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9

Blaise

Maddox doesn’t come home that night or the next or the following night. Am I disappointed in the tone he’s setting for our first week as a “married” couple with his absence? Or should I be happy he sent flowers of condolences when the media blasted my grandfather’s death to the world?

“Sorry for your loss, Blaise.”

The words scrawled on the sympathy card are simple and expected. So is his silence when the media dropped news of my financials. I don’t have billions. I have a few thousand dollars, and that has to be good enough.

After tossing and turning all night from my nightmares and feeling the walls closing in on me every time I think of my dad’s good name being dragged through the mud by my kidnapper, I take the chicken-shit way out and send Collins an early morning text that I am out for her crazy plan before I promptly pull the covers over my head.

It’s best I lay low. Hiding from the world is my expertise. I didn’t go to college. Crowds and the idea of being touched or stared at kept me from pursuing higher education. Anyway, I have my grandfather’s money. Had Grandfather’s money.

I have no skills and did nothing with my time except read romance books and throw parties, observing and living vicariously through the book characters and my party guests. After each romance book I finished, I would think of myself as a hopeless romantic. But, I’m not clueless.

What’s written in the books is fantasy. My reality is a life without romance. Romance is for those who are normal. I’m far from it.

My cell on the nightstand buzzes. Five calls already tonight. On the sixth time, I answer, tired of him toying with me.

“Hello.”

“Hello, doll. Miss me?”

I squeeze my eyes shut and breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. Slow breaths. Slow breaths, Blaise. Otherwise, I’ll hyperventilate, remembering vividly the wooden box he put me in before he lowered the coffin into the ground.

“You there, doll?”

“What do you want?” My voice trembles. Oh, God, that’s not good. So not good. Fear is what he wants me to feel.

“I want you, Blaise. You’ve always been what I wanted.”

“Then why bury me with your dead sister?”

“Is that who you think the corpse was?”

He doesn’t give me time to answer.

“She was your twin, doll. Did you know you had a twin sister?”

He’s wrong. He has to be.

“You’re a sick man. I’m an only child. My parents are Jack and Violet Lexington.”

“Wrong!”

His anger should startle me. I should block his number and destroy my cell for good measure. Except his anger gives me power over him. What other emotions can I elicit that will give me the upper hand? How can I draw him out from whatever dark hole he is hiding in? Can an abnormal girl draw out from the darkness a dangerous crazy who has the power to destroy her family? I can hope.

“What was my sister’s name?”

“Maya.”

“How did she die?”

“She drowned.”

The sorrow in his voice . . . “You loved her.”

“Very much.”