Across the table from Gage, his mother, Celeste Blackwater, had gone still as well.
Celeste’s spine was stark straight, making her appear even taller and leaner than she was by nature. She’d slithered her delicate body into the tightest wrap dress in her closet. An eggplant purple that made her pale skin cry out, its vibrant color the only thing stopping her from melting into the white dining chair behind her. The smile that never unglued itself from her face wavered as she considered David from the corner of her unmoving green eyes.
Scarlett’s parents watched David just as closely. They both had red hair like hers and the same big blue eyes. With a forest of freckles on his cheeks, sparse red eyebrows, and lips so pale they nearly vanished against his skin, Scarlett’s father reminded Gage of a Chucky Doll. Luckily, Scarlett had been blessed with her mother’s looks. A beautiful, delicate face, worthy of being highlighted by a head of bright red hair.
Once all eyes were on David, he laid the two piles of paper onto the table, and his gray eyes locked to Gage and Scarlett. “As crude as this may be,” David said again. “I’m sure the two of you will understand, after the last failed endeavor, that we’d like to make this engagement a little more official than the last one.”
Gage breathed out a chuckle, looking at Scarlett, who still had her lips locked around her wine glass. “With all due respect, Father, you can’t be serious—”
“Oh, deathly so.” David widened his eyes.
“Contracts,” Gage deadpanned, looking to Scarlett just as she tilted her head back to finish off the last of her wine.
She set the trembling glass back down on the table, the big swallow she’d just taken moving down her wobbling throat as she cut her eyes at David. The stem of the wine glass remained clenched in her fist as the butler came up behind her, refilling it for the millionth time.
“Contracts,” David confirmed with a sharp nod at his only son. “To ensure the two of you follow through on your words, which in the past haven’t proven to be your bonds. I’m sure you understand.”
Gage clenched his teeth, eyes dancing over to Celeste, the cool silver of the fork he’d forgotten was in his hand suddenly feeling like it was freezing his skin. “Mother…”
Celeste moved her heated eyes from David to Gage, and the moment they landed on her son, her green orbs softened. The hard line of her red lips eased as well, revealing their true fullness as a gentle smile upturned at the corners.
But she didn’t speak. Even as she smiled, the jagged black cliffs that rose into the starry night sky beyond the windows behind her seemed to be a clone of her very aura. The cruise ship boasting her moniker, the largest ship in the family’s fleet, sat farther in the distance behind her, it’s white body booming against the black sky, even brighter than the moon itself.
Gage looked away from Celeste when he realized she’d be of no help.
“So you guys don’t trust us,” Scarlett said, her voice slightly raspy.
Every head at the table flew to her as she spoke for the first time that night.
Her father, Edward Covington, chuckled. “Of course we don’t trust you.”
“Have you given us any reason to?” Her mother, Barbara Covington, added. “You’ve already betrayed us once before. Of course we’re going to do everything in our power to ensure it doesn’t happen twice.”
“And if you value your inheritance and your trust funds, you’d do well to take the pen and sign these papers without another word,” Edward said.
Scarlett took a healthy swallow of her freshly re-filled wine.
“Nothing outrageous,” David reassured, using a tone that falsified a willingness to negotiate, even though every soul at that table realized this wasn’t a democracy. That it never would be. David pressed the pads of his fingers on the papers. “It’s simply an agreement—a binding agreement—that the two of you will be married before the summer season hits…”
Scarlett’s chest swelled.
David’s eyes went to her, and he watched it happen. “And if, for whatever reason, you fail to marry within that timeframe, we’ll remove all financial support from the day the deal breaks down, onward. No jobs. No trust funds. No inheritances. No nothing. If the two of you are not married by summer—”
“You’re on your own!” Edward jumped in, his cheeks fire-red.
David sighed, pressing a hand to Edward’s shoulder while handing him the papers and pen. “Eddie, if you wouldn’t mind…”
Edward heeded David’s request and passed the contracts down to Gage and Scarlett, as well as the pen.
Once the contracts were before them, Gage and Scarlett stared at the papers.
Scarlett clutched the pen as tightly as she had the stem of her wine glass.
Barbara searched Scarlett’s face. “Sweetheart, I can’t imagine how you can sit there, gaping, as if you’ve given us no reason to take things to this level…” She waited for Scarlett’s eyes to meet hers. “Do you think your father and I aren’t privy to the gossip all over town? The late night partying? The drinking? The drugs? The rendezvous with Juan, the pool boy?”
Scarlett drew in a deep breath.
“You’ve left us no choice.” Barbara’s red hair fluttered as she shook her head. “You need this, sweetheart. And I, frankly, can hardly wait for you to fill up Gage’s mansion with a soccer team of ginger babies…”
Scarlett’s eyes bulged.
“It’s the only thing that will bring you back down to Earth,” Barbara beamed.
“Sign the papers,” Edward spat.
Scarlett looked at her father. She looked at Gage. She looked at David and Celeste. Then she looked down at the contract. With another deep breath, she brought the trembling pen to the paper and signed, the tip shaking so wildly her name was barely legible. Eyes still down, she offered Gage the pen.
He took it and signed his own contract without another word, his breathing even, pen steady, and his signature much more decipherable than Scarlett’s. He set the pen down with a sigh once he was finished, clasping his hands together in his lap while meeting his father’s eyes.
David raised an eyebrow at Gage.
Gage raised both of his back, wondering what it took to make that man happy. Had Gage not just signed his life away with almost zero argument? Why was his father still looking at him like something he’d found at the bottom of a drain?
“Well,” Barbara exhaled, the relief in her voice plain. “That wasn’t so terrible was it?” She and Edward smiled at Celeste and David. “David, Celeste, we’d like to thank you for the lovely dinner, but we really must be going.”
“It’s always our pleasure to have you,” Celeste smiled, standing from her seat with her hands clasped in front of her body.
David stood as well, shaking Edward’s hand. “Here’s to many more to come.”
“Absolutely,” Edward agreed with a roaring laugh that made his belly shake. His eyes flew to Scarlett as David was in the midst of kissing Barbara’s hand in farewell. “Scarlett,” Edward beckoned her with a sharp voice and wave of his hand.
Scarlett spoke for the second time that night. “If you don’t mind, Father, I’d like Gage to take me home.”
Every shocked eye in the room landed on Scarlett.
Silence.
Clearly taken aback at how beautifully she was already adjusting, Edward smiled. “Well, if that’s what you’d like, sweetheart, then that’s fine with us.”
Scarlett gave a tight smile and an even tighter nod, turning her head to meet Gage’s eyes.
Gage gave a rigid smile in return.
3
“Why, Gage? Why, Gage? Why, why, why?” Scarlett’s hoarse cries filled the interior of Gage’s Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupe later that night, bringing her clawed fingers into the air from the passenger’s seat. Her bangs danced with the breeze sneaking into the passenger window, and her voice rose, drowning out the roll of the waves that crashed against the rocks at the bottom of the cliffside road they pursued. “We
were home free! Why?”
Gage’s nostrils flared, taking in the dewy scent of the ocean air creeping into his own open window. He shot her a look from the driver’s seat, one hand guiding the smooth leather steering wheel and the other clapped around the gearshift.
“Will you please calm down?” he asked. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”
“Sick,” Scarlett roared, her heated eyes flying to him, red hair in disarray because she’d spent the bulk of the drive with her clawed fingers tangled inside it. “We are so far passed sick—” She couldn’t even finish as a violent heave rolled up her chest, making her entire body convulse as if she were in the midst of puking. She pressed her lips together tightly, her beet red cheeks expanding as if she really was swallowing back a lump of bile racing up her throat.
“Please don’t throw up in my car,” Gage begged.
Scarlett’s chest heaved as she took a moment to calm herself, her voice coming softer, but still frantic, as she held her hands out to him over the gearshift. “I just don’t understand. Help me understand. I thought you’d fallen madly in love with Veda Vandyke? I thought the two of you were engaged. What happened? Why, Gage?” Just as quickly as she’d found some semblance of peace, she spiraled back into madness.
Gage kept his focus on the rocky black cliff blazing by beyond the windshield. On the moon that flirted with the ocean horizon in the distance, leaving a sparkling white cast that trickled across the surface. He let the soft rumble of the leather seat below him, aided by the purring engine, center him.
Of course, he couldn’t tell Scarlett the real reason he’d “left” Veda. He couldn’t tell Scarlett the real reason he’d agreed to re-enter the arranged engagement they’d both escaped by the skin of their teeth and were now contractually obliged to. He couldn’t tell her that he had no plans of following through on that contract because he was out to destroy the very man who’d produced it. The man he’d suspected had played a role in the kidnapping of the only woman he’d ever loved. In the death of his unborn child.
He couldn’t tell Scarlett he was going after his father—after his business—to find out the truth about his family. A truth that had been hidden under wraps for far too long. He couldn’t tell Scarlett that the only way to do it was to secure a position at Blackwater Cruises. To get inside. He couldn’t tell her that he’d agreed to be a confidential informant for Shadow Rock PD. That he’d agreed to pass any information he found in his new position along to them.
He couldn’t tell her any of it, so as he came upon a stoplight, just a few streets away from her home, he sighed and met her gaze across the console.
Tears had filled Scarlett’s eyes, but they didn’t fall, leaving her big blue orbs even more cartoonish than they already were by nature. Her bosom heaved under the low neckline of her black Calvin Klein dress—its dark shade making both her red hair and pale skin scream out. Her side-swept bangs had been purposely cut to fall over one eye, but at that moment, deep in the midst of her rant, they nearly swallowed both.
“Whatever happened between you and Veda…” Her voice had fallen from a primal scream to a desperate whimper as she shook the hair from her eyes. It fell right back down. “I’m sure you can work it out. There’s no love without forgiveness, Gage, and there’s no forgiveness without love!”
Gage fought a frown at how desperate she’d become, drudging up uninspired quotes she’d probably found on a Google search.
“Veda Vandyke was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made,” Gage said, stoically, clenching the steering wheel. “Besides, even if I did want to rekindle things with her—which I don’t—you and I have signed the contracts. It’s too late to turn back. We get married, or we lose everything. It’s a done deal.”
Scarlett heaved again, but thankfully, she didn’t throw up. Instead, she collapsed back in her seat, the leather squeaking against the backs of her thighs as she slumped as low as she could go.
Silence reigned.
Gage swallowed thickly, wanting nothing more than to assure Scarlett she had nothing to worry about. Instead, he looked back to the road without a word, moving the car forward when the light turned green. It was difficult—biting back the urge to tell her he had a plan.
He liked Scarlett. Not in a soccer-team-of-ginger-babies kind of way… but as a human being. He understood her. She understood him. Probably more succinctly than anyone else on the planet. He didn’t like seeing her upset. He wanted to reassure her.
But he couldn’t risk it.
He couldn’t risk anyone knowing that he had no plans to marry her. That he had no plans to marry anyone whose name wasn’t Veda Gabriella Vandyke.
At the end of it all, it would be Veda he’d be marrying. It would be Veda in sickness and in health. For richer or poorer. ’Til death do them part. It would be Veda’s soccer team of mixed-race babies invading his four-bedroomed mansion.
It would be Veda by any means necessary.
Even if it meant watching his entire family—and everything they’d built—burn to the ground.
——
The next evening at Dante’s, more than twenty-four hours after Linc had spared her for reasons she still couldn’t comprehend, Veda’s hands still shook. As a bartender who wasn’t exactly a customer favorite, the last thing she needed was to spill the drink of the assholes waiting behind her. Regardless, the cocktail shaker wobbled in her hold as she filled the two chilled martini glasses before her. Behind her, the bar was in full party mode. The bass of the hip-hop music, blasting so loudly it shook the walls, pounded right in tune with her heart, even though her heart had the thump of the music beaten by a mile, as it seemed moments from disconnecting itself from her chest and falling to her feet.
She bit the corner of her bottom lip—eyebrows drawing together—when she filled the glasses too high, ensuring they’d be difficult to carry back to the assholes waiting behind her. At the opposite end of the bar, she eyed her boss, Dante. The mocha skinned, hundred-watt smile, never-in-a-bad-mood owner of the bar. Busy serving his own customers, he hadn’t yet noticed Veda falling apart at her end.
She frowned after she finished filling the glasses, making the bags under her eyes—the ones she’d collected after the zero hours of sleep she’d managed the night before—ebb even darker. She picked up the drinks before turning back to the crowded bar, her curly ponytail flying as she did, struggling to carry the overflowing martinis to their owners without spilling.
“You know, I remember you…”
She jolted softly at the memory of Linc’s voice from the night before, causing a big dollop of liquid to spill from each drink. She froze mid-step and took a deep breath, unable to stop her wild mind.
How much did Linc know?
How had he known to look for The Chopper in that abandoned guesthouse?
Did he know she was The Chopper?
Was that why he’d let her go?
The customer’s waiting for their drinks snapped their fingers at her, clearly irate that she’d delved so deep into another world that she’d stopped moving completely. Veda blinked back to the present, her wide eyes catching theirs as they reached out, fingers splayed for their drinks. Some distant voice in her mind implored her to focus.
“I remember you from the water.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
“You had blood on your dress.”
She slammed her eyes closed.
“Those animals left you in the ocean to die.”
“What the fuck?”
Veda gasped at the shout, eyes flying open and landing on the two irate men before her. The two irate men who were still waiting on the drinks wobbling in her hands, making the alcohol inside them slosh. Two irate men, one of which was one of the very animals Linc had spoken of the night before.
One of the animals who’d left her in the ocean to die.
Her teeth clenched behind her tightly drawn lips as she looked dead at Matthew Russo, her number seven. Since she still hadn’t ta
ken out number six, Matthew’s time hadn’t yet come.
But it would.
Oh, it would.
And it would be glorious.
Matthew widened his irritated hazel eyes at her when their gazes locked, giving a sharp shake of his head that made his brown hair dance, visibly dumbfounded at her dumbfoundedness. As the youngest mayor to ever be elected on Shadow Rock Island, Matthew wasn’t accustomed to being left waiting. Clearly, that moment was no exception. Since Dante’s was his usual stomping grounds, Matthew’s presence there went widely ignored by most everyone.
Everyone but Veda. As she snapped out of her haze and set the drinks down for Matthew and a friend whose name she didn’t know, all she could think about was the night she’d finally follow him home from that bar, jam a syringe of sodium thiopental in his neck, and take him to his goddamn knees.
The flash of joy that thought sent through her was short lived however, as Linc’s voice zoomed through her mind once more.
“Stop this.”
Her chest swelled at the two-worded demand he’d made, unable to shake the fact that she might be forced to do just that. She might be forced to stop before she had the chance to finish what she’d started. Before she had the chance to avenge the animal who’d not only raped her ten years ago but was now snapping his fingers in her face for the millionth time that night.
Matthew’s snaps came just inches away from her nose, over and over, harder with each moment that passed without her responding quickly enough for his liking.
Pulled from her haze at his rudeness, Veda met Matthew-the-snapper-Russo’s widened eyes and widened hers just as much.
Eyebrows raised, Matthew motioned to the two martini glasses she’d just sat down, and his friend scoffed.
“Olives?” Matthew waved an exasperated hand through the air.
Veda did everything she could not to curl her lip. Not at Matthew, but at the thought that she might never get the chance to wipe that smug fucking smirk off his face forever.
She didn’t know how much Linc knew. She didn’t know how he’d discovered that Liam O’Dair would be her next victim. How he’d known she’d choose the O’Dair guesthouse to carry out her attack. Did he know who number six was too? Did he know Matthew-the-snapper-Russo was number seven? Did he know eight, nine, and ten? Would she have to switch up her pattern completely?
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