Page 2 of Her Wicked Promise (The Devil’s Plaything #2)

Robin

I ’ve been breathing hospital air for so many hours straight that disinfectant is now linked inextricably in my mind with defeat.

Maisie’s hand feels so fragile in mine, her skin paper-thin and cool to the touch.

The machines around her bed beep in a steady rhythm that should be comforting but isn’t.

Each sound reminds me that my little sister is closer to death than she’s ever been.

Somewhere in the distance, a cart squeaks across linoleum, nurses murmur in hushed tones, and a phone rings incessantly at the nurses’ station. It’s the soundtrack of desperation, and I’ve been listening to it for three days straight.

Maisie stirs slightly, her eyelashes fluttering against her pale cheeks. I hold my breath, not willing to wake her—God knows she seems to breathe more easily when she sleeps—and she settles again after a few moments.

The curtain slowly and quietly draws back, and I look up to give a tired smile to Adrian, who is coming in to sit with Maisie for the evening while I head back to Murphy’s bar and beg for my job back.

Because I still have no idea what we’re going to do about the eviction notice and the back rent that I’ll have to pay even if we are evicted, if I want a chance at renting anywhere else in this city.

“The doctors say she’s stable,” I whisper to him.

“That’s good news,” he whispers back, but his voice carries no real conviction. He’s trying to sound optimistic for my sake, but I can hear the exhaustion underneath. The fear. It’s the same tone that threads through my own voice, too.

Maisie’s condition isn’t getting worse, but it isn’t getting better, either. She’s trapped in some medical limbo while the bills pile up like storm clouds on our kitchen table back home.

I stroke my thumb across the back of her hand, careful not to disturb the IV taped to her wrist. She’s struggling to eat, and so the nurses recommended IV nutrition instead.

Her skin is so pale I can see the blue veins underneath, delicate as watercolor.

She looks impossibly young lying there in the hospital gown that swallows her small frame.

Eleven years old and fighting a battle that would break most adults.

What kind of world makes a child suffer like this?

Earlier today I swallowed the remnants of my pride and called the number Leon gave me before I left Castle Blacklake, begging him to ask Eva to release the money.

She hasn’t, as of the last time I checked my account on my phone, which was about three minutes ago.

I hate that I even know how much money is waiting out there in the ether.

Hate that I can calculate down to the penny how long it will last, how many more weeks I can pay the rent and how many more days for Maisie’s hospital stay that it might cover.

Hate that I’ve become the kind of person who thinks in terms of dollars and cents when it comes to my siblings’ lives.

Most of all, I hate the treacherous little voice in the back of my mind that whispers: You sold yourself for nothing .

It wasn’t for nothing. I got enough money to keep us afloat for another few weeks. I just don’t know if it’s going to arrive in my bank account fast enough to save us.

But it has to. It has to.

One of these days, fate has to give us a break.

Right?

“Who’s that?” Adrian asks, and something in his tone makes me look up. His eyes are fixed on something beyond the curtain.

And then I see a silhouette approaching the curtain that cordons off Maisie’s space from the rest of the room, a shadow reaching up in preparation to pull the curtain aside.

My breath catches in my throat. I know that aura, would recognize it in a crowded room or a pitch-black alley. It’s like a shift in atmospheric pressure, the kind that warns of an approaching storm.

And when the curtain pulls aside, I can only stare with a sense of inevitability.

Eva fucking Novak.

She’s dressed in black from head to toe—a perfectly tailored jacket over a slim black dress that I know without a doubt is Chanel, and shoes with heels so high and sharp they could double as weapons.

Her dark hair is pulled back in a chignon that emphasizes the angles of her face, and her amber eyes are blank and empty as they meet mine.

She looks exactly the same. Untouchable. Dangerous. Beautiful in the way that a stiletto is beautiful—tapered, sharp lines and a deadly edge.

The nurses in the hallway beyond, usually chattering among themselves, have gone silent. It’s like the entire hospital is holding its breath, waiting to see what this elegant monster will do.

Heat rushes to my cheeks in a jumbled reaction of fury and disbelief and outrage. My body tenses instinctively, every muscle coiling like I’m preparing for a fight. My grip on Maisie’s hand tightens protectively.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I demand in a harsh whisper.

Eva steps into the room slowly. She doesn’t look at Maisie, doesn’t acknowledge the machines or the medical equipment or the fact that she’s intruding on the most private, vulnerable moment of my life. She only looks at me, and the weight of her attention pins me there.

“I came to make you an offer,” she says softly.

I almost laugh. “An offer I can’t refuse?”

“An offer you can’t afford to refuse,” she replies calmly, “if my sources are to be believed.”

Leon is skulking beyond her, and I send him a glare that he ignores.

I can’t speak. Whatever I could say would be wrong to say in front of Maisie. She’s sleeping, but I don’t want to wake her, and if I say what I’m thinking, I’ll just get louder and louder until I get myself thrown out of the hospital altogether.

Eva waits, patient as a cat watching its prey. When I stay silent, she smiles.

Smirks, really.

“Ten million dollars,” she says at last. “For another thirty days. Return with me to the castle.”

From Adrian, I hear a sharp gasp as he rises to his feet. “ What? ”

She can’t be serious. She can’t be.

“Five million up front,” she says without even glancing at Adrian. “The rest on completion of the contract.”

Enough to pay for Maisie’s treatment a hundred times over. Enough to send Alicia to college, to buy Dane whatever future he wants, to ensure Adrian never has to worry about keeping our family together again.

Enough to save everyone I love.

But the cost…

“There isn’t enough money in the world,” I say flatly, “to take me away from my sister right now.”

This is my baby sister, who still seems so much younger than her age. Who still sleeps with a stuffed rabbit, who draws me pictures of flowers and rainbows, who told me once that when she grows up, she wants to be a doctor so she can help other kids who feel scared in hospitals.

I won’t abandon her. Not for Eva, not for ten million dollars, not for anything .

Adrian shifts in the corner, arms folded tightly across his chest. I can see the conflict written across his face as clear as words on a page—confusion and curiosity and shock battling with desperate worry for Maisie.

His eyes flick from our sister’s pale face to Eva’s black-clad figure. “Who is this?” he asks me quietly.

“She’s no one.”

“I’m the producer of the reality show your sister recently starred in,” Eva says, and now I glare at her. “I mean it,” she says. “Ten million. You should discuss it with your—brother, is it?” She casts a cold smile at Adrian.

“Get out of here,” I hiss at her. How dare she? How fucking dare she stroll in here and throw numbers at me, as though ten million dollars is pocket change she’s willing to write off just to watch me squirm again?

“Robin,” Adrian murmurs. “We should—seriously, we should talk about it. Like she says.”

My brother doesn’t understand. You can’t bargain with the devil without losing your soul. But it’s my fault he doesn’t understand. I left details of the “reality show” as vague as I could, and just said that I got voted out earlier than I hoped.

Eva takes a step closer, and I catch the scent of her perfume. The memories it brings are unwelcome and immediate: the warm light of the fireplace licking over my skin along with Eva’s tongue…

“I’ll cover Maisie’s treatment upfront,” Eva says quietly, her voice never changing pitch or tone. “Right now. She could go into surgery within the hour. I’ll pay for whatever she needs—here, or at the best hospitals in the world.”

My fingers tighten again around Maisie’s hand. She can’t do this to me. She can’t waltz back into my life and dangle salvation in front of me like this.

But Maisie?—

God, Maisie deserves everything. She deserves the best doctors, the most advanced treatments, a real chance at a normal life.

She deserves to wake up tomorrow and the day after that and every day for the next seventy years.

She deserves to grow up and become that doctor she dreams about, to help other scared kids the way I wish I could help her.

Damn Eva Novak. Damn her for always making me choose between my pride and my family.

Eva’s shadow is falling over me where I sit. Her presence is suffocating and magnetic at the same time, impossible to ignore. She knows exactly what she’s doing—knows that she’s offering me the one thing I can’t refuse, no matter how much it might cost me.

But then I see her smoothing her jacket carefully down her front. The gesture is smooth, unconscious, but there’s something underneath it—a tension that suggests she’s not as calm as she appears.

“You have until this evening to decide,” she says coolly. “After that, you will never see me again.”

With that, she slips back out of the curtained-off area.

“Robin,” Adrian says quietly, his voice tight with emotion he’s trying to hide. “Please. I don’t understand why…” He takes a breath. “Tell me what the problem is, and we’ll find a way around it. You don’t want to be away from Maisie? She’ll understand. I’m here. Dane and Alicia are here. Please.”

I shake my head, not knowing even where to begin explaining. “I can’t…humiliate myself again,” I tell him in a low, strangled voice.

He crosses to me and takes me by the shoulders. “We don’t have time for pride,” he tells me urgently. “Robin—none of us will think any less of you if you make a fool of yourself on TV, I swear. Not if we really can get that money.”

If only it was as simple as making a fool of myself on TV.

And I know better than he understands that pride is something I can’t afford, not when my little sister is lying in a hospital bed fighting for her life.

Not when the alternative might be watching her fade away because I was too stubborn to accept help from the devil herself.

But it’s not just about pride, is it? It’s about what Eva did to me.

How she made me feel things I’d never felt before, made me hope for impossible things, and then cast me aside the moment her grief demanded a sacrifice.

It’s about the way she looked at me when she told me to leave—like I was nothing. Less than nothing.

A mistake she was correcting.

I exhale shakily, my hand trembling as I smooth Maisie’s blanket with careful, deliberate movements.

“Okay, Robin,” Adrian says, his voice gentle but insistent. “If you can’t do it, I will. I’ll ask her to consider casting me, instead.”

I let out a half-laugh, half-sob. “Oh, buddy. You—you can’t. You don’t understand.”

“Then help me understand,” he pleads. “Because from where I’m standing, she looks like she could save Maisie, save all of us, and you’re turning her down for no good reason.”

God help me, I know how it looks.

Eva has the resources to give Maisie everything she needs. Like she said, she could make one phone call and have Maisie in life-saving surgery tonight.

All I have to do is say yes.

All I have to do is go back to that castle, back to those dark halls and silk sheets and the woman who made me feel alive and terrified at the same time.

All I have to do is sell myself again.

“She…hurt me,” I whisper, the words barely audible in the quiet room.

Adrian watches my face carefully. He seems to understand there’s more to the story than he’s heard, but all he can think about is the money. “Maybe…maybe this time will be different?”

Different? Eva Novak doesn’t change. She doesn’t soften or apologize or learn from her mistakes. She takes what she wants and destroys what threatens her, and I was foolish enough to think I might be the exception.

But as I look down at Maisie’s face, at the IV in her arm and the monitors tracking her vital signs, I see the truth.

It doesn’t matter what Eva does to me. It doesn’t matter how she breaks me or uses me or casts me aside when she’s finished. All that matters is giving Maisie a chance to live.

I can already see the trap Eva has set, can feel its jaws closing around me with mechanical precision. Maybe she planned from the start to toy with me like this. Maybe she didn’t.

Either way, I’m going back.

For Maisie, I’d walk into hell itself, which is exactly what I’ll be doing by letting myself get dragged back into Eva’s world.

But before I do, I need Adrian to understand the full story. Because being in Eva’s orbit is dangerous, and there’s every chance I won’t be coming back this time.

I take a long breath and look my brother in the eye. “There’s something I need to tell you.”