ELLA
There are certain circles where the rules are different.
Where your mother can blackmail your father into marriage. Where he can then abuse her and their child when she’s at the age of his friends’ liking.
Where relationships are used as bargaining chips and money is more important than truth. Where lies can be spread and believed. Where palms can be greased and problems go away.
Those are the circles where murder is a way of life for those nasty moments that threaten to destroy you.
Kam was my savior when he helped get rid of my father, but he couldn’t ease the pain that lingers from a life brought up like that. He would know.
I thought James was my escape and I was his. He was my happily ever after in a fucked-up fairy tale written with a diamond-crusted pen and passed around in dark corners of coke-fueled parties.
He took me away and showed me life could be different. And then fate caught up with me, that cruel bitch.
“He asked you to marry him?” Kelly asks, glancing down when I look back at her in confusion. I clear my throat and do everything I can to shake off the sudden emotion that’s overwhelmed me.
“You keep fiddling with it,” she comments.
Peering down, the rose gold ring still on its chain sits between my fingers.
“If you don’t want people to know, you better slip that back in,” Kelly warns and then takes a sip of her champagne.
The after-party is in full swing, the music so loud, the bass vibrates my chest. “Do you think anyone saw me—”
I don’t have to finish. Kelly reassures me just like I’ve done for her a hundred times before. “No one, babe,” she whispers and tells me she loves me. “You okay, though?”
“Just … a lot,” I answer her, not knowing if she’s aware yet. I don’t want to be the one to tell her.
She gives me a sad smile and takes a curl of mine in her hand before setting it back into place. “If it means anything at all,” Kelly tells me, “I think James would have liked him. Even if he’s quiet and brooding, he’s protective of you. You can tell and James could have liked that.”
“Thanks,” I murmur and return her smile.
When James died, I swore someone did it. An enemy saw to it.
But the evidence was on camera. It was only a tragedy.
He suffered my karma. All the reckless bad I’d done in my life … and he was the one who suffered the consequences.
I thought I was okay seeing that man upstairs … but the sight of him lying so still … “I need Zander, I think.”
“I’ll cover for you, babe,” Kelly tells me and kisses my cheek before striding back to her party.
I’m halfway across the room to my security detail dressed in a sharp black suit, when Trish grabs my elbow. The sudden touch makes me gasp and pull back until I see it’s her. “It’s just you,” I say with my hand on my chest, catching my breath.
“Shit, sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” she tells me before looking left and right.
“Are you okay?” she asks me.
“I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. It’s taken care of. Kam tied up the loose ends.”
Shaking my head, I close my eyes and remind myself we’re standing in the middle of a crowded room. “But he knows. Zander …”
“My brother trusts him. I trust him. You do too, right?”
My head shakes again as I try to explain, “I love him … I’m worried that he … he knows what I’ve done now.”
“Oh,” she says and breathes out, my concern finally getting through to her.
“He knows I’m … that I’ve done things.” I speak just lower than a murmur, just barely enough for her to hear, “Enough things that the sight of a dead body doesn’t faze me.”
Her lips turn down slightly before she decides to say, “Go find him. I bet the moment you two are alone, everything will be all right and you’ll stop worrying.”
She nods as she speaks, as if she’s convinced herself as well.
“Thanks, I’ll go do that.”
“Let me know how it goes, all right?” she questions and I give her a quiet nod before continuing my way to the detail watching me.
“Silas, where’s Zander?” I ask him.