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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