“I told you I’m not going anywhere.”
“Because of the investigation, right?”
“Yes. And because I’m not walking away from what belongs to me. Devil’s Music and you.”
“I don’t belong to you.”
“Wrong.” The insistence in his voice sounded like a threat. At least it did to the guard who strolled closer and stood poised to open fire.
“This company doesn’t belong to you.”
“Wrong, Chelsea. You do, and it does, and the only way to stop me from taking back what’s mine is to kill me. If that’s what you want—to be free of me—tell him to shoot. Tell him to make the most accurate shot of his life, because if he doesn’t, I’ll make him regret the moment he slid out of his mother’s cunt.”
Chelsea pleaded to the guard with her eyes. Don’t pursue this, she wanted to beg. Give us space.
Dante was a Bishop, and to deprive Bishops of something they thought was rightfully theirs never ended in anything short of destruction.
“We need privacy,” she told security. “Dante and I are going to my office. Please don’t follow us. If any of you do, you’ll be immediately terminated.”
Together, she and Dante took an elevator to a hushed hallway. While headquarters offered luxury through the ages, this entire building was ostentatious glamour. This was the show people wanted to see when they visited Devil’s Music—not a plantation built on the blood and tears of slaves.
When they entered her office, neither took a seat. They looked at each other, watching.
“If I don’t want to be with you, I won’t be with you, Dante,” she said. “I don’t give a damn what you think you deserve. Your birthright doesn’t mean shit to me when it comes to my life.”
“If I don’t want to be without you, I won’t.” The stubborn bastard didn’t even flinch. “So where does that put us?”
“It puts you on Delilah’s side. She wants my shares and I won’t give them up. You can’t have me and take what’s mine. See, Dante, I can be entitled and rigid, too.”
He stood there, cornered in the middle of an open room. And he didn’t even know that of course he could have her. She’d never let him go. Even as she insisted that her life belonged to her, she hid the truth—that she wanted a life that included him.
Because she truly was a fucking mess.
“Give me your twenty-four percent right now and I swear to God I wouldn’t accept them. I don’t want them. I don’t want Delilah to have them.”
“Then what do you want, Dante?”
“You and my legacy. Someone threatened both and I’m not going to watch it happen.”
“So this is your God complex at work?”
“It’s just me, Chelsea. It’s me telling you there’s no motherfucking way I’m going to step aside and let you go through life dropping on the ground every time a car pulls up beside you. It’s me fighting to stay with you because I can protect you. I can make you feel safe.”
“Your solution to making me feel safe is to take control. I don’t want that.”
He studied her. “You going to therapy?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, is that what we’re doing—lying?”
“You lied to me. Why shouldn’t I give it a try?”
“Are you going to therapy, Chelsea?”
“No.”
“Are you talking to the other shareholders about what you’re going through? Do they know you’re slipping?”
She lowered her eyes. “No.”
“First, don’t you dare be ashamed.” He lifted her face, kissed her so quickly that she couldn’t react in time to bat him away. “Second, if you’re not working through this with somebody and you’re pretending to be okay, how are you going to get better?”
“I can take care of myself.”
“And when you can’t?”
“Then I’ll improvise.”
Dante reached into his jeans pocket. “The reason I went looking for you this morning is because I figured out that I fucked up when I tried to help you before. I took control out of your hands.” He held out a rubber band.
“Everyone says I hurt myself when I snap bands on my wrist. I know it’s not healthy.” But damn, did she ache to take it from his palm and put it on.
“You can’t heal on anyone’s timetable but your own, Chelsea. You can’t forgive me before you’re ready. You might never forgive me.”
“Can you accept that, Dante, even though you believe I’m yours?”
“The thing is, you can’t expect me to accept something based on your timetable any more than I can expect you to forgive me based on my timetable. If I had it my way, we’d already be fucking by now, and I’d have you moaning in my ear about how much you love me. But we’re not in that place, are we?”
“No,” she whispered. Fucking, moaning, loving him—it sure as hell did sound glorious, though. “Dante, we’re tiptoeing around something important. I heard about the investigation surrounding your father’s death.”
“Is there something you want to ask me?”
“Would you tell me the truth?”
“Yes. So—” His brown eyes searched hers. “—ask me.”
Chelsea’s brain could form the words. Did you kill your father?
But she wasn’t ready for the truth. Instead she looked at the rubber band in his palm, and he quietly slipped it over her wrist.
The fingers poking out of her sling trembled and tears slid down her cheeks. “Dante…”
He settled a hand to her face, wiping away the dampness, and his mouth covered hers as he pulled the elastic and snapped her wrist.
The shock of pain startled her for a moment, then euphoria flooded her. Calmness followed and took root as he popped her a second and third time while they kissed.
Giving her back the control he’d taken, he gave part of himself, too. “When you’re ready to know the truth, Chelsea, you come to me. Ask me. Talk to me.”
“It might never happen.”
“Just say okay, Chelsea.”
“Okay.”
Dante kissed her again and left the office.
The next day the rubber band had gone slack, she wore a bracelet of welts, and she was aching to snap right along with the elastic. After a series of morning appointments at headquarters, she grabbed her purse and found Teagan. “Where did Dante Bishop go when he moved out of the guesthouse?”
“That big-ass mansion outside Buckhead,” the woman said. “But wait—you didn’t hear that from me. Emma said to not stress you with his drama.”
“What do you know about his drama?”
“Word on the street. That the cops are reopening his father’s suicide case ’cause some shit hit the fan. They came through asking Emma what he was doing in town, and she pulled some strings to keep things confidential, but they called your man in for questioning.”
Chelsea instructed her assistant to clear her afternoon appointments. She was grateful to have the discreet Grayson on duty. When she provided him with her destination, he asked only, “Are you sure?” When she confirmed by opening her own door and climbing into the town car, he said nothing more.
She was sure the moment she’d withdrawn Solomon Coin’s hymnbook from her bank vault. Practicality had its advantages, but it gave her a sense of security she now knew to be false. Dante had put her before all else. Including family. He’d chosen her.
If she was that one person for him—the one he trusted with his cruelest secrets and deepest sorrows—then she needed to know if she could handle him.
If Jude Bishop hadn’t killed himself after all, and Dante had somehow been involved, was she prepared to hold his sins?
Could she go on working with Joshua if he was behind the drive-by shooting that had almost killed her?
Could she go on loving Dante if she knew he’d committed murder?
Devil’s Music. The devil at work, her parents had warned. She worked for the devil, and yet the record label wasn’t the entirety of
her identity. Evil was powerful, but love was dangerous.
It’d been years since a Bishop had inhabited the castle-like mansion, but household staff maintained the property and warded off vandals. The last time Chelsea had set foot on the stone steps had been the night she and Dante had broken up. She wouldn’t run again. If he turned her around and banished her from his life, she wouldn’t scurry off in tears. She would hold her chin up, swing her hips, and strut, because Atlanta had raised her to be one bad bitch and she would survive him, too.
—
The Bishop house was empty. Dante wanted it that way. Alone in the place where he’d grown up and watched his family fall—first his mother, next his grandfather, then his father—he struggled to reaffirm that he’d done the right thing to rescue his sister from those ranks. He’d played God when he’d run to the ballroom he stood in now, gathered Delilah’s bloody body in his arms, and bellowed for help.
That night had been a warning he hadn’t heeded. She’d wanted to die. She’d resented him for keeping her alive. And life continued to fuck him sideways for interfering with hers.
He and Fred Hill had gone to the police station a couple of days earlier, and he’d cooperated as far as confirming that he’d footed the bill for the lithium Dr. Celia Chavez had obtained from a lab in London and denying that he’d loaded a syringe with that lithium and killed his father. The cops weren’t satisfied with the holes in his account—why hadn’t he or the psychiatrist come forward during the first investigation?—and maybe they detected his guilt, because now they were circling him. A detective had paid him a visit at home earlier today. But Dante had told Detective Hoffman—and his lawyer, Fred—all he would.
Atlanta police wanted to keep him good and close. He didn’t intend to leave while his gut told him Chelsea was at risk, but he didn’t appreciate being under the cops’ microscope. A psychiatrist had been strangled, and now he was being eyed for patricide.
Dante laughed at how fucked-up it all was. Saving someone who didn’t want to be rescued had led him here to the house where it had all happened, and now he was looking down the barrel of a murder charge.
He hadn’t killed Jude Bishop, but he was guilt-ridden. Accountability was his. It was his fault the lithium had wound up in this house, in his father’s possession. Maybe, to a degree, that made him his father’s killer after all.
The doorbell moaned. Dante turned away from the sunlight streaming through the ballroom’s tall windows, rubbing his exhausted eyes, and took his time walking down silent staircases and through empty corridors and halls.
Hauling open the pair of custom wood doors, he stared at Chelsea. Fuck, he’d missed her. “Ambushing me again?”
“I’m asking you to let me in.”
“You shouldn’t be seen around here.”
“Either tell me to leave or step aside so I can come in. A word of advice—choose option two.” Chelsea gave him about three seconds before she made the decision for him. She crossed the threshold, never taking her eyes off him.
“You know about my father’s case,” he guessed, shutting the doors and engaging the locks.
“Yeah.”
“A brush with death and you’re not afraid to be alone in a big, empty house with a man who’s suspected of offing his own father? Admirable, Chelsea.”
A sling pinned her left arm across her chest, but that didn’t deter her from touching him. Smoothing her free hand up his arm, she stroked his neck. “I’m not standing here because I’m fired up to pass judgment on you. I did enough of that at the studio yesterday. That’s not a part of this situation with Jude. So take my purse and look through it. My phone’s off and I’m not carrying recording devices.”
Dante took the bag and set it on the floor. He didn’t search it. He trusted her.
“Just answer me, Dante. Did you kill him?”
He picked up her hand, held it to his mouth. “No. I didn’t do it.”
“Then let’s figure out how the fuck we’ll prove it.”
Chelsea started a journey through the house and he followed, grasping to comprehend what had flung her from raw anger toward him to absolute faith in him. He took over, directing her to the place where he’d lately been spending so much time thinking and regretting.
“It’s been a while since this room saw a party,” she said, entering the vacant ballroom. A sunlight-streaked floor, a tarp-covered piano, and a hollow echo greeted them. She gravitated to the west-facing walls. Draperies held away from the windows with dusty silk trailed to the floor. Particles of dust floated freely in the shafts of light, disappearing into her dark hair. “Your father was found in his office.”
“Yeah, but this is where Delilah shot herself on her birthday.” He joined her at the windows, looked out onto a quiet summer day. The land seemed to stretch out to forever. “You told me this before, when we were together. She likes her dramatics.”
“It’s not dramatics. She’s been suffering for most of her life, Chelsea.” His sister’s secrets weren’t his to tell, but he’d protected Delilah for too long. “She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Our mother was bipolar, and when Jude started to see similar signs in Delilah, he panicked.”
Chelsea shook her head, looking about the ballroom. “Panicked how?”
“Every time he threatened to cut her off from the company, she threatened to hurt herself. Then on the night that he gave her a revolver as a birthday present, he said he was going to send her away to college.”
“But he couldn’t have known that she would turn the gun on herself.”
“When she was recovering, I heard him tell her something to the effect of ‘You can’t do a damn thing right.’ ” Dante searched Chelsea’s eyes, looking for accusation. “If you think that gave me reason to hate him, you’re right. But I didn’t fight him or tell him what an evil bastard he was for torturing her. I tried to get her help, behind his back.”
“How?”
“I found a psychiatrist. Celia Chavez. She diagnosed Delilah and tried to get her going with therapy, but Jude blocked it and threatened to have her license revoked. I should’ve left it the fuck alone, but the psychiatrist said she had contacts at a lab in England that was treating patients with lithium injections. I paid for it, planned to get Delilah to meet up with her, but Jude found out and burned the plan down. He confiscated the lithium and said he’d kill Dr. Chavez if she came near his family again. He told me I’d be out of the family if I went behind his back again. After that the deal you and Delilah set up with South Sounds happened, and since I was writing Lo Grizz’s song, Jude thought I was in it with y’all. He said he was cutting me out. I didn’t think about the lithium—I thought he’d gotten rid of it. Then we found him laid out with the shit in his veins.”
“This isn’t your fault,” Chelsea insisted.
“It looked like I’d betrayed him, Chelsea. All he wanted was to leave his legacy in capable hands—to me. In his eyes, Delilah wasn’t fit. When he found out I’d screwed him over by bringing in a rapper, he saw that as piss in his face. I thought that was what convinced him to say fuck everything. I thought I made him kill himself.”
“If he did kill himself, it’s not because you made him. You didn’t force him to load the syringe and inject the needle. If someone else was behind it, you’re not to blame for that, either. You love your family and tried to do right by your sister.”
“I cut corners.”
“So did the doctor. Jude threatened her, so she had motive to get to him before he could get to her. Is she being looked at?”
“That’s what resurrected this. She’s dead. She was found a few days ago hanging from a shower rod. The dead woman’s telling all kinds of tales, and now the police are getting nice and friendly with me. What they know is that I didn’t come forward and admit the lithium was mine, and that I inherited half of Jude’s estate.”
“But not all of it.” She came closer, spoke softly as if soothing a beast. “Dante, we both know who inherited the o
ther half.” Delilah. And after Dante had left Georgia, she’d gained complete ownership of Devil’s Music. And when the people she trusted had cut her out, she’d tried to burn down headquarters.
“She said she’d kill herself if she couldn’t be a part of the company,” Dante objected.
“That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t eliminate whoever kept them separated. I’m not outright accusing her. But listen to me. Jude died. She tried to set the boardroom on fire with Emma, Joshua, me, and the other board members inside. She was at Opera the night I was shot.”
“She said she wasn’t involved.”
“Sorry, but I’m having a hard time believing I can trust her word. But let’s take that off the list, and you still have all the others. Then a psychiatrist is found dead and Pandora’s box opens. If the police put Jude’s death on you, you’re out of the way.”
“Delilah’s back with Devil’s Music. I don’t have a part of it. She’s got nothing to gain by having me collared.”
“She does. It’s revenge. You turned on her when you chose me. You said so yourself—you put me in front of family.” Chelsea pressed against him, hooking her fingers into the collar of his shirt. He glimpsed reddened welts on her skin. He’d given her a tool to hurt herself, but he’d given her back control. Containing Chelsea wouldn’t cure her. Dominating her wouldn’t save her.
“Will you ever get back to trusting me again, Chelsea?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll try.”
He pushed her hair from her face and claimed those plump, naughty lips. “Goddamn, that’s good enough for now.”
“Good enough to keep you in Atlanta? If you’re willing to choose me over your family, then choose me over the blueberry farm. I didn’t want to ask you to change your life for me, but I’m doing that. I need you here.” She wasn’t soft sweetness. She was wounded and afraid. “The shooting is making me doubt everyone. Stay, and I’ll help you find out what happened to your dad. Be with me on this, Dante.”
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