Forbidden Fate

by Mary Catherine Gebhard

  Despair and desperation tore seams inside me.

  If you ever need a wish granted, use it.

  My uncle’s last words rang in my head. I could really use a magic coin right now. I had over twenty million dollars, was the richest I’d ever been, but I’m still trapped, still under the Crowne thumb.

  There was only one place I could think of that the Crownes didn’t touch, and I hadn’t been there since high school.

  Don’t go there, ever.

  That’s what Grayson had said to me…but he didn’t give me much of a choice. I wasn’t going to stay and become my mother.

  I sucked in a breath at the rusting, paint-chipped Ferris wheel. October enveloped Crowne Point, the fog even thicker around the metal spokes.

  I hadn’t seen Grim or any of them in years, but I’d heard rumors of the four boys with no fucks to give and the only power to rival the Crownes in this town. I’d known them back when they were teenagers at Crowne Point High, and even then you didn’t approach the four inked and brooding boys unless you were ready to lose something. Didn’t matter if you were a teacher.

  Now…everyone knew the Horsemen.

  They run the underworld in Crowne Point.

  I couldn’t believe I was here. Bargaining with them meant I really had nowhere to go.

  How far would I go to save myself? If they wouldn’t take my money, like everyone else…then they might ask for more. A contract. A debt. But that would be trading one prison for another…

  The Horsemen don’t even take on many contracts, because each contract they marked on their body in ink and blood.

  I pushed the creaking gates aside, then came to a complete stop. Gemma Crowne stood in front of Grim, the head of the Horsemen. He dragged his collar down, exposing a new tattoo on his pectoral.

  It looked like…scratch marks?

  Gemma blanched before turning ten shades of red. “You’re evil,” she hissed. “Disgusting.”

  “I like you in red…” He dragged his thumb down her crimson-stained cheeks. “Like your tears more.”

  She flushed harder, yanking her face away. “Do you think I give a shit?”

  Grim’s smile stretched on one side, and the dimple in his right cheek popped, eyeing her for what felt like forever.

  Then he looked over her shoulder, at me.

  “Sweet Storybook.” Grim let his shirt fall back into place, lifting off the wall in a fluid motion.

  Gemma spun, eyes growing wide when she spotted me. As if shaking out of it, her plump pink lips and bright-blue eyes quickly returned to their haughty, entitled grace. She walked away without so much as a goodbye to either of us.

  “See you soon, Rich Girl,” Grim called after her. He laughed, the sound like the fog around us.

  She bristled, and our eyes locked; then she blinked and kept going.

  Did Gemma Crowne have a contract? What would someone like her even need?

  “Little Storybook,” Grim said, bringing me back to the reason I’d come.

  I tried not to roll my eyes. He was one year older than me. But I guess he did have that air about him, the one all the Horsemen did. It said they were so much more than human.

  “I need your help,” I said.

  He rubbed his bottom lip, eyes sharp. “I know. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  He thumbed behind him to a sign in the window—a rough plastic sign that said We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone. But it was spray-painted.

  I wasn’t going to bother asking how he knew I needed help.

  “You’re not going to help me? I can pay you.” Once again I reached into my bag, fisting the cash that I had worked so hard to acquire and no one wanted to take. I held it out to him, all but begging him to take it.

  His brow arched. “Moving up, Story.”

  Still, he didn’t reach for it.

  My hand shook.

  “Does this have to do with Gemma?”

  He grinned that slow Grim grin that was somehow seductive and sinister all at once.

  “There’s a bounty on your head. You have people looking for you, Storybook. The princess jumped the castle walls, and the prince is not happy.”

  Grayson.

  “Whatever he’s charging, I can double it. Triple it.” I thrust the cash in my hand harder. All Grim did was thumb the sign again.

  My shoulders sagged.

  I knew how this worked. They were going to take me and hold me until Grayson came back for me.

  “I could pretend I never saw you, if the prince comes asking.”

  My mouth parted. “Really?”

  Grim shrugged like it was no big deal, eyes on his phone. With an exhale, I looked over the abandoned Wharf. At least I had my freedom, if only for a little while longer.

  In this world…money is useless. You need power.

  West’s words blasted into me. What good was having millions if no one would take it? His ring was in my purse…My number was still the same. Was his?

  No.

  No, I couldn’t go down that road.

  “Ah, you forgetting something?” Grim called at my back. I turned, finding his dark eyes on my cash. My jaw dropped. Ten thousand just so he and his Horsemen wouldn’t kidnap me?

  He put his phone away, and all at once his humor vanished. Grim was one of the tallest people I’d ever met, and with his shoulders straight, the shadows at his back seemed to dance along his muscles and make the ink at his neck one with them.

  Some say he was called Grim because of his looks.

  Those people are stupid.

  I shoved my ten thousand dollars at Grim.

  He smiled slow, putting the wad into his pocket, before leaning back against the post and returning to his phone.

  “Nice to see ya, Cinderella.”

  His voice seemed to follow me out of the Wharf.

  I sat on the warped wood, kicking my legs out into the street. No one drove down this way. No one came down here, not unless they rolled with the Horsemen.

  I pulled out West’s ring, and it caught the light. Why did West du Lac have to be the one to give me this? I stared at his contact in my phone, fighting the urge to dial.

  A few months ago, I would have slapped myself for even considering calling West. Now I was so twisted up in grief, in heartache, in fear, I couldn’t think straight.

  I held my stomach as if it would protect my baby from my own decisions.

  Looking at the facts…West saved me when Grayson tried to gamble me. West saved me from the boat when Grayson left me for Lottie. He’d saved me from his own father. He was there when Grayson married Lottie and left me in the dust.

  I thought Grayson was my white knight hidden beneath thorns, but maybe he’s always been the rogue, and I had just grown addicted to the pain.

  Maybe I misremembered that night with West…

  I shook my head.

  No.

  No, I didn’t.

  I dialed the number I hadn’t looked at in years, refusing to acknowledge why I hadn’t deleted it. As the dial tone met me, my eyes were locked on the princess-cut diamond refracting the light.

  “Angel.” West picked up after the third ring, sounding way too fucking pleased that I’d called.

  “Hi…”

  “Not that I’m not happy, but why did you call?”

  Grayson said I would hate him…and I do. I hate him for forcing me into this. I hate him for giving me no choice.

  For making me feel so goddamn useless and powerless. Never have I felt so powerless as I do in this moment, forced to marry the man who raped me to escape being the mistress of the man I love.

  Fuck.

  Him.

  I hate him.

  I hate him so much.

  I slid the ring on my left ring finger.

  Story du Lac.

  There was a time when this would have felt like a happily ever after.

  I swallowed, then said, “Does your offer still stand?”

  Seventeen

&n
bsp; GRAY

  * * *

  I rubbed the ridges of my broken nose as I came through the large wooden doors. After searching everywhere I thought I might find Story, I was forced to come back to the dark spires of Crowne Hall, empty-handed again.

  Everyone thinks Crowne Hall is such a strange mixture of architecture to find in upper New York. Victorian and black but on the whitest sand on the East Coast.

  The story goes the first Crowne built it for his wife, a keepsake from old Victorian England. In reality, Crowne Hall was built for the love of his life—a mistress. His wife hanged herself. We’ve been fucking our wives over for our mistresses since its inception.

  Where did I get off even thinking I’d be a good father?

  That Snitch wouldn’t be better off out of this world, away from everyone…especially me? In my head, when the girl I loved told me she was pregnant, I lifted her into my arms. I didn’t fucking threaten her.

  I was such a piece of shit.

  “Grayson?” Lottie’s soft voice called to me. “Grayson, where have you been?”

  “I only came back to grab some cash.”

  Something to bribe the Horsemen with—didn’t matter I’d already bribed them. They only spoke in one language: cash.

  Lottie cut me off in the grand foyer, just before the entrance to my wing.

  Our wing.

  Fuck.

  “Lottie…not now.” I tried to push her aside.

  “You look like you haven’t slept in two days. Where have you been?”

  Looking for Snitch.

  I have everyone I know searching for her, but I can’t just sit back as she fucking disappears. I’ve never felt a fear like this before. Where the hell is she? All her clothes are back at the house. I got word she was at the motel, but when I went, she was fucking gone.

  In the wind.

  I placed my hand on Lottie’s shoulder to push her aside. I know she’s my wife. I know I should love her and choose her, but Snitch is out there. Alone. I couldn’t fucking stay here.

  “Grayson…glad you could find it in your busy schedule to join us.”

  I stopped at the voice. In his iconic three-piece suit, my grandfather stood at the bottom of the grand staircase, watching me. Suspicion wove vines in my blood.

  “Why are you here?” I finally said.

  His brows raised slightly. “Your wife hasn’t told you?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck, that familiar pain I was starting to associate with failing Lottie as a husband.

  If Snitch ever gave me a second chance…what’s to say I wouldn’t fail her too?

  Before I could come up with the right response, I saw Mr. and Mrs. du Lac behind him, speaking with my mother.

  “You have so many homes around the world,” my mother said. “I would think you’d be more comfortable there…instead of crammed in here with us.”

  “Nothing compares to family,” Mr. du Lac replied.

  “And we’d hate to miss Lottie and Gray’s first year,” Mrs. du Lac said.

  My mother hesitated, but only for a second. “Well, of course you can stay until you find a new home.”

  I glanced sidelong at Lottie. “New home?”

  It took a good ten minutes of Lottie tiptoeing around the subject before I got the story out of her. Du Lac Manor was destroyed. It had been flooded, then the wiring had caught fire. Everything was ruined, her personal possessions gone.

  It was hard to grasp.

  We’d only just been there, and everything was gone. She showed me the pictures. The once proud and historic roof, now charred and caved in. Stones blackened. All that remained were the impeccable grounds.

  “Everything is ruined. Gone. Destroyed.”

  “Grayson will fix this. Don’t worry, dear,” her mother said.

  Even if Lottie wasn’t my wife anymore, I’d known her all my life. Of course she could live here.

  But…her mother, who’d all but threatened Story’s life if she were to get pregnant.

  Her father, a groping drunk.

  And West? The idea of West living in this house, even if it was far in the north wing, the one the maids said was haunted, made my throat burn.

  It was still too close to Story.

  “You’re my wife…what’s mine is yours.”

  I glanced at the clock. I’d already wasted ten minutes. The sun would go down soon, and that was another night Story was out there.

  “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “Are you really leaving me after I just lost my home?” She stared up at me, eyes wide.

  If I could just find Story and calm the tempest inside my chest, I could handle this later. I could comfort her. I could.

  I don’t know how she’s managed to hide from me.

  But I know it’s not good.

  Another stale silence passed; then my mother smiled. “Why don’t we have dinner, and we can work out the logistics? Will Westley be joining us?”

  “He’s on his way,” Mrs. du Lac said. “He said he had some big news for us. What news can be bigger than this…I don’t know.”

  A look flickered in Mr. du Lac’s eyes.

  I found Lottie. “I won’t be staying for dinner.”

  “Where are you going? What is so important you have to leave me?”

  The mother of my child was missing.

  I can’t breathe.

  My grandfather watched, eyes sharp.

  “Later, Lottie. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I wasn’t even down the steps when my grandfather’s voice stopped me.

  “Grayson.”

  I paused, then kept going. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “You’re married now. You don’t get to be a playboy. You need to come into Crowne Industries and do the fucking work.”

  “Later,” I gritted.

  “I’m not going to let you ruin this family for some cunt. If you have to learn that lesson the way your father did, so be it.”

  Ice cold in my veins.

  I stopped on the cobblestone driveway, warmed in the golden autumn sun. When I turned, my grandfather was on the last step, only a few inches from me.

  “And what lesson would that be, Grandfather?”

  He gave me a cold smile. “You won’t have anything to risk it for if she’s not—”

  Years of repressed anger and abuse came to the surface and I slammed my fist into my grandfather’s face.

  Eighteen

  GRAY

  * * *

  I stared down at my grandfather and his bleeding nose.

  “If you ever threaten her again, if you even look at her again, I will kill you.”

  He dabbed cotton at his bloody nose, looking slightly annoyed, as though I’d just let a fly into his office. “Your father—”

  “I’m not my fucking father. My father was too chickenshit to do anything.”

  I heard the stampede of footfalls, of my mother and others who’d no doubt seen my grandfather fall, rushing over. I didn’t have much time left to get this out.

  “You asked me what I was willing to lose. So, I thought about it. I’m willing to lose everything—my nice life and the name it came with, the family I’ve been keeping afloat, my freedom, my wife, you. I’m willing to lose it all, but I’m not willing to lose her.”

  He pressed the silk cloth to his nose, but his eyes were shrewd as ever.

  “So if you try to take her from me, if you even fuck with her, I won’t have anything left to lose. But you….” I looked around with a deep exhale. “You will have so much to lose, Grandpa.”

  He smiled. “There’s nothing you can do to me, Grayson. You keep making the same mistake.”

  I quirked my head to the side, finding Lottie watching me with her parents near the stairway. That was when it hit me.

  Strings.

  Strings I could tie on my grandfather.

  “I’m going to divorce Charlotte. If you try and stop me, I’ve had a postnup drawn up, and Lottie has signed it,”
I bluffed, still watching Lottie.

  For the first time in my life, my grandfather was speechless.

  Slowly my eyes traveled back to his.

  “I’ll come out and say that video was me. If you so much as look at Story, I’ll come out and say that video was me. We’ll lose the company. We’ll lose everything. This divorce can be painless…or not. I know you had planned on dragging us back into the boardroom after a year of photoshoots while you and the du Lacs worked out the borders on your new kingdom. It would be a shame if it all went to them before then.”

  “That’s insane,” Grandfather finally sputtered. “You’ll go down with the ship you sink.”

  I grinned. “But so will you.”

  “I’m trying to save this family—”

  “At the rate you’re saving this family, we won’t have any family left to save!” I yelled.

  My mother landed next to my grandfather. “Have you lost your mind?”

  A little bit. Maybe.

  “Grayson?” Lottie grasped my wrist.

  “What happened, Grayson?” my grandfather asked, standing and adjusting his tie. My mother stood with him, and soon everyone looked at me, waiting. Adrenaline pounded in my skull.

  “I’ll go get you ice,” I gritted.

  A chorus of disbelief rang out at my back as I went inside. I tangled my hands in my hair. It could work. This could work. A way out not just for me, but for Lottie—

  I stopped short at the sight of wild, curly hair.

  “Story?” I said her name aloud, not entirely convinced I wasn’t seeing a ghost.

  She stopped, then kept walking—faster—heading toward the servants’ quarters. I rushed after her, before she vanished into thin air again.

  I grasped her elbow. “Story, wait.”

  She yanked at my grip. “Leave me alone!”

  “I’m trying to tell you something.”

  “I don’t want to hear it—”

  I spun her to me. “Dammit, Story. I’m sorry.”

  “You put a bounty on my head with the Horsemen!” Her voice raised, but she quickly lowered it, eyeing the open front door at my back, where my grandfather and mother, Lottie, and her entire family still stood.