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Chapter Fifteen

MERRICK

“I’ll be back by the wedding,” Boden announces.

He’s leaving against his better judgment, something that he’s said to me more than once. But there is literally no reason for him to stay here with me, not when there is work to be done at home, and there is—plenty. We’re still running a business in North Carolina, even when we take personal time to handle shit like this.

I’m going to owe my partners big fucking time after all of this is said and done. Weeks out of commission after having taken time off to not only marry but then go back and pick up my wife later.

And here the fuck I am again. My personal life is taking control of my work. But instead of sitting around doing absolutely nothing, I decide that I have to do something productive. So I open my computer and check my email.

The entire time, I can’t help but think about Adriano and his bullshit. There’s only one person crazy enough to help me figure this shit out. She will know what is going on in his head because she’s just as unhinged.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: COLETTE STEELE

Lucille,

I need your help. I need you to dig into Adriano Bellucci. Dig into him as you would to financially ruin him. I’ll pay you under the table. This is not for Securus. This is personal. I don’t want anyone to know yet. Keep it on the hush. Whatever you find, save it because there will be a time when Securus will pay you to actually push the button and ruin him from the inside out.

Also, if there’s a way that you can find out just who he associates with and why he would have a meeting with the head of children’s services, that would be great. Boden and I haven’t been able to find much.

Merrick .

I hit Send .

I’m sure that what I’ve done is against some sort of silent code, but Lucille works with us now. She’s a contracted worker, so it’s not like I’m taking any money away from the company when I ask her to do something personal.

Leaning back, I stare at my computer for a moment, wondering what the fuck I’m going to do here for the next couple of weeks. Closing my computer, I stand and gather my shit before I head over to the Bellucci household.

I’m going to make him my main fucking focus until I figure out every little fucking thing there is to figure out about him. I want to know what color he shits in the morning by the end of this before I completely destroy and obliterate him into the goddamn ground.

Then, when he’s a useless pile of bleeding flesh, I’m going to wrap my arm around Colette and laugh in his goddamn fucking face before I spit on him and nail the coffin shut. Because fuck Adriano Bellucci for everything he’s done.

Fuck him for making me marry his daughter

And then fuck him for taking her away from me.

One week until the wedding. All I’ve done the past two weeks is follow Adriano around. The only thing I’ve discovered about him is that he’s a gigantic fucking asshole, which I already knew.

He’s also fucking the lady in charge of the wedding planning. That lady, Marina, is in love with him, or at least the idea of him. I took some pictures of her in her office when she was doodling his name on a piece of paper.

It’s sad, really, because that girl will never be more than an easy fuck. But at the same time, she’s planning a wedding for my wife to marry another man, so I’m not sure I give much of a fuck about her in the long run.

But other than him fucking the planner and eventually fucking her over, I have nothing. I have zero leads on Colette. Nothing. I even did a little surveillance on the guy who had been guarding her. It didn’t matter. Because I’ve found absolutely fucking nothing.

Lifting my hand to my forehead, I rub it a few times. I’ve never been this bad at finding someone in my life, and it’s my fucking wife. Just when I’m about to give up completely, my phone makes a noise. Looking down, I arch a brow—an incoming email.

When I click on the email icon, I am surprised to see that Lucille has responded to my message. It’s been a few weeks, so I wasn’t sure whether she was actually working on it or not. I wasn’t even sure if she was going to tell Theron or not, but I assume if she had, he’d have already called me about it.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: COLETTE STEELE

Merrick,

Adriano Bellucci is the scum of the earth. That being said, all I could find was money laundering, which I’m ready to completely fuck up. I also found some offshore accounts. Again, I can completely fuck those up, too.

I can’t find Colette. I wish I could have found something about her in the research, but I have nothing.

Adriano wants to go into politics. He’s been setting up meetings with officials. He wants to get started with the city council. Other than that, I don’t have much else. I’m pretty sure he’s paying someone to scrub him from everything—everywhere.

If I come across anything else, I’ll let you know. Want me to do anything with my info?

-Lucille

I laugh to myself. Lucille would ask if I wanted her to do something with the information that she sent me. And if I were a bigger person, I would say no. But I’m not. I’m not a bigger person at all.

Chewing on my bottom lip, I release it as I lift my gaze to the limestone house across the street from me. What the fuck am I going to tell Lucille? She’s crazy enough to do whatever it is that I give her the green light to do, so I have to make sure it’s not going to get either of us arrested or killed.

I decide to sit on it for a minute.

A long minute.

Starting my engine, I leave the limestone home and head back to the hotel. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. My heart says fuck him over immediately, hard and fast, but my brain is telling me to wait… or well, Boden’s voice is telling me to stop.

Once I’m at the hotel, I make my way up to my room and flop down on the sofa. Dropping my head backward, I close my eyes and let out a frustrated growl. I don’t know what the fuck to do, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so goddamn conflicted in my whole life.

About anything… and right now, I’m conflicted by everything.

Colette. Adriano. Annulment. Wedding.

All of it.

COLETTE

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I look down at my feet. It’s been three weeks since I was brought here. Three weeks, and I haven’t left this room. Thankfully, it’s been three weeks since I have seen Malcolm. The first night, he stayed here, taunting me with the key to my collar.

Then he left.

I breathed a sigh of relief but then realized that I was here alone with no food or anything to drink. The next day, a man came to the door. Thankfully, he was bearing food, and as much as I wanted to turn my nose up, I was starving and thirsty.

The mysterious man comes in the evenings with food and water, gives them to me, and then camps out on the couch before he leaves in the morning. I haven’t asked his name, and he hasn’t even looked me in the eyes.

I’m okay with all of that. I don’t want to make small talk with anyone. Not with a single person, especially not with someone who is close to Malcolm. I’d rather sit in silence for the rest of my life than talk to anyone who is associated with Malcolm.

The fact that I’m going to be married to that man in a few days makes me feel absolutely sick to my stomach. I’m still not sure what he wants with me or why he chose me as his wife. I don’t think that he really cares anything about me at all.

He wants to use me, but it’s not for sex the way I thought it would be. It’s for something more, something sinister, and I can’t let my mind go to what it could be. I don’t want to believe that that kind of evil lives in this world.

But it does.

As I sit on the edge of a bed in a remote cabin wearing a padlocked collar chained to a headboard, I know deep in my soul that Malcolm is pure evil, likely sired by the Devil himself. And if he wasn’t, then he sold his soul to the Devil because there is nothing behind his eyes that even gives an inkling of him being an actual human.

I’ve stopped crying about my situation and the fact that my short life as Merrick’s wife is now completely over as of about two weeks ago. I have no tears left to cry. I can’t help but wonder what will actually become of me because I know that this man doesn’t really want me, and judging by the collar and chain, I’m nothing more than an animal to him—a pet. And not in a sexy way, either. More like a burden that he’s saddled with. Granted, he chose to be saddled with me, but only because he’s got an ulterior motive.