by Fallon Hart
What the hell was going on?
I watched the roads as we drove and twenty minutes later we pulled onto West 2nd Street. The car came to a stop on the tree-lined street next to a modern apartment building opposite more traditional New England town houses.
The driver opened the door and as I got out he handed me a keycard and said, “Mr. Mandeville is waiting for you in penthouse apartment A.”
What? “Did he say what we’re doing here?”
“No, ma’am, just that you’re to meet him there.”
This cloak and dagger crap was getting on my last nerve. Shaking my head, I wrapped my coat tight around my body, and I walked into the reception. It was clean and bright with one elevator on either side. A sign told me one of the elevators was for Penthouse A and B only. I got in and had to use my keycard to get the elevator to work. Anxiety made my pulse race. Why would Griff bring me to an apartment building in South Boston?
The elevator doors slid open and I walked out into the airy hallway on shaking legs. There were two doors at either end of the long hallway. One of them was already open.
Feeling like I might burst into tears or a shrieking rage at any second, I tentatively made my way to Penthouse A and knocked on the door. “Griff?” I called inside.
“In here!”
Relief moved through me. It really was my husband and not some elaborate scheme to get me on my own by… who? Bryce. I shook my head at my paranoia. Yesterday had made me skittish and uneasy.
My heels echoed off the dark wooden floors of the huge hallway that suddenly opened out into an open-plan living area. A modern kitchen at one end, a sitting area at the other, and in the middle acting as a kind of room divider was a wall with a modern gas fire built into it. It was on and its heat flickered toward me as I gazed around the room before settling on my husband. He stood out on the balcony that led off the living room.
“Griff?”
He turned and slowly walked into the apartment.
His face was blank. Completely devoid of expression. He rubbed his fingers over the knuckles of his right hand and my gaze dropped to them. His knuckles were bruised and cut from beating Bryce to a bloody pulp.
And I think I knew.
I knew before he spoke.
I think I might have known from the moment I’d gotten in that town car.
Fear tightened my chest.
“What’s going on?” I forced out.
Unlike every other time Griff saw me his eyes didn’t roam, they didn’t feast greedily on every inch of me. They stared coldly into my eyes. There was a flicker of emotion as he got closer when his gaze rested on the swelling bruise on my upper cheek. But he controlled it.
Killed it.
“Griff?”
“This is your new apartment,” he said, matter-of-factly.
I closed my eyes as if not looking at him would kill the agony. It didn’t. “Why are you doing this?”
“It’s much earlier than we planned but we’ll deal with the fallout if my father’s lawyers come sniffing.”
“Your mother’s estate.” I opened my eyes. “You would put it in jeopardy?” You would throw me away!
He looked across the room at the kitchen and I saw that tell-tale muscle in his jaw tick. “Some things are more important.”
“Like?”
When he didn’t answer I grabbed his arm and forced him to look at me. “After what I’ve been through I deserve to know why I’m being thrown away the day after a man tried to rape me.”
And just like that the emotion he’d been trying to hold back flooded out, flushing his skin and darkening his eyes to black. “It was fucking Pete alright!”
Shocked I stumbled away from him. “What?”
“Pete,” he bit out. “He has something on McKellan. It’s enough that McKellan refused to press charges against me. Bryce has certain sexual proclivities that will destroy him if they ever get out.”
My mind jumped to the worst case scenario and the horror must have shown on my face because Griff shook his head.
“It’s not anything he’d be arrested for. But it’s kink beyond kink. Pete has a video. He had a woman Bryce was with film them unawares. Apparently, Bryce made the mistake of telling Pete about his proclivities when they were drunk together. Pete saw an opportunity to have a wealthy man in his pocket. So he used it to blackmail Bryce, to convince him to become a member at the club and seduce you away from me. When it didn’t work, Pete put the pressure on, and Bryce got desperate. He thought if he could film you two…” he cursed and turned away. For a moment he couldn’t speak, his short pants of distress filling the apartment. “Pete says he never told him to rape you, that was never his intention.”
“What was his intention?”
“To tear us apart.” He looked back at me. “I fired him.”
“But why did he want us apart, Griff?”
“He wouldn’t say. I have a man combing through Pete’s office, every club account, everything. Maybe I’ll find answers there.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. But honestly, what did it matter now? The tears I was holding back slipped free. “So you’re done with me then?”
“I lost control of my civility, Scarlett.” He glared at my tears. “In that moment I became my father. I became a man so obsessed with a woman that I nearly fucking killed someone!”
“Because he tried to rape me!” I sobbed. “That doesn’t make you like your father. That isn’t obsession. It’s caring about someone. You were enraged to see another man hurt the woman you—” I cut off sobbing.
“Love?” he bit out, striding toward me. He grabbed me by the arms and gave me a shake. “It’s not love, Scarlett! It’s fucking madness.” He pushed me away, glaring at me. “I’ve inherited my father’s sickness and I’ve worked too hard to have a woman come along and destroy everything I’ve built. If that had been any other club member, I could have lost patronage. I could have lost important members and with it all my business connections and affiliations.”
His words sent a crack through my heart.
A splintering, burning, sharp crack right down the middle.
I stumbled away, unable to believe that this was how it was ending.
“Your things are being brought from the club. I’ve left a credit card on the kitchen counter. It’s at your disposal. If you need anything, you can contact the club.” And just like that, like I meant absolutely nothing to him, he started to march by me.
“You’re a coward.”
He stuttered to a halt and we turned to look at each other. His blazed with anger. Mine with heartbreak.
“You’re a coward,” I repeated. “And I’ll never forgive you for this. Not just for this,” I gestured around the apartment before looking back at him. “But for leaving me when I needed you most.” I let my anger reign, I let hurt turn to hate and I knew when he saw it because he paled.
I turned from him.
I waited.
And then I heard his footsteps fall.
But not toward me.
Away from me.
I didn’t know how long I stood in that apartment but it was long enough for a buzzer to sound on the wall. Shaking myself from my thoughts I pressed the intercom system.
“Mrs. Mandeville, we have your things from the club.” I recognized Wells’ voice.
“Wait there.”
I hurried out of the apartment taking the credit card and apartment keycard with me. I felt numb. But numb was good. Numb would get me out of there before I fell apart.
Down in the hallway I found Wells and Xavier with four suitcases.
My things.
Things Griff had bought.
The butler and under butler wore solemn, concerned expressions.
“Let us help you with your things, Mrs. Mandeville,” Xavier said kindly.
“I don’t need them.” I looked from one to the other. “You’ve been extremely kind to me. Both of you. You’ve done so much already… but I need you to do one
more thing.”
Xavier’s eyes shone with emotion. “Anything, Mrs. Mandeville.”
I flinched. “It’s just Scarlett now, Xavier.”
Wells immediately looked fit to be tied. I gave him a reassuring smile that didn’t reach my eyes. And then I held up my left hand and stared at the diamonds on it. I’d made the mistake of thinking because they were real diamonds they symbolized a real marriage. What a fool. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
But like all women in love, I’d gotten my damn hopes up.
I tugged off the rings and turned them into Xavier’s palm. Then I handed Wells the apartment key card and credit card. “Return everything to Mr. Mandeville. None of this…” I gestured to the suitcases. “None of it belongs to me.”
“But Mrs— Scarlett,” Xavier frowned, “Where will you go?”
My lips trembled because I wasn’t sure where I could go.
I was alone again.
Amelia would take me in but… I didn’t want to be a part of Griff’s world anymore. Even if it meant losing the best friend ever I had.
Amelia.
God, now I had to grieve her too.
“I’ll be fine,” I told Xavier and I was proud that I sounded like I meant it. “I have somewhere I need to be. But.. .thank you.” I kissed him on the cheek and shared a sad smile with him. And then I kissed Wells who blushed and bid me a quiet goodbye.
Although I’d worried about where I’d go, I found my feet moved me. They took me step by step back to the beginning until I was standing on the porch of a townhouse with blue-painted shingles on East 2nd Street.
The door opened and Mrs. Donovan peered out at me.
I promptly burst into tears.
“Oh, Scarlett, what have you gotten yourself into?” She wrapped an arm around me and led me inside where I sobbed out my heartache until there were no tears left.
GRIFFIN
The words on the screen of my laptop blurred together in a haze of black against white.
There was a dull, horrendous fucking ache in my chest and every time I tried to rub it to ease it, it just worsened.
“Jesus Christ.” I shoved my laptop away with more force than I intended and it flew off the desk and crashed to the floor. “Fucking, bloody, fucking Christ!”
“Sir, is this a bad time?”
I scowled over at the door where my butler stood.
Usually he knocked.
Had he knocked?
And then I remembered where he’d just come from and looked back at the laptop on the floor. It’s screen now completely black. “Did you deliver the items as I requested?”
Xavier strode into my office, something he didn’t do either without permission. I looked up at him and I was stunned to find my butler staring at me in disapproval. He reached over and placed four items on the desk in front of me.
That ache in my chest flared to outright agony.
Her wedding rings, the credit card and the keycard for the apartment.
I looked up at Xavier in question.
“Mrs. Mandeville asked me to pass those along. She won’t be staying at the apartment and she asked me to return all of the things you asked me to deliver to her.”
Anger, powerlessness, flooded me. “Well where the fuck is she going to stay?”
Xavier straightened and peered down his nose at me. “I was under the impression, sir, that it is no longer our concern.”
Rage, rage that been boiling inside me since I’d come across that little prick, Bryce McKellan, trying to attack my wife hovered close to the surface. “I’d be very careful, Xavier.”
All he did was incline his head in mock obedience before marching out of the office.
And he slammed the door.
I glowered.
She’d turned my long-serving, loyal as fuck, employee against me.
I scowled at the door but then my eyes were drawn to the diamond rings glittering on my desk.
“You’re a coward. And I’ll never forgive you for this. Not just for this. But for leaving me when I needed you most.”
Her words were punch after punch after punch to my gut.
I had left her when she needed me.
Grabbing her rings up in my fist, I had every intention of locking them in my safe and forgetting about them. Except they dug sharply into my skin, reminding me of the look in her eyes.
I opened my palm and stared unseeing at the rings.
She hated me now.
It was for the best.
I didn’t deserve her.
I’d only end up suffocating her as I slowly turned into my father.
Slipping the rings into my inside pocket I got up and opened the liquor cabinet I kept in the office for celebrating business deals. I poured myself a large whiskey and downed it. Its burn scored down my throat.
I threw back another.
Another.
But to my shock it didn’t numb the pain.
The pain only grew worse. As did the worry.
Where did she go? What if something happened to her?
Fuck.
I threw open the door, ignoring the fact that the club was open and I had members coming and going. “Xavier!” I yelled through the club. “Someone get me my fucking butler!” I slammed the door shut and stalked back to the whiskey.
My office door opened a mere minute later.
“Sir?” Xavier frowned in concern.
“Find her.”
Relief moved through my butler but I killed it. “Not to bring her back. Just to… I just need to know that she’s safe.”
Something like pity crossed Xavier’s face and my first curled around the glass as I waited for him to say it. To force me to listen to it.
To my everlasting relief he just nodded. “Right away, sir.”
And then he was gone.
I barricaded myself in the office, ignoring the knocks that came and went, and attempting and failing to numb the never-ending goddamn agony in my chest. By the time Xavier returned I’d emptied an entire bottle of Macallan.
“Well?” I grunted at him.
“I thought to check the obvious places, sir, and I finally found her on East 2nd Street.”
“The old Donovan woman?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So she’s safe?”
“Yes, sir.”
I finished off the last trickle of golden-brown liquid and staggered to my feet. The room spun.
“Shall I help you to your room, sir?”
That anguish intensified. “No,” I muttered, my gaze bleary. “Set up one of the guest rooms. Somewhere…” I can’t be reminded of her.
“You could… you could bring her back, sir,” Xavier said.
I shook my head. “No. She hates me now.” I laughed harshly. “For the best, Xavier. She was muddying up the waters.”
“Or perhaps she was leading you to clear waters for the very first time, sir.”
“No,” I said adamantly, surprised to find us in a guest room already. “How did we get here?”
“You’re drunk, sir. You need to sleep.”
I collapsed on the bed and the room spun. “I’ll feel better in the morning. Everything will be fan-fucking-tastic in the morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
I didn’t remember anything after that.
The next thing I was blinking against the light forcing my eyes open and wondering why the fuck my head was pounding and why I was in the guestroom at the back of the west wing.
Scarlett would tell me.
I turned to cuddle into her and as soon as I saw the empty space beside me I remembered.
“It’s for the best,” I muttered, pushing myself.
I felt like hell.
But it was just a hangover.
The wet in my eyes?
That was just tiredness.
And the throbbing ache in my chest?
Well that was the pain of choice.
I’d chosen what was best for her and I’
d told her it was what was best for me.
A choice, I suddenly had no doubt, that would haunt me for the rest of my fucking miserable existence.
To Be Continued…
Preorder PROMISE ( The Deception Trilogy, Book 3), the conclusion to Griff and Scarlett’s epic romance. Out January 21st 2019 in Kindle Edition.
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SURVIVING WILDE by Fallon Hart
She needed his guidance… and so much more
When Jake Wilde showed at my uncle’s ranch I knew he was my chance to escape. Some might call me crazy, throwing myself at the mercy of this stranger. But Wilde is a force to be reckoned with, a man built for survival in a world turned on its head. I can’t survive out here without his guidance and I need him to take me to the one place in this Godforsaken land where they say men and women are treated fairly. It’s a place where beautiful crops grow, the burden of work is shared equally, and no man is superior to another. It’s my ray of hope in a world gone dark.
I never expected to feel anything for Wilde but gratitude. Instead I find myself craving the touch of this gruff, wild man. Suddenly he lights my way. Somehow with him at my side this crazy brave new world doesn’t seem so bad. I need him like I never thought I’d need anyone and I’m so afraid that the revenge he harbors in his heart will take him from me forever.
He never wanted anything but to survive… until her
I went to that ranch to fulfil a promise to an old friend and instead I somehow ended up agreeing to guide Rebecca to a community I’m not even sure exists. She’s desperate for hope and I have long given up on that. However, I never thought she’d get under my skin as fast as she has. I want her beyond all reason and madness. I will do anything to protect her. Yet she wants to settle down and start life anew in this new world and I still have an old promise to keep. A promise of revenge that I always knew would end badly. That need for revenge has driven me for so long. How can I give that up? But if I don’t, I leave Rebecca alone in an uncertain world. If I lose her, I lose everything that makes life worthwhile.