Page 66 of Scorned Beauty

Phil Harding had been in a medically induced coma to ease the swelling in his brain caused by the fall. He was lucky all he suffered besides brain trauma was a broken leg and collarbone considering the height he’d fallen from. His spine remained intact, and he wasn’t paralyzed. The second they removed his breathing tube, the detectives took his statement.

When he finally saw me, the disgust on his face spoke volumes and managed to make me feel an inch tall. He witnessed the cruelty I’d inflicted on Sloane.

“Find her…”

I wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question.

“I was hoping you could help me find her,” I said.

He didn’t say anything but breathed heavily. “Don’t deserve her.”

“If there’s anything…”

“She didn’t betray you.” His heart monitor ticked up.

That was neither here nor there. Though Sloane and I avoided sharing personal stuff, we did spend five months together, and when I was able to think clearly, it left me with a certainty that she was coerced to work for the FBI. That she was cornered and didn’t have a choice. I lied to myself when I said she was dead to me, but I wasn’t prepared for Phil’s next words.

“I cloned her phone.”

The words didn’t register at first. My mind rejected them. It rejected them because that would mean Sloane was innocent. That there was no gray area to bargain with and make me feel better even when her shattered look haunted me.

The look as I spewed those venomous words and rejected her.

Ridiculed her.

Degraded her.

Called her a rat.

Trash.

No. No. No.

The unfairness of it all. My misplaced outrage and pride. I fucking destroyed her.

A faint smile curved Phil’s mouth. He was delighted to watch the slideshow of horror playing on my face.

“You framed her?” I choked.

And if the nurse hadn’t rushed in, I would have grabbed him, post-comatose or not, and strangled the life out of him.

Dazed, I didn’t even fight the nurse when she shoved me out of the room. I staggered a few steps into the hallway with no direction. I paced in circles.

I fought through the roaring in my ears, the pounding of my heart, and the inability to breathe without snagging on what suspiciously sounded like a sob. Sloane never betrayed me. Sandro was right. The FBI framed her. I scrambled through our text messages and cross-checked them to the messages from the bodyguards I assigned to her.

I battened down the nausea of self-disgust rising inside me when my brain came to the undeniable conclusion of Sloane’s innocence.

Since that night she disappeared, my days were spent on the streets talking to informants or riding Trevor’s ass on dark web chatter. Any clue that would lead us to Sloane or even Billy.

Kirill issued a warning that Grigori was his to deal with, but fuck that.

I also had Harriet watched. Trevor, at first, thought I’d lost my mind to consider stalking an octogenarian, but after we’d discovered the auto-monthly debit of her stay in Delphine had been cancelled only to be paid up for a year from an untraceable shell company, he agreed. I didn’t know whether Harriet knew what happened to Sloane and I wasn’t about to give her a heart attack with bad news.

I would return to my penthouse in the early hours of the morning, but today, after finding out that I’d misjudged Sloane, I didn’t have the energy to haunt the streets or hound Trevor, so I returned to my penthouse early.

Six p.m. to be exact.

Here, Ginger was my constant companion. Surprisingly, she’d acclimated to being confined to an indoor space, noting said indoor space was ten times the size of Sloane’s apartment. Apparently, she had a taste for fine living and expensive furniture. I kept her fed in style and she’d been gaining weight, her coat getting healthier than it’d ever been.