Keller’s dark and silky, shoulder-length hair barely showed one vicious eye. He was the only triplet not named after a Crowne, though rumor had it, he was named after a long-dead St. Germaine.
None of them seemed the least bit phased at their mother’s death. With the porcelain skin of their mother and the high cheekbones of the Crownes, they had all the beautiful parts of their mother and father. And, I suspected, the darkness.
They stared at their mother’s casket like they were on a museum tour of fossils. At one point, Jo took out her phone.
“I have a riddle for you, Story…” I straightened at Lynette du Lac’s soft voice. “Where does a mistress and her lover live happily ever after?”
I shrugged, knowing she didn’t give me permission to speak.
“In the ground.”
A while ago, a threat like that would have terrified me, but I remembered what Josephine had said.
I was a threat.
I turned and looked her dead in the eyes. “Are you scared, Lynette?”
Her eyes popped. “I could have you punished for speaking to me.”
I slowly looked back at the black casket, lowering into the ground as we spoke. “Then do it.”
Put me on my knees.
Lock me in a tower.
Whatever she does, I’ll do it with dignity.
Lynette opened and closed her mouth, one eye twitching. She straightened her shoulders, waving to some unseen person across the funeral, before joining them without a second glance to me.
“How…” Lottie said, mouth parted. “How did you do that?”
I did a double take, surprised to find Lottie standing next to me, and not with Grayson. The casket continued to lower, and most everyone’s eyes were on that—the only exception being Grayson.
He was alone now. In a well-fitted charcoal suit, his rose gold hair perpetually unkempt, and standing beneath a lone tree with bare branches.
Eyes on me.
Something in those blue depths I couldn’t read, but he wanted me desperately to understand.
“You can talk,” Lottie said after a minute. “I won’t…just, just talk.”
“How did I do what?”
“Talk to her that way. Weren’t you scared?”
After a moment, I nodded.
“So why did you do it?”
“That’s why I had to do it. To not be afraid anymore.”
Her brow furrowed, and she turned from me, staring after her mom. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore either…”
“Charlotte!”
Lottie straightened her spine at her mother’s voice, and without a second look in my direction, went to her.
The casket was in the ground, the funeral was over, and everyone was heading back inside.
I stayed as soft snow fell to the sandy grass. I looked around at the looping poetry etched into the various mausoleums.
I walked around the graveyard, reading the various poems.
Miss me one place, find me another…
I froze.
Could this be it? Is this what my uncle meant when he said the coin was buried beneath a poem?
West gripped my elbow, following my line of sight. “See something interesting?”
I really didn’t want to leave it. What if we were so close?
“Um…no.”
I followed West inside, leaving the only clue behind.
West walked a few feet in front of me as we went back inside Crowne Hall. I caught my reflection in the edge of an oil painting’s frame, my rounded stomach warped in the gold. For the first time, I didn’t have to hide my pregnancy. It felt odd. So many months I’d spent concealing it, and now it was on full display.
I slowed my pace considerably, trying to walk beside the triplets behind me.
Their faces were buried in their phones.
I had to hope that because of their mother’s circumstances, they would let me speak. I had to hope even more that they might know something.
“Um…” I looked around to be sure no one else could hear me talk. “Hi.”
“You shouldn’t be talking, mistress,” Jo said, without looking up. Despite the bored apathy on her chiseled, pouty face, she hadn’t spoken with any ire.
She was the only girl of the three triplets, and though named after her mother, was starkly different. Where Josephine was airy and fay-like, Jo was gloomy and unsmiling.
“So…” I dragged my bottom lip between my teeth, working out the best way to approach this.
Hey, you heard any hot goss about a shiny gold coin?
Jo lifted her head slightly, narrowing on me. “Our mom told us you were coming months ago. What happened?”
I stopped short. “What?”
But before I could get any more information, I was yanked back.
Into Grayson.
I blinked up at him as he dragged me into an alcove. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t like you talking to them.” He glared at their retreating figures.
“They’re your siblings—”
His glare slashed to me. “They’re not my siblings.”
“But—”
“Their existence is the reason my father is dead!”
His anger silenced anything I would have said.
I pulled my elbow free. “They were just about to tell me something! Apparently they were expecting me in Scotland. Maybe it has something to do with the coin—”
“Don’t believe anything they say,” he cut me off.
A minute ticked into two, and I remembered what Josephine had told me months ago. According to her, Grayson and the rest of the Crowne children didn’t speak to hers.
“Do you really not speak to them?” I asked.
He shrugged. “There’s nothing to say.”
My hand glanced my stomach. “Will Lottie’s child treat mine that way?”
“It’s different,” he growled.
“You’re right…” I quirked a tight smile. “It’s worse… You know, they probably miss him just as much as you do.”
Fiery blue eyes slashed to mine. “I don’t miss him.”
“We could be different. You could be different. You don’t have to hate them, we don’t have to hate each other.” I covered my stomach. “We could be a family. Isn’t that what you want?”
“They’re not family. They never were.”
“Then what am I?”
He gripped my face. “You’re my wife.”
“I’m living as a mistress. I’m living as the other woman.”
Grayson’s thumbs dug into my cheeks. “You’re a queen, little wife. You’re my fucking queen.”
“I can’t talk to anyone, I have to stand behind everyone, and these kids, your brothers have grown up in that life. If we want better for our kids, we have to be better, Grayson. Don’t you think maybe you could be a little biased about them? You sound like your grandfather.”
He dropped me like I was fire.
I reached for him, to soothe the ache on his face.
“I mean—” but before either of us could say anything more, the hallway was flooded with people.
Once again, I couldn’t speak. Bodies moved past in a blur of somber colors as Grayson and I could only share our stare.
Because I was relegated to the life of a mistress once more.
Thirty-Two
GRAY
You sound like your grandfather.
She was right.
Fuck.
She was right.
Now, while my mother glared at the triplets who had the audacity to sit alone and not try any of the food she’d had the servants prepare, while Lottie wispily stared out the window, and while Story stared at me with questions in her eyes… I reread Story’s secret letter to me, over and over again. I read the letter that made me seek her out after the funeral in the first place.
Dear Atlas,
Today he said, if I loved you, then why did I sleep with him?
Today he said, I do
n’t love you, not the way I think I do. Because if I loved you, I would never have sought him out.
Today I wondered, why did all of those questions feel so fucking wrong? Like a trap. My love for you is a house for which I constantly need to buy new beds and build new rooms. I love you more than I have space to feel.
Today I wondered…why do I have an urge to sink into that trap, like quicksand in my heart? He’s right, it whispers. You’re bad, it whispers.
If I make a mistake, does that mean I’m not worthy of loving you anymore?
If that’s the case, then I will take my punishment and penance.
Because I love you.
I don’t want to keep you from someone who can love you without mistake.
She still wouldn’t tell me about her secret letters. I was beginning to wonder if she even thought of them as secrets, if she even realized she was keeping them from me.
If she was starting to keep them from herself.
Maybe a funeral wasn’t the best place for love letters, but for us, it felt right. I wanted Story’s imperfect love. I wanted her honesty, because she was the only one who loved me enough to be honest.
You sound like your grandfather.
My eyes lifted to the triplets.
“They’re orphans now.”
I jumped. “Jesus, Gemma.”
Gemma stared forward, across the sitting room where the triplets sat alone. They waved their hand no to yet another frangipane tart. From across the room, my mother watched them, picking at her bottom lip.
“Do you remember when Dad died and they came to the funeral?” Gemma continued. “How old were they then?”
“Young…” I said. “Really young.” Which is saying something because we were barely children ourselves.
“Mom told me not to talk to them. I remember she said something super-fucked up, but I didn’t realize it until…” Gemma trailed off on a laugh. “Well, now, I guess. She told me Grandfather could only love a certain amount of granddaughters, and if I was friends with Jo, he might love her more. I used to think about that when he showed Abigail all that affection…” Her brow wrinkled, and she turned to me. “Do you think she told Abigail the same thing?”
They’re your competition now.
Words my grandfather said to me at my father’s funeral echoed back in my head as I watched the triplets sit alone at their mother’s funeral.
Every interaction I’d had with them was tainted by my grandfather—a man I hated, a man I loathed. He had influenced my decisions on an unconscious level for years.
I rubbed my forehead.
Maybe they did know something. Maybe I should talk to them. Where the fuck do I start?
I didn’t know the first thing about them.
“Have you ever talked to them?” I asked.
Gemma arched a dark blonde brow. “Have you?”
Not once. Ever. Not even an “excuse me” or a more likely “get the fuck out of my way.”
“Do you think they’re gonna get revenge?” Gemma asked lightly.
“On who?”
“Does it matter?” Gemma laughed. “I think Abigail put Nair in my shampoo bottle once. Maybe they’ll do that.”
“Yeah. That’ll make up for the death of their mother.”
My father left only orphaned and fucked-up children as his legacy. I can’t let that be mine.
But everywhere I looked, there was someone I’m letting down.
Lottie—her and her child, our child…
Snitch. Always Snitch.
My sister standing beside me. Would I really abandon her into a marriage with West? A fucking monster?
I couldn’t let her marry West.
A hero, a good man, a father—an impossible dream. Did my father have this exact moment, staring out at a room filled with choices, wondering what the right one was? What would hurt the least amount of people?
My lungs were starting to close. I snatched a frothy white cocktail from a passing server so fast their silver tray wobbled.
My sister eyed me as I swallowed my drink in one gulp. “If you need help…If there’s anything you need help with…”
I looked back to the main problem I couldn’t solve, currently on West’s arm. Story looked like my little nun again. How fucked was that? That at a funeral she finally looked like herself.
I exhaled. “There’s nothing you can help with, Gemma.”
I placed my empty drink on the tray of another passing server, and turned to leave. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but I needed some fucking air.
“Grayson!” Gemma grabbed me, stopping me.
Bemused, I looked at the black-polished nails curling around my suit jacket. “The fuck, Gemma?”
“You think I don’t know what you’re dealing with, but I do. I’ve been engaged since the day I started my period. Mom had the maids hand me a tampon, and by the time I’d come out of the bathroom, Grandpa had called Horace’s father.”
I looked at my sister—really looked at her. Gemma was in a black shift dress that hung heavy on her arms. Something plucked right off the Paris runway, I’m sure. And just like the runway, she looked like she’d been losing weight.
Her eyes found mine.
Big and blue, like mine, but her foundation was failing to hide her circles.
She had a pill problem, but like everything Crowne, it was shoved under the rug. I wondered what else she’d been shoving under the rug.
She slowly let me go. “You’ve been privileged, little bro. You’re only just now starting to realize how fucked up our world is.”
STORY
Hours after the funeral had ended, I found Grayson staring at a family portrait. He looked about six in the painting, so then his sister Gemma seven and Abigail five. He was standing proudly next to his father, and his mother was seated next to his sisters.
A hero for my sisters. A good man. A good father.
Grayson’s dream was like rain on a sunny day against the resigned look in his gaze.
“You’re hiding something,” I said.
He spun.
“Does it have to do with your grandpa? You don’t think it’s a good thing he left either, do you?”
Grayson rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “Little wife…”
Maybe he didn’t realize he was keeping secrets.
Maybe he was keeping them from himself.
How do you tell someone a secret you can’t even say out loud?
“You asked me why I kept doing this to myself. Why I stayed with my uncle, why I chose to stay with West. Why I kept playing the victim. I was born poor, to a disloyal mother, so I didn’t have many choices in my life, but I can choose what kind of person I am. I could choose not to be her. I could choose to be loyal. I could choose to be strong. I could choose to be good.”
I looked down at my fingers. “I didn’t realize how easy my choices had been, until I had real temptation to be disloyal. Weak. Bad.”
Nostrils flared, he grabbed me. “Tell me more words—all of them.”
I opened my mouth, desperately wanting to give him what he sought, but I didn’t know what to tell him.
What more secrets to give him.
“I…I don’t know what else to tell you.”
His eyes narrowed, but he just spun me around, holding me back to chest, wrapping his arms around my body.
“Do you know how fucking sexy you are right now?” Grayson’s voice slid through my bloodstream. “You look like my little nun again. My pregnant nun. For the first fucking time, I want you wearing tight clothes.”
I nearly said something about West—he’d notice my absence soon.
Stop warning me, Snitch. I know the consequences.
I melted into him, resting my head on his chest so I could see him upside down.
“There’s my girl.” His lip tilted up. “Please tell me your words.”
He trailed a soft touch along the side of my face, across my cheek, and under my eyes.
I wracked
my brain for something—then it slammed into my head without consent.
That night when he came in the room, your eyes grew in the way I’ve dreamed about for years.
Grayson must have seen the change on my face because his gentle touch turned bruising, his breath heavy.
“What?” he growled. “Tell me.”
“Earlier today…” I didn’t know where to start, or how to get the words out. I’d been trying to bury the night, and West shone a spotlight on it. “West taunted me with the night of the masquerade and I felt… I don’t know what I felt. He reminded me that he came inside me—”
Grayson went rigid, stepping off me.
My back was cold without him.
“Don’t ever feel bad about that night, Snitch. It’s my fault.”
“It’s not, though. That night—”
“I should have pulled him off you. I thought it was my punishment, I thought I deserved it, and because of that…This is all my fucking fault, that’s the end of it.”
It wasn’t.
There was this feeling inside of me, this briar. I didn’t know how to tell him. I don’t even know where to start.
I feel…twisted.
“But—that night…the night I slept with West—”
“Was my fault,” Grayson cut me off.
My brow furrowed. It wasn’t his fault, not by a long shot. “It wasn’t your fault, Grayson.”
“I pushed you to that point. I shoved you into his arms, and I didn’t drag you out.”
“But—”
“My. Fault. Move on.”
The silence that spread between us grew sticky, like old oil. I rubbed my arm. White sun drenched the hallway in slats. Out the window, you could faintly see the garden…
“Oh! Oh my God!”
Grayson looked to me, brows lifting.
“Um…I think I know where the coin is.”
As my smile grew, so did his, and I felt like my limbs had been filled with melted butter. His smiles are so rare, too rare.
“I think my uncle might have been talking about the graveyard. There are so many poems out there…and it’s the perfect place to bury something. I didn’t tell West, but how are we going to search without him?”
Destroyed Destiny (Crowne Point Book 4) Page 19