work for Alexander. It had been subtle at first. Sometimes, she still clung to seeing herself as the woman she’d been four years ago. She’d have to come to grips with how much she changed on her own terms. I wasn’t about to force her to confront that. Still, it wasn’t like her to look so worried. “You’ve got to do something about this, Price.”

“I have a call in to the doctor. He’s going to stop by the house. Maybe there’s different medication she can go on,” I continued before downing the rest of my drink. “Honestly, I’m not sure where to start. Distract me. Tell me what you found in the file.”

“That’s just it,” she said slowly like I’d asked her to put her hands where I could see them. “What I found in the file isn’t going to make you feel better.”

At least, I wasn’t surprised to hear that. “What did you find?”

“The bones are from the seventies, which means that it likely has to do with a local missing person’s case.”

“There was more than one person down there,’ I said gruffly. The small skull floated to mind, and I shut my eyes against the image.

“There was,” she confirmed grimly. “An entire family, in fact. The Thorns. Did you look into the history of this house before you bought it?”

“I know it was vacant forever. It just sat on the market.”

“But that’s not true. How did you hear about this house? It was vacant for years, kept up by a preservationist trust, but it wasn’t for sale,” she said. “It’s almost like someone wanted it to stay empty.”

“That’s ridiculous.” I stood to pour myself another Scotch. “We were told that the final member of the Thorns had passed and the house went on the market.”

“Smith,” Georgia said with the delicacy of someone defusing a bomb, “the house was never on the market.”

“That’s odd, considering I bought it,” I said in a flat voice even as my heart pounded against my chest. “Our estate agent told us about it.”

“You need to reach out and find out how they knew about it,” Georgia said forcefully, her expression growing even grimmer. “I can’t help thinking someone wanted you in this house.”

“Now you sound like him,” I murmured. I didn’t have to tell her who I was referring to. We both knew I was speaking of Alexander. “Do you honestly think there was some conspiracy to get me into this house?”

“It’s not paranoia if they’re really after you,” she said with a bemused smile that didn’t match her worried eyes. “Maybe someone planned for you to come here.”

“Who? I’m not a royal. Hammond is dead. There’s not a single one of our old associates around who will care what happens to me going forward.”