Lottie sighed. “You’re about to witness the hostile takeover of Crowne Industries and Du Lac Enterprises…Never in a million years did I think I would help my husband plan a mutiny of my family’s centuries-old business for his mistress. But…” She clutched her tummy. “But, I guess the real reason is we had no say in how this marriage began, but we can decide how it ends.”
“Antionette!” Beryl called for Tansy, finally spotting her resting leisurely against the fountain as swans flapped their wings, water falling off the feathered tips like glitter.
“Where the fuck is everyone, Antionette?”
She shrugged, and took a sip of the night’s specialty cocktail—a phosphorescent vodka that glowed like moon water. I had to admire her in that moment. Even as the world she knew burned down around her, she made sure the night’s menu was perfect.
“It seems everyone has…” She looked around, unconcerned. “Lost their way.”
His brows popped. “Lost their way?”
She shrugged again.
Beryl took a step to her, but someone else stepped in the way.
Grayson.
He hadn’t spoken yet, but I know his profile like the blood in my body. His ridged nose, his plump pink lips.
Oh, fuck.
My chest expanded like a balloon at the sight of him.
I took a step to him before I’d realized it—then dug my fingers into a tree beside me, physically restraining myself.
He thought I’d died. All this time, thinking I’d died? That we’d died. What had that done to him?
The urge to run to him was like the tide dragging me out to sea, but for just a little while longer, I had to stay hidden.
Be the girl behind the girl.
“You probably could have kept Mom under control,” Gray said. “But you did the one thing you shouldn’t have. You threatened her child.”
Dawning slowly spread on Beryl’s features, and he searched frantically around him—for his guards, that weren’t there.
For anyone.
The only people who’d been allowed to stay were a crowd that would turn on him, paparazzi that would descend like vultures.
And they watched eagerly.
“You can try calling security,” Grayson said. “Won’t do shit since they’re probably halfway to Mexico, and by the time you hire new guards, you’ll be in jail.”
When you look at a Crowne, they ruin your life.
When you cross a Crowne…they make sure you wish you’d never been born.
I was never more aware of that than now.
Beryl laughed. “You think it’s that simple? I spent decades—”
“Blackmailing. Threatening. Murdering,” Grayson interrupted. “There’s a whole slew of paparazzi out there, wondering about a poem that paints me as an adulterer.”
Something was building. With the glimmering water and swans and lights, with the smell of fresh night blossoms and salt air that had become ubiquitous with my love for Grayson.
It built and built.
Hope.