“Did you really think while I was away, I didn’t have eyes on you?”
They weren’t there for their mother? They were his fucking eyes?
Of course, Jo wasn’t here. Just the two males, because of course my grandfather would never acknowledge Jo as anything other than a girl.
“He killed your fucking mother,” I spat.
“Oh, he speaks,” Charles said, glancing to his brother.
I lunged for my grandfather, breaking free enough to slam my fist into his jaw. In a second, I was pulled back, a vice grip around my arms.
My grandfather wiped his bloody mouth. “Don’t be a fucking pussy.” He reached down, thumbing the tears on my face, before slapping me. “You should be thanking me.”
He hit me again.
And again.
The pain was at least focused on the one spot.
I should have been there.
I should have died with them.
My grandfather stepped back, pulling a silver handkerchief from his suit breast and wiping my blood on it.
“When I’m done erasing the du Lac name from history, I’ll write ours in stone. There are a couple of kings in Europe who’ve really pissed me off.”
“You’ll start a war,” I said. “You’ll destroy our entire fucking family before you’re done.”
He paused his ministrations. “Maybe. Or maybe I’ll finally sit where I belong. We’re owed a dynasty, Grayson.”
We’re owed a dynasty. Our names should be written in stone.
My grandfather dropped the bloody handkerchief to the ground, his lifelong revenge realized, as he took one final step to becoming the most powerful man on the planet.
Sixty-Four
GRAY
The months faded into one another, and soon it was July. I lay awake every night in our bed, sliding my hands through the silky sheets. I felt Snitch in the moon, in the wind—I feel her.
If Story was dead, then why could I still feel her?
I only had West’s words for company.
West had the coin for months, while we looked for it, the fucker kept it. If he’d just given it to us, none of this would have fucking happened. My wife was dead and I only had the man’s—whose inaction led to her death—words for company.
What sick kind of fucking hell was this?
Some days, I hung it over the fire, waiting for the flames to lick it.
I never burned it.
I thought about how much Snitch would have loved to read it, the insight it would have given her.
It just sat on my fucking pillow.
West’s words haunting me from the fucking grave.
A light rapping on my door sounded, followed by my mother. “You haven’t come down for dinner in weeks.”
There was no bell in her voice, she wasn’t trying to manipulate me. I imagined my mother sitting alone in a hollow room, at an empty dining table that sat twenty. For once in our lives, both of our masks were gone. I saw my mother and her rotten heart, and she saw me and my thorny one.
I had a bottle of whiskey and suckers—that was all I needed.
She came to me, sitting on the edge of my bed like I vaguely remembered her doing when I was a child.
“There has to be some way,” her voice shook.
Tansy Crowne was scared, because Grayson Crowne, her rock, was cracking.
“There isn’t.”
She grabbed my hand, holding on to me, tight. “I can’t lose you, too, Grayson.” Her other, shaking palm touched my cheek. “Please don’t do anything foolish.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
Story made me promise not to destroy my world, but Story was gone.
The minute I got that man alone, he was dead.
And then I’d follow.
Midnight struck and I couldn’t sleep again. I saw her wide, walnut eyes staring back at me on the pillow, and then she vanished into smoke.
So with a bottle of whiskey in hand, I went to our room.
The guards at the end of my wing were curiously absent, and I was too drunk to care. I stumbled through halls until I got to the no-man’s-land between Gemma and Abigail’s wing.
Then I pushed open the door.
Since it was basically a glorified storage room, nothing really changed, and it had become a museum of our love. I walked over to the corner of the room, staring at the luxurious Russian rug, still with jewel-toned pillows still atop them.
Story had looked so small and perfect lying on them. Not innocent…open. No walls.
I took a drink to swallow the rock in my throat. The harder I stared, the more she took shape. Her slightly shaking hand as she undid the zipper at her side. The way her hazel gaze never strayed from mine.
“Perfect,” I took a long drink, closing my eyes. “Fucking perfect.”
“Excuse me—”
“Story?”
I spun at her raspy, quiet voice. Shadows stared back, cobwebs of silence. Slowly turning from the door, I took a drink.
Clang.
I jerked back, heart racing.
It was tea—not now, back then, when I’d stolen her into this room and kissed her. I could see it now, falling from her small hands as she reached for me.
A tea tray.
I walked like a zombie to the door and slammed my hand against the wall beside it, closing my eyes, trying to summon her with a memory.
I’d never seen anything like her eyes.
Her sigh, her—
Gasp.
I jerked up at her breathy inhale—spinning into nothing. Darkness. An oppressive emptiness. I dug my nails into the wall, taking another drink.
The shadows on the floor spun.
The waves crashed behind me.
Too little time. I’d had too little time with her. I squeezed the glass neck of the bottle, grinding my teeth. In that time, my grandfather had refused to let us be happy.
He couldn’t just leave us the fuck alone.
It was his fault.
It’s done. It’s over. I broke us. Let me go.
I spun to the window. She was a shimmering mirage, the only thing clear her heated gaze.
“Story, wait—”
I ran to the window, grasping at air, stumbling through fog and memories that vanished into smoke.
“You’ve waited so long…don’t you want it to be special?”
I spun around and the bottle slipped through my fingers, shattering. Stony hazel eyes, softened and vulnerable, stared up at me from the rug.
“Story—” She vanished like smoke. “Story!”
I couldn’t hear my scream past the memories falling on top of me like stones. I just knew it came out of me by the way my lungs burned.
You’re so goddamn perfect, you know that?
I fell on my knees, onto the broken shards. “You were so goddamn perfect.”
Sixty-Five
STORY
“You are so perfect,” I whispered. “Your dad would light the world on fire for you.” I held my and Grayson’s baby to my chest. Her eyes were scrunched closed, her small fist resting on my chest.
I didn’t think it was possible to love something more than I loved Grayson, but here I was, proven wrong daily.
She was my love for Grayson incarnate.
How does a princess locked in a tower, save a prince prisoner in his own castle?