Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 121723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
We’d just slept together, and procedure dictated I not speak about past lovers. “You don’t want me to talk about her.”
She frowned. “I asked, didn’t I?”
I shook my head to placate her. “She was a lot like you, actually. Not intimidated by me, even when she should have been. She enjoyed getting under my skin.”
“I am intimidated by you,” she grumbled. “I’m just good at pretending not to be.”
I gave a knowing smile. “And also like you, she was well liked. Friends with everyone who met her.”
I hadn’t expected my statement to fall as flat as it did. Her gaze dropped from mine, staring vacantly at my chest.
“I’m not like that.”
Was she thinking about the father who refused to acknowledge her? Her parents? Tate Isaacs, who slept with her then cruelly brushed her aside? I wanted her mind off them. “You have dozens of friends. Hundreds, even.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Not really.”
“Every event since you’ve been my assistant, I’ve watched as people gather around you.”
“They don’t count,” she scoffed. “I mean, sure. I’m popular. But those people don’t give a fuck about me.”
“What about Marist?” I countered.
Sophia’s lips pressed together. “We’re not friends.”
“You were in her wedding.”
“Because I’m useful. If anything, she sees me as a frenemy and goes the whole ‘keep you enemies closer’ route.”
What? How could that be?
I must have appeared confused because she continued. “If we were really friends, don’t you think she would have told me the story about the time she almost died?”
I inhaled a deep breath. “She wasn’t allowed to. I forbid it.”
She hesitated. “Can I ask what happened?”
It was becoming easier to share secrets with her, but this one carried a heavy amount of shame. “When Alice learned of my infatuation, she saw Marist as a threat, and . . . she poisoned her. Had I not discovered Marist dying on my staircase, it’s possible Alice would have succeeded.”
Sophia sat upright in her surprise, turning to face me. “Wait, what?” I watched as she put the pieces together. “The allergic reaction Marist had before the wedding, the one that put her in the hospital.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. You stayed married to Alice, like nothing happened.” Her eyes widened. “Why didn’t Marist go to the cops?”
“Because the Hale family couldn’t be involved in that kind of scandal, and she understood that.” The irony wasn’t lost on me that had I done the right thing then, I would have avoided everything that came after, and it was possible I’d still be CEO and Alice would be alive. My legacy wouldn’t have been dragged through the mud.
“But,” I added, “it was not as if nothing happened. She was punished and banished from the house. Alice and I had been over for years before that incident, but that was the day she knew she had truly lost me.” I swallowed a lump in my throat, wanting to justify what I’d done. “You need to understand, I aspired to sit on the board of the Federal Reserve, and I couldn’t risk divorce. She had the ability to ruin me, and at the time, that was the only thing that mattered. My name was everything.”
It still was now.
And it was likely hard for Sophia to hear. The name she had wasn’t her own, and the one she deserved wouldn’t be granted to her.
The judgment in her eyes was intolerable, worse than two years of wearing state-issued clothes and having every decision taken away, and although I didn’t deserve it, I craved relief.
“Tell me the truth,” she said softly. “It will be our secret.” She leaned close and set her hand on my chest, the heat of her palm soaking through like it could melt the ice in my heart. “Did you mean to kill her?”
I stared into her eyes, wishing I had a confident answer, but since I didn’t, I’d give her what I could—the truth. “I don’t know. Everything on the balcony is hazy in my memory, and those final moments are . . . gone.” I set my hand on top of hers, pressing it harder against my skin, like I was swearing it to her. “I hope I didn’t. I want to believe I’m not a man capable of that.”
She evaluated me with a critical gaze, and it stripped me bare. There weren’t any secrets left to hide from her.
“I don’t think you are capable of that,” she whispered. “At least, not anymore.”
TWENTY-THREE
SOPHIA
MACALISTER WOKE ME IN THE MORNING by rolling me onto my back, unbuttoning his shirt I was wearing, and then he went down on me. He brought me to orgasm with both his tongue and two fingers inside me, and when I was a quivering mess, his steely eyes filled with power.
“Up,” he ordered. “On your knees and face the wall.”
He didn’t leave me time to catch my breath, but I scrambled to follow his command. I buried my knees in the mattress and stared at the headboard, tracing the nail head detail at the edge while he yanked the shirt down off my shoulders and tossed it away.