Page 106 of Ruthless Chaos

I lean in closer to him, resting a hand on his.

Liam looks at where I’ve touched him, then up at me. “You flew all this way to find that out?”

I nod fervently, pulling a slight smile. “Well, of course. We had an agreement, and you know how I am about agreements.”

Another hissing laugh. “Well, thanks to ouragreement, I was in a medically induced coma for three days, got over two hundred stitches and will have to have my nose reconstructed.”

His words don’t make sense.

I search his face for even the hint of a joke, but he’s stone cold serious and that confuses me because he couldn’t possibly mean what I think he does.

“Alexander did this to you?” My voice trails off, and Liam nods slowly.

He clears his throat. “I was in the middle of it with his prudish bitch and he just appears out of nowhere and attacks me.” Liam looks at the wall behind me. “I don’t remember anything else.”

“He was supposed to be away,” I say. “I triple-checked before I gave you the go ahead.”

Liam nods. “I know you did, love. I have no fucking idea what happened.”

He starts talking more about what could have brought Alexander back early, but I tune him out. An icy rope of panic wraps itself around my throat.

I severely miscalculated things.

A display of anger like this is out of character, even for Alexander. This sort of thing could get him kicked out of Kingmaker and even Saint Frederic—but he did it anyway, for a mulatto whore.

I’m sick to my stomach, but I force myself to go cold.

As much as I want to scream, and cry, and rage, I can’t let my emotions get the better of me. This is a business visit. I will treat it as such.

“I will reimburse your family for your care,” I say, pulling down my veil of indifference. “I’m so sorry this happened to you, Liam.”

I stroke his hand, doing my best to seem sincere.

He gives me a pained smile. “Once I’m better, we will continue on with our plan.”

Inwardly, I sigh a breath of relief.

I’m so happy he brought it up. I was wondering how to broach the topic without seeming callous. Just because he’s injured doesn’t mean our scheme is over. If anything, this just makes it more imperative that we move faster. Clearly, this thing between Alexander and that bitch is more far gone than I thought.

Desperate times call for more desperate measures.

“We’ll have to think about the long game from now on,” I say. “We need to break him.” I take a notepad out of my bag and start jotting down my thoughts. “Breaking them up is the easiest way to do that.”

I swallow thickly as I write.

This fucking girl is Alexander’s one weakness.

When I look up from my notepad, Liam is leaned over like he’s trying to get a glimpse of the page. I show it to him. It’s just a blank page with the headingBreakup Ideas.

“I think I know why he’s so possessive of her,” Liam offers.

I quirk an eyebrow. “You do?”

“It’s something she said to me when I started dragging her off the dance floor,” Liam looks lost in thought. “She told me to stop because she’s a virgin.”

My jaw drops. “They’ve never fucked?”

So that’s what this is all about. The mongrel has the one thing next to no girl has anymore—a motherfucking hymen.