Oh no.
Wearing a baby pink sweatshirt that said MOOD: FUCK(ing) YOU with a leather and diamond choker, Gemma Crowne looked like she belonged trending on Insta, not here. In the tunnels of Crowne Hall, shepherding two pregnant fugitives.
“Gemma?” The fate of my and my baby’s life hung with Gemma Crowne?
We were doomed.
“Where’s my brother?”
“He’s…” I sucked in a breath through my nose. “He’s not coming.”
Gemma’s brow caved, but only for a second. “Well, let’s fucking go. I’m not delivering your babies.”
“Babies?” I jerked my head to Lottie. “You’re in fucking labor?”
“Well, so are you!” she snapped.
“How is this happening?” I rubbed my temple. “How is any of this happening?”
Gemma snapped her fingers. “Let’s go!”
Lottie, Gemma, and I snuck out in the dark of the labyrinth under Crowne Hall. It wasn’t lost on me that these tunnels had once been reserved for purposes like these, sneaking out mistresses in the dead of night.
The farther we got from Crowne Hall, the more real it became. I was leaving Crowne Hall, leaving Grayson, about to deliver his baby.
Unsure when I could return.
Soon, the brackish sea air overwhelmed the stony dark.
I could barely breathe, walking was a struggle, my back hurt. The coin in my hand was sticky with blood, and so many questions ran through my head. How did he get it? Who gave it to him?
That coin grants wishes, but only one. You only get one.
My uncle’s words echoed in my head.
Only one.
Another deeply painful contraction cracked through my body. I cried out and fell to the soft, cool sand. Early summer wind whispered across my cheeks as I took deep breaths, trying to steady the pain.
“Oh no.” Gemma snapped her fingers in my face. “Stand the fuck up. We have to get you both to a hospital.”
I pressed my hands into the sand, but I couldn’t fucking stand. An instant later, I had company. Lottie fell beside me, a blank and numb look on her face.
I glanced at her and a sudden, sharp pang hit my chest, this one having nothing to do with the baby.
West was dead.
I don’t know if I’d ever see Grayson again.
We had one coin to Beryl’s four.
Gemma eyed us with a low whistle. “I don’t think we’re going to make it. Fuck.”
“What do you mean—” Lottie broke off on a groan.
Gemma placed a hand to her lips, staring at us, brows drawn. “You’re delivering this baby on this beach.”
Gemma looked around at our dark, sandy surroundings. We were somewhat hidden by the rocks, and the beach itself was private.
“No fucking way—” I tried to stand again, wobbling and failing.
Another beat of silence pressed. I gritted my teeth through contractions that were coming faster and harder, as waves crashed violently on the shore.
I slowly looked back to Gemma, the realization landing like a rock in my gut.
She’s right.
“Have you ever done something like this?” I asked.
Gemma blinked her big, blue eyes at me. “I mean, what the hell do you think?”
“Of all the people I wanted to deliver my child, you, literally, are the last.”
“Gross, you’d rather have my mother? Or my grandfather?”
I grimaced. “Third to last.”
Another wave of contractions started and I dug my hands into the sand. I vaguely registered Gemma dropping to her knees before me. I heard the sound of Lottie’s cries—or maybe mine—over the ocean’s roar. Could hear Gemma cursing, and what sounded like her calling for help.
I don’t know how long it lasted.
I focused on the stars.
Yeah, Snitch. I’ll bring you the stars. The moon. The ocean. You name it.
“You’re having this baby. Now. Like…” Gemma looked at her phone, then lifted up my nightgown. “Like right fucking now.”
She then did the same to Lottie’s. “Yikes. This is gross.”
I fisted sand and chucked it at her. “You suck at this!”
Top Ten Midwife Tricks You Didn’t Know—
“Is that fucking YouTube?” I cried.
Gemma threw up her hands. “Am I supposed to do this without guidance?”
“I can help with that.”
My blood froze at the voice. I thought I was losing my mind. I lifted my head off the sand, and I saw him—them.
Grim Reyes, like a mythical being pulled from a painting, with the wild night wind his backdrop.
Grim smiled at Gemma. “This is a mighty big favor, Rich Girl.”
Sixty-One
STORY
“Gemma Crowne, midwife,” Grim drawled. “Did hell freeze over?”
“I don’t know,” she bit. “You tell me. You live there.”
In a hoodie and leather jacket, tattoos vining up his neck, Grim tilted his head, studying Lottie and me. He was completely at ease, totally undisturbed by two women giving birth on the sand. It was off-putting—but that was Grim Reyes.
Head of the Horsemen, king of the underworld, someone whose smirk belied secrets to all the dirty corners of the world, to questions you wouldn’t ever think to ask.
“Why is he even here?” I groaned, looking away from his obsidian glare.
“When Lottie said you needed to get out, well, there aren’t many places my grandfather doesn’t touch in Crowne Point. So plan A was getting you out of Crowne Point. This was plan B.” Gemma thumbed to Grim. “Well…I guess plan A was this not happening. So is this plan…Z?”
“I am not having my child with the fucking head of the Horsemen watching.”
A slight smirk lifted his lips. “I’ve seen worse.”
Gemma and Grim’s voices faded to a low murmur; above me the stars blurred into the black sky. I got lost in an ethereal world of pain and loss.
Grayson wasn’t here. West was dead. We lost.
“I think you’re supposed to push now,” Gemma said.
“Fuck you,” I groaned.
“Seriously, push.”
I rolled my head to the side, the cool sand feeling nice on my sweaty head. I found Lottie, and our eyes locked. She wasn’t pushing either.
“I won’t do it,” I whispered. “I can’t.”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I can’t deliver my baby on sand, with Gemma fucking Crowne as my midwife. While the Horsemen stood watch. While the love of my life was captive. While West du Lac was dead. I can’t, I fucking can’t—
“This isn’t how it was supposed to happen,” I said.
I’ll be there for you, Snitch. I’ll hold your hair back. I’ll get you ice chips. Let you scream and hold my arm until you break the skin.
Grayson was supposed to hold my hand.
He was supposed to push the hair out of my eyes.
He was supposed to be here.
“Push or your baby is going to fucking die. Do you want to be the reason your baby dies?”
“Worst midwife ever…” I mumbled.
He promised he would be here.
“He said he wouldn’t miss this.”
“Story, look at me,” Lottie said. “Look at me.”
I found Lottie’s warm brown eyes again. “None of this is how it was supposed to happen.”
She gripped my hand.
“Okay. YouTube says when I see a grayish sac…ew what? Oh, this is for a dog birth. Oh. Oh…”
“Fucking hell,” Grim growled. “Move aside. You’re going to kill them.”
“What do you know about delivering babies?” Gemma snapped.
“More than you. I delivered my sister.”
Grim has a sister?
Grim got to his knees in the sand, his dark black hair falling across his eyes as he went for my thighs.
I tried to shove him off. “I changed my goddamn mind
. Grim is the last person I want delivering my baby.”
He ignored me, my efforts to remove him barely jostling him. I was so tired. I could barely feel my legs. It felt like all my adrenaline slipped out of my body.
Through my suddenly foggy vision, I could see he’d taken off his jacket and pushed up his hoodie to his forearms. Black ink wrapped around muscular, caramel skin disappeared between my thighs.
Tattoos—the hands used to seal bloody contracts were now being used to deliver my baby.
That can’t be good.
“It’s time to push,” he said casually, bored, as if his head wasn’t between my legs.
“No. He said he wouldn’t miss this. He promised.”
Lottie squeezed my hand.
“I’ll do it if you will,” she whispered.
Hot tears fell down the corner of my eye.
“I don’t want to,” I said. Not without him. Not here. Not when I was so unsure if this baby would ever have a father.
Not with the king of the underworld as my midwife. What would he ask for in return?
Tears fell down her cheeks. “Me either.”
But holding each other’s hands, we pushed.
“They’re doing it!” Gemma said. “Fucking finally.”
For a split second, the world was beautiful and right.
“What’s happening?” Gemma’s voice sounded warbled and off-key.
Something felt wrong.
Very wrong.
Just do one thing for me. Survive. Survive.
Grayson’s earnest plea was the last thing I remembered, and then it all faded to black.
Sixty-Two
GRAY
I have all the luck in the world, but none of it belongs to me…
I’ve lived a lucky life. A spoiled, selfish, lucky life.
I wrote that line in my journal the first time my grandfather yanked at my strings. When he broke my nose and first forced me to choose Crowne Industries over love.
With my arm swung off the side of my bed, I trailed my fingers along the cold floor.
Back and forth—my hand slammed into something hard, beneath my bed. I rustled around until I could get a grip, bringing it up.
A book?
Made of worn leather and pressed paper.
I have searched under every poem at Crowne Hall. There is no coin here, at least, not buried under any famous poem. I tell my dad there is still hope…but I think she is the key. It keeps me up at night, why did he want her to go to Scotland?
My blood went cold. Not a book, a fucking journal. West’s journal.
When the fuck did he put this here?
The cobblestone walls of Scotland are marked with Story’s poetry. When she slept, I went down to where the songbirds gather to search. When they spotted me, they started to sing. There it was, buried in the cobblestone wall, beneath the inscription: Put my heart in a cage and treat it like a songbird.
I slammed the journal shut at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs, sliding it under my pillow. Every day, my grandfather visited me in my wing, trying to win me back to his side. Every morning, I stared out at the ocean, wishing I had some word of Story.
I think no word was good, though.
If my grandfather didn’t know, then that meant she was somewhere out of his reach.
“Are you ready to stop moping?” My grandfather leaned against the railing. “Aren’t you even the slightest bit curious what I’m using these on?”
I slowly trailed my gaze to his.
He held the coins out, glimmering gold in the light.
I was morbidly curious what my grandfather had planned with his coins. He was now the most powerful man on the planet.
I know it had something to do with the du Lacs, with a revenge plan he’d spent decades concocting.
But the longer I didn’t give him what he wanted, the longer he wouldn’t use them.
“I’m more curious how the fuck you knew I had them,” I said.
He laughed. “How long did you really think you could keep it a secret? I have eyes and ears everywhere. I’ve dedicated my entire life to finding them. But…It was a year ago, when I missed the Swan Swell to punish your sister Abigail, and I overheard Arthur du Lac yelling…as he always did…” My grandfather trailed off, annoyed. “His son had thrown away a coin. Given it to a Crowne.” He narrowed on me. “For years, I had no idea where any of them were, but now I knew for certain where one was.”
He made his way up the rest of the steps, talking as he did. “I always suspected Josephine had the other three, but she was watched for years and nothing showed up. Then Christmas provided some much needed clarity.”
“When you murdered Josephine,” I said.
“When she had a tragic accident,” he corrected, stopping beside my bed. He leaned against the floor-to-ceiling window, one leg crossed casually. “I knew Charles had stolen them, but what happened after was always fuzzy. Then I overheard Josephine talking…” His clay eyes found mine. “All these years I never would have thought to look at you.”
“You killed my father over fucking coins.”
He exhaled. “Another tragic accident.”
“You could have taken them at Christmas, then. Why did you leave?”
He adjusted the silver bar on his tie, like we were discussing the weather. “Everything in its due time. You know Arthur was following me everywhere I went. He thought he was so clever.” He shook his head. “Idiot.”
“If this is all for your revenge on the du Lacs, you could have just fucking taken the du Lac company when Lottie violated the prenup.”
He wrinkled his nose like he’d smelled something foul. “That is so…uninspired. I’m not using these coins to take a company—that company was given to me.”
That’s when I sat up, sitting off the bed to see him clearer. “Given to you?”
“Oh, did I finally get your attention? Yes, Grayson, given to me.”
“Arthur du Lac wouldn’t just give you his company—”
“Arthur du Lac didn’t make it back from Switzerland. His private plane went down somewhere in the Alps. Sad about West, too. No surviving heirs. In exchange for the du Lac empire, I simply had to promise Lynette a few things.”
I scoffed, bitter, finally starting to see all the puzzle pieces. “Like a dead husband, maybe?”
He grinned. “Do you have any idea the power these have?” He rolled the coins in his hands. “You could raze a country. Become a king. You used them on a whore and a bastard.”
I rolled back to bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for him to just fucking go.
I had a plan for my grandfather. It wasn’t as elegant as his had been. My plan was simply to cross the line. End his life, end it when guards weren’t waiting at the foot of the stairs to rip me off him.
I was just waiting for my moment to end him, so wherever Story and our little lemon were, they could live forever.
Free.
Even if that meant I would be locked away.
“There is nothing you can do to stop me, Grayson,” my grandfather continued. “And honestly, even if you could, I don’t think you’d want to.”
He placed something down beside me on my nightstand. I glanced to the side. They were square and slick.
Photos.
I picked them up. “What are these?”
“Proof that it’s over. Give in.”
I couldn’t process what I was looking at. Blood on the sand. More blood than I’d ever seen in my life. In the middle of it all, the green pocket square.
My green pocket square…abandoned.
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me. Your little whore never made it out alive.”
Sixty-Three
GRAY
I lunged at my grandfather, in an instant pulled back by his guards.
“You’re fucking lying!”
I couldn’t fucking breathe.
Gone.
She couldn’t be gone—they couldn’t be gone. That wasn
’t—it wasn’t—what the fuck was happening?
Gone.
I wouldn’t survive this pain. I couldn’t breathe through it. It was suffocating me. I didn’t want to survive it. The only reason I was even trying to breathe was to end him.
It had to be a lie. A trick.
My grandfather reached into his breast pocket, pulling out another photo. An aerial view of the beach, what looked like a satellite photo of two women.
Snitch lying pale on the ground.
Surrounded by blood.
The only thing keeping me standing was the guards holding me hostage.
“In your version, I got some shares of a company. In mine, I take everything the du Lacs own down to their very bloodline, and then I erase it off the planet. All Lynette asked was her daughter stay in the family.”
Who had the most to gain from all of this? For months I’d thought it was Lottie.
If not you, then who? Who has the most to gain?
“Lottie wouldn’t agree to that,” I rasped.
“When given the option between saving her own child and yours, who do you think she chose? There was only one spot in the ambulance.”
Hate.
Visceral hate.
Why did I trust Lottie with her? What the fuck is wrong with me?
“No one will know the child isn’t yours, Grayson. I’ve spent too many years on this. A small price to pay.”
“That is what you gave Lynette?” I screamed.
Your father tried that.
Josephine’s words echoed in my head, over and over and over again.
There is no getting out of this world, not alive.
She tried to warn me.
Now Snitch was dead, and I was supposed to make my peace as puppet. My child and wife were fucking gone. My little lemon. Would she have had her mother’s talent?
Gone.
Gone.
“Be on the right side of history, Grayson. A hundred-year rivalry is coming to an end,” he smiled cruelly. “And we win.”
The room blurred, watery.
The world is collapsing.
Destroyed Destiny (Crowne Point Book 4) Page 32