Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 104729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
“Okay, but I’m confused.”
Leaning back in my seat, I focus my gaze out the window. Although you can’t see it clearly, that’s where his island is. Where Ivy is. For all intents and purposes, they shouldn’t be together, yet they are. Maybe, if what Phoenix says is true, maybe there is a chance. But first, I need to know. I put my cards on the table for Cyrus. “Maybe I was looking at this all wrong. Michael has always claimed his innocence.”
“This is about the girl?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” I’m so used to denying it, so it slips out of my mouth, but it sounds like a lie. I can hear it, and by the way Cyrus looks at me, he can hear it too.
“Cut the shit, Prince. You were stranded on an island with his daughter, and then you come back with this bullshit. No way is that a coincidence.”
“Shut the fuck up.” I grunt.
“That’s not a no.” He grins, and I’m not sure what Ivy has done to this man, but now he’s grinning too. I guess anyone can change. Can I? I already have. The fact that Michael isn’t dead yet speaks of that, and now I’m here bartering a deal to give the man, who has been my enemy for as long as I can remember, his guns for a girl. Yep. I’ve changed. It’s pretty obvious I also handed in my man card somewhere on that island.
“Can you do that for me?” I ask, needing to get out of my own inner rambling.
“I can. Anything else you need?”
He probably will hate himself for asking that question in five, four, three, two, one.
“Can you throw a masquerade party and invite him and his daughter?” Now that the hit has been called off, Michael will not have to stay in hiding. It’s the perfect plan to lure her to me.
The look on his face is worth a thousand words. “What the fuck, Alaric? You know I hate people.”
“This is true, but in my plan, this is necessary. He won’t let me anywhere near her. I wouldn’t put it past him to shoot me on the spot if he saw me. This is the only plan I can come up with that allows me to speak to her and not get killed. Trust me, if this wasn’t my last option, I would never ask.” His hand runs through his hair as he thinks about what I’m asking. “Plus, who are you kidding, Reed? As much as you hate everyone, you always have them here, so this time, you just have to make it a little bigger.”
“You’ll owe me.”
“The fuck I will. I helped save your girl’s life.”
“Touché.” He lifts his glass and takes another swig. “Tell me the plan.”
43
Phoenix
The door to my room flings open, and my father steps into my room.
“How are you feeling today?” he asks as he crosses the space to get a better look at me.
“Like shit still,” I mumble.
“The doctor said that after what you’ve been through, that would happen. You just need to give it time.”
“It’s been four weeks.” I groan.
Four miserable weeks. Four weeks of a broken heart, and apparently, a parasite I had picked up on the island.
Only me.
When I returned, I was severely malnourished, and my body has been paying the price for it ever since.
I now know without a shadow of a doubt, that if it wasn’t for Alaric, I would have died.
He saved me.
I owe him my life, and I will never see him again to tell him that.
For the first few weeks, I expected Alaric to come for me. Or at the very least call. But after a month, I now know I never meant as much to him as he did to me.
He never did tell me he loved me.
Here I was, crazy and stupid in love with him, and I was just a way to pass the time.
My heart still hurts when I think of him.
No matter how much time passes and how much I beg my brain and my heart to move on, I can’t.
I’m now resigned to the fact that it will never happen, and I’ll just die from the apparent parasite I got from my ill-fated trip.
“When do you go back to the doctor?”
“Not for another few weeks. He thought it would pass naturally, but I feel weak.”
Luckily, the vomiting stopped, but now I’m tired all the time.
Since I haven’t left the hotel, my tan from the island has faded, and now I just look pale and sickly.
A part of me wonders if it’s just my broken heart that has made me feel like this.
“I’m happy you are feeling better. That’s actually why I came to talk to you—”
I sit up in my bed and raise my brow. “What’s going on?”