Page 35 of Bloody Wedding (The Order of the Owed #1)

“Okay.” I tuck the folders under my arm. Adrian’s fingers flex, eager to snatch them from me… which is all the more reason why I keep them close. “How about this black book, huh?” I turn to the page marked with the ribbon. “Maxwell and Dimmity’s. Why is information on my firm in your book?”

Names. I recognize all of these names. My bosses.

Some of my co-workers; recent ones, and those who have moved on.

There’s Bradley Figueroa, a sweet guy I dated for six months under my supervisor’s nose before some puritanical ‘co-workers can’t date’ clause ended with Bradley in the UK, and our relationship over.

His name is crossed out so fiercely, the page is ripped.

What the hell is that about?

I show Adrian what I’m looking at, waiting for an answer.

He purses his lips. His fingers tap against his upper thigh, and I’d bet all the money in his account that, if I plucked the unlit cigarette from behind his ear and offered to light it, he’d agree.

I wait.

He sighs, resigned. “I have stake in that firm.”

“Monetary?”

“A little. But more like I have a vested interest in their staff.”

He what ? “What do you mean by that?”

I thought one thing already based on the files I was looking at before he walked into the study. But this… I don’t understand it.

Or maybe I didn’t want to.

“Do you really want to know?”

No. “Yes.”

“Then it’s pretty simple. My mentor insisted that they hire you.” He pauses a moment. “It was a favor to me.”

I blink, unable to say anything in response to that bombshell.

And then, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, he tells me: “If I knew where you were, I could keep tabs on you without ever having to leave Harmony Heights. Your promotions, your moves… I had a hand in all of it.”

There it is. Confirmation I never knew I needed.

“You…” My mouth works, but nothing comes out. I give my head a clearing shake. “All this time, I thought I got my promotions through my hard work.” A scoff as my heart fucking shatters . “Figures. I haven’t earned anything my entire life.”

“Yes. You have.”

“No. No, I haven’t.”

And, like everything that’s ever gone wrong in my life, this man is to blame.

Pushing away from the door, Adrian sidles past me. I expected him to grab me, to hold me close, to explain… but he doesn’t do any of that.

My heart leaps into my throat when he jabs the button to the fireplace, the flames starting small before growing steadily. I checked the grate. I checked the whole damn study. Peaches isn’t in there, but there’s still that moment when the fire comes to life that I brace myself for a yowl.

It doesn’t come. Instead, Adrian watches the fire for a few moments before turning around. He heads for the desk, moving to stand behind it instead of meeting me at the front.

He lays his hand on the back of his desk chair. “You’ve earned my heart, Loni. As black as you think it is, it’s yours.”

What if I can’t accept it?

A man who would interfere in my life even after I thought he was no longer a part of it?

A man who forced me into marrying him and now I’ll never be free of him?

I thought…

I thought?—

The fire crackles in Adrian’s study, but it does shit to warm me up.

I’m cold all the way down to my bones, and this time, it has nothing to do with the powerful central air conditioner pumping into every room of this house.

Oh, no. It’s the realization that Adrian is more indispensable to the Order than I ever thought.

He isn’t just a member. He works for them. He got rich off of them.

There will never be a moment when I’m more important than the society, even with this proof that he meddled in my life long before now. They own his loyalty, and me… I’m just the woman he got as a prize for a job well done.

I grab the folders again. I didn’t want the pages to mean what I thought they meant, but if he could control my life from a distance all these years, there’s no end to the criminality he could be involved with.

Honestly? Why am I so fucking surprised? He’s a murderer , a fact that I conveniently keep forgetting if only because I wanted to see Desmond dead.

But this?

“You’re laundering money for them, aren’t you?”

“For Maxwell and Dimmity?”

I swallow. “For them, sure. But mainly I meant the Order.”

“It’s yes either way.”

He doesn’t say it like it’s a confession. No. It’s simply a fact, and one that I took too long to notice.

I set the folders in my hand down harder than I mean to.

Papers spill out onto the desk. I recognize them; having gone through this folder already, I know what they are.

Ledgers. Bank statements, the ones on top clearly coded.

Investment portfolios that funnel money through six or seven different shell companies so that they come out clean on the other side.

“All these accounts,” I tell him, jaw tight, voice shaky, “tied to hospitals, construction sites, campaign funds to the sheriff’s election last year?—”

“The Order owns Harmony Heights,” Adrian cuts in. “Someone has to keep it running. Keep Jack and the others from destroying it from the inside. I do what I have to.”

My heart pounds, hoping that I was wrong. That, like I once accused him of being, he isn’t the villain of this tale. That Adrian Heller can be my hero … “You do this to help the town? You go against the Order?”

His loyalty isn’t to the Owed? It’s to?—

“No,” he says, and our eyes finally meet.

I don’t even realize that he was avoiding looking at me directly until I see the steely flint in his light green eyes.

“I do this so that they can’t fuck with me.

That they owe me. I’m an Owed, right? I want every fucking person in this town to owe me, and when they do?

I’ll know that I’m untouchable.” Fire flashes in the depths of his pupils. “And that makes you untouchable.”

I shake my head. “You’re profiting off of it.”

“Of course I am.” He grips the desk chair tightly.

I can tell he wants to touch me, but he knows better than to do that right now.

“Because I needed the power to Claim you. I needed leverage. If I just followed you out of Harmony Heights without any… if I was just one of the basic Owed… do you think you’d be my wife right now?

Or would you be in the back rooms of the Court, fucking any Owed that climbed into your bed? ”

“You took Demond’s place because Jack Collins is your uncle?—”

“I took Desmond’s place because you’ve always belonged to me. You’re fucking mine , Avalon. You always have been. Even when you thought I hated you, I was protecting you. Because, damn it, I love you.”

I wish I could believe that. I want to, but like always with Adrian, there are so many goddamn secrets.

Financial manager, huh? God, I was such an idiot.

The way he smirked when I asked him about his job…

Financial manager, he told me. I guess when you’re cooking the books for an entire town, that’s the easiest way to describe what you do.

He’s a crook, and he’s a liar.

He lies.

And I’m the silly little girl who spent way too long convincing herself she was special. That he would be honest even if it hurt, but nothing hurts more than discovering everything I thought I knew… it wasn’t true.

He loves me?

That might be the biggest lie of all.