CHAPTER 32
DEVON
Iwas going to fucking kill someone, and it wasn’t going to be Emmabelle Penrose, even though she was the woman who most deserved my wrath.
Crumpling the handwritten letter, I slam-dunked it into the bin, scooped my keys from the kitchen island, and charged toward the door.
I took the stairs two at a time, almost toppling over on my way to the Bentley.
My first stop was Sweven’s still-paid-for rented flat. The matchbox-sized hellhole from which I rescued her like a flea-ridden puppy.
I banged on the door until my fists were red and sore. No one answered.
“Open the door, Emmabelle. I know you’re there!”
One of her neighbors shuffled outside their apartment, clad in a Big Lebowski robe, a joint dangling from the side of his mouth.
“You’re wasting your time, man. She hasn’t lived here in a few months. Moved in with her rich boyfriend.” The neighbor puffed on his spliff, cocking his head to the side. “Come to think of it, he looked a lot like you.”
She hadn’t come back home.
My next destination was Persephone and Cillian’s place.
I tried calling Belle the entire journey. She did not pick up.
Not one to be deterred by her lack of availability, I left her voicemails left and right while trudging along the painfully slow traffic of Boston during rush hour.
“Hello, darling, it’s your boyfriend. The one you just left with a fucking note. Yes, the same one whose baby you’re carrying. If you think we aren’t going to talk about it, you’re gravely mistaken. Oh, and by the way, whatever happened to the fact that people are trying to KILL YOU? Ring me back. Kisses. Dev.”
And then:
“Sweven. Hope your evening is going better than mine. Where are you? Also, if this is you telling me in a roundabout way Louisa’s presence is bothering you, may I suggest hiring a life or speech coach to help you with your communication skills? Call me back.”
And finally:
“Emmabelle fucking Penrose. Pick up the bloody phone!”
Things escalated from there.
I arrived at Persy and Cillian’s place, using the lion’s head brass knocker so hard it dislocated and dropped onto the floor. My girlfriend’s (yes, she was still that) sister informed me, rather regretfully, that her sister was not there.
“Are you saying this because you’re hiding the bloody wench, or because she’s really not here?” I stood on her threshold, panting like a dog.
“My wife said her sister’s not here.” Cillian appeared behind Persephone at the door, draping a protective arm over her shoulder. “Are you calling her a liar?”
“No, but I’m calling you an insufferable wanker.” I’d lost all form of etiquette and manners, resorting to hostility. “So I have a good reason to think someone might be hiding something. They’re close. They’d cover for each other.”
“Actually…” Persy squared her shoulders, looking rather haughty, “…I would like to know where she is too. I worry about her. She might not take the threats against her seriously, but I do.”
“Ask Sailor and Aisling,” I instructed her, but I was already pacing back to my car, making my way to Sailor. “Let me know if you hear anything.”
“Will do,” she called from her spot at the door.
Sweven wasn’t at Sailor Fitzpatrick’s house either. She wasn’t at Aisling Brennan’s place. She wasn’t at Madame Mayhem. She wasn’t anywhere.
It was as if a sinkhole swallowed her.
I called Brennan. After all, I paid him to have her followed, the boyfriend of the year that I was. When he didn’t pick up, I decided to pay him a visit. For what I was paying him, Emmabelle should not only be safe but also warm, cozy, and getting regular pedicures and three meals a day.
Bursting into the gambling room at Badlands, I flipped over a poker table. Sam was arranging a game with two senators and a business mogul. The chips fell on the floor with a clank.
He looked up.
“What the fuck?”
“The fuck is you fucked me over. I’m paying you a retainer to keep tabs on my girlfriend. Newsflash: it’s been a second since I hired you, and I have no bloody clue where she is.”
Sam ushered me to his back office. We rushed through a busy, narrow corridor, passing men who wanted desperately to stop and chat with us. I swatted them away like they were flies.
“Would you shut your trap? I have a goddamn reputation to uphold.”
“Where’s Emmabelle?” I bit out. We got to his office and I slammed the door behind us then proceeded to trash the place. I tossed his couch over, tore at a Roman curtain, and punched a hole in a portrait of Troy Brennan—an offense which was likely punishable with death by stoning.
“I’ve been calling and calling your arse. It went straight to voicemail.”
“Was busy buttering up Dumb and Dumber,” Sam said shortly, producing his phone from his back pocket and punching in a number. “Let me call my guys and check.”
The good news was they answered him immediately.
The bad news was that, well, THEY LOST HER.
“What do you mean they lost her?” My voice rose, and I found myself yanking his Apple screen from his desk and crashing it against the wall. “She is not a fucking thought thread. A subplot in a book. A pair of sunglasses. One does not simply lose a thirty-year-old woman.”
“She tricked them,” Sam said, lightly stunned by the revelation. His eyes were wide, his mouth slightly agape. I gathered it didn’t happen to him often.
“She must’ve realized they were following her and tricked them.”
“She’s a smart woman,” I seethed. God, couldn’t she be just a little less perceptive?
Sam scowled. “You were the genius who didn’t want to tell her I was putting surveillance on her. In my entire career, no one I followed has ever managed to slip under the radar.”
“Thanks for the fun fucking fact.” I grabbed the collar of his shirt and jerked him toward me so our noses were crushed together. “Find my girlfriend by the end of tonight or I will personally ensure you and the DA who is covering for your arse are both dragged through court for the rest of your miserable lives to account for every crime you’ve committed over the last two decades.”
I stalked out of his club and went to the only person I knew may have some information—Louisa.
Louisa waited for me in a tiny crème and black lace bodysuit, complete with a corset that made her waist as nonexistent as my need to screw her.
“Hello, darling. Good to see you.”
She sidestepped from the door to allow me to walk in. As soon as I closed it behind us, I pinned her with a look that said a fuck fest wasn’t in the cards for us.
Know your audience, lass.
“Put something on.”
“Like what?” she asked, blinking slowly.
“A fucking raincoat if you wish. Do I look like a bloody stylist?” I grabbed something I suspected was a robe lying on a back of a chair and threw it at her. She wrapped it around herself quickly, drawing in a breath.
“What’s the matter?” She made her way to the wet bar to pour us some drinks.
“What did you do?”
Surprisingly, I sounded fine. Wry. Businesslike. Not like I was about to commit capital murder.
“What do you mean?” She stepped toward me with two glasses of whiskey, handing me one. I didn’t acknowledge the gesture nor the drink.
“What did you do?” I repeated.
“Devvie, stop being so weird, for heaven’s sake.”
She took a step back.
I took a step forward.
I had no idea what I was doing, and I didn’t want to find out.
Sweven brought out emotions in me I didn’t care to explore.
I’d always been calculated. Calm. Full of confidence.
I was not any of those things right now.
“What. Did. You. Do?” I took both glasses form her hands, putting them aside on a credenza, crowding her against the wall. We were inches from each other.
The air was charged with menace, violence. She could feel it.
Louisa wilted slightly and finally asked, “How much do you know?”
“Enough to know it reeks of your involvement.”
She stuck her chin up. “What I did may have been unethical, but it certainly wasn’t illegal.”
“Wasn’t illegal?” Yup. I was roaring in her face now. Her hair flew back from the impact. “There are people after her! She is on the run!”
“People after her?” Louisa wore an expression of genuine surprise. “I did no such thing. I’d never send anyone to go after a woman, let alone a pregnant one. It goes against everything I believe.”
I gave her an aren’t-you-a-saint look.
She elevated her eyebrows, in a way that said, quote me on this, motherfucker.
I decided to strike her off the list of suspects. For now. Frank and my mother kept my hands full, as it was.
“You did something,” I maintained.
“A small something,” she countered. “Really small. Teeny-tiny, actually.”
“What did you do?”
“Devvie …”
“Now.”
“It was your mother’s idea.” She dug her fingernails into her fists, looking unbearably embarrassed, her cheek turned in my direction. She couldn’t meet my gaze.
“What did you do?” I asked for the millionth time.
“I can’t tell you. You’ll hate me.”
“Too late. Already there. Now, for the last time, before I make you regret the day you were born—what happened between this morning and this evening to inspire my girlfriend to leave me?”
All the air was sucked from the room in the moment before her confession.
“I paid her.”
It was out in the open now. The admission.
And once it was out, Louisa proceeded, gingerly throwing another crumb of information.
“It’s Ursula, Devvie. She was relentless. Completely unhinged. Time is ticking. She got nervous … gutted, really … and …” She shook her head frantically, reaching for my face. I threw her hands away.
“And?”
“And she wrote her a one-million-dollar check.”
“Fucking hell.”
“And Emmabelle took it,” Louisa added desperately, her small fists balling around the fabric of my dress shirt. “She took the check, Devon. What does it say about her? She doesn’t love you. Doesn’t need you. Doesn’t see you. I ache for you every day.”
She spoke the words to my shirt, unable to look at me when she said them.
“You’re my first and last thought. You’re always in the back of my mind. Loving you is like breathing. It’s compulsive. Let me love you. Please. Just give me a chance, and I’ll be everything you need me to be.”
“You can’t be everything I need you to be.” I stepped backward, letting her stumble a little before gaining her composure. “Because you’re not the woman I love.”
Her eyes were big and full of tears. I walked over to a small dining table, picked up her phone, and handed it over to her.
“Now you’re going to call and tell your pilot that’s on standby that you will be leaving tonight. Go back to England. You will never set foot in Boston again. Not as long as I’m alive. And if you ever come back—”
I paused, thinking about it. Louisa’s face was now marred with makeup and tears. A concoction that gave her a slightly comical look, like she was a long-lost Cradle of Filth member.
It didn’t feel good or right, crushing her like that, but I had no choice. “Darling,” I gathered her arms in mine, my voice dropping to a whisper. “I’m never going to marry you. Not in this lifetime and not the next. With or without Emmabelle in the picture, I’m an all or nothing kind of bloke. With her, I want it all. With you …” I let her complete the sentence in her head, before adding, “If you try to tamper with my relationship with my girlfriend—and she is still my girlfriend, make no mistake about it, even if she doesn’t know it yet—I will ensure your family and legacy are both destroyed. I will ensure everyone knows Byron has demolished a historical church so he can place his side piece within a stone’s throw of his countryside estate. The money he paid Parliament Member Don Dainty under the table to promote favorable tax laws would be revealed, and let us not forget your dear brother Benedict has a particular taste for underage girls. Your family is corrupted through the nose, and I am willing to unveil every piece of wrongdoing it has done over the years if you don’t give me your word here and now that you are going to stop this.”
All this dirt, courtesy of Sam Brennan and his detective work. Maybe he was worth some of his fee after all.
I could tell it sank in this time around.
That it hit her real and hard. In the same place it hit me, the day I knew my father didn’t love me. Although now, it seemed like my entire family didn’t love me.
Mum had betrayed me too.
Outwardly, nothing changed. Louisa was still the same Louisa. Willowy and delicate, a perfect, stainless feather in the wind. But her eyes turned from glossy to dull. Her mouth became rigid. The twinkle behind her irises was gone.
“Answer me with words,” I said softly, using my hand to gently pry her jaw open. The words fell from between her lips like they were on the tip of them, just waiting to be said.
“I understand you never want to see me again, Devon.”
And to my surprise, behind those words, there were cinders, still hot from where the flame had once been.
She was angry. Defiant.
She would rise from the ashes, I hoped, and find someone else.
I turned around and made my way to the airport.
I had a plane to catch.
On the way, I called Emmabelle a few more times, dropping more messages that would make any serial killer proud.
“You’re bloody crazy if you think I’m giving you up. You were mine from the moment I set my eyes on you. When you weren’t even aware of my existence. When I came to serve your sister with a draconic agreement she shouldn’t have signed.”
And then:
“The night we got in bed together for the first time, at Cillian’s cabin, was the night I first contemplated breaking my pact with myself to never marry a woman. I refuse to lose the only woman who is worth breaking my word over.”
As well as:
“Goddammit, I love you.”
As I zipped through neighborhoods, and skyscrapers, and lives that weren’t mine, I pondered something Louisa had told me before I left her.
It was true that Belle didn’t love me.
After all—she took the check.
But I loved her, and maybe that was enough.