Page 93
Story: Bloody Wedding
Because he did it. He figured it out. He knew that I refused to tell Loni that shehasto Claim me at the end of August or else he’ll have our marriage annulled.
I never did. Icouldn’t.If she knew she had an out, the Loni I first married would’ve taken it in a heartbeat.
Is she taking it now?
No.
“Adrian? Adrian… what’s wrong? What did Dal say?”
I shake my head, trembling fingers pulling up Loni’s number. I’ve had it in my phone for the last two years, ever since I convinced Todd Dimmity that I needed it for my records. If he thought that it was weird that someone in Harmony Heights requested she be hired only to then ask for her number, he’s paid enough to not ask questions.
Sometimes, when I couldn’t help myself, I would use a burner number to call Loni for the two seconds she would say ‘hello… hello?’ before she’d inevitably hang up. I made a display of getting her to give it to me—relief flooding through me when the numbers she spat out were the same as the ones I already had—but the truth is that I’ve had it long memorized.
I can’t dial. I’m too busy losing my shit to punch in nine numbers. I select her contact instead, stomach dropping when I see the candid photo I snapped of my wife sleeping in our bed, and wait for her to answer.
When she doesn’t, I call again.
And again.
“She’s not answering.” My mind goes blank, my voice icy cold. “Loni… she’s not answering.”
And my fucking uncle has her.
TWENTY-SIX
JACK COLLINS
LONI
When the blond-haired brute walked into my house, telling me that Adrian needed me at his office downtown, that my husband sent him to retrieve me, I panicked.
Worse, I believed him.
I only had enough time to gather Peaches up in my arm and return her to my private bedroom—since we haven’t had the chance to move her to a room closer to Adrian’s and mine—and grab a pair of sneakers before he was snapping his fingers at me, telling me that it’s urgent, that we have to go.
I was frazzled. I admit it. Since I returned to Harmony Heights, doing everything the Order expected of me, I forgot about the danger a secret society like ours can pose. Not everyone is honest, and while I figured my dad was safe as long as I played my part, I never thought the Order would come after me.
So, yes, I believed this man when he said that Adrian needed me. After all, he knew where my husband lived, and he even flashed the Order’s brand on his palm. I had no reason todistrust him—which was my mistake because, in the rush of everything, I left my phone behind.
He put me in a car similar to the matte black coupe that Dallas Collins drove in Bridgewater. I asked his name, he grunted out ‘Luke’, and that was all he said despite me asking what was going on.
What happened to Adrian?
No wonder he didn’t answer me. Because now that I’m sitting in a heavy leather chair, swallowing my nerves as I face off against Jack Collins himself, I finally understand.
It wasn’t Adrian who wanted me to come to the downtown office.
It was the King.
The last time I ever was in the same room with this man, I was seventeen, he was standing with my dad, and the two of them were grilling me about that graduation party. As the King, Jack was the only one I could prove my innocence, too. He had the ability to keep me as an Offering or make me one of the Used.
I wasn’t innocent. I couldn’t lie, either, and in front of my father and the leader of the Order of the Owed, I admitted that I had been seeing someone. I didn’t think it mattered. Really, the Order’s laws and rules were so ridiculously outdated, I secretly hoped that I wouldn’t get in trouble for sleeping with Adrian.
But I did. And if I’d admitted that Adrian was the one in the room that night, so would he.
I confessed to my own sins, but even when I felt betrayed… even when I hated him… I refused to throw him under the bus. He had a bright future ahead of him, the kingmaker who would rule Harmony Heights when the crown was on Dallas’s head, and I…
I would be one of the Used. That’s what Jack decided the last time I saw him. And, yet, sometime over the last ten years,he changed his mind. He gave me to Desmond. I became an Offering again, and I can believe what he’s telling me now…
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93 (Reading here)
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104