Page 55 of Double

“Yes!” I grinned up at the sweetest husband on Earth. “That was so good. I really needed that.”

He grinned back at me. “I’m glad I was able to do this for you.”

We were shuffling out of the row behind the crowd when a big, burly dude wearing a suit approached us. “Excuse me,” he said. “Your presence is being requested. Would you follow me?”

“Our presence is being requested by who?” Double asked, immediately going into protective mode.

The guy leaned in close to Double. “The artist.”

“I know him,” I explained to Double. “He was a potential client before I left . . . came here.”

Double was silent for a second. “Okay,” he said finally, and the two of us followed the suited man.

After walking through a maze of corridors, we ended up outside of an inconspicuous door. The man knocked a few times before receiving word, then opened the door for us. We stepped into a large, brightly lit room with people buzzing everywhere. I spotted King Cobra through the crowd just as he spotted me.

“Tinsley! What the entire fuck? I thought that was you.” He threw an arm around me and gave me a side hug.

“Hey, Shaun.” I called him by his given name, as he’d told me to do when we met back on Iredia. “It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see me? Shit, it’s good to see you.” He lowered his voice. “The way you disappeared off the island had everybody speculatin’ and shit.”

“Yo, out here in the middle of everybody like this, ain’t a good place to talk.” Double eyed the people milling around. “This is a sensitive subject.”

King Cobra, who was five foot nine inches tall, at best, looked up at my husband. “You’re right. Follow me.”

Shaun led us deeper into the bowels of the venue until we came to a door that was in a much quieter area of the backstage madness. We walked into that room, which was clearly his private dressing room. It was empty of people.

“Sterling Gillespie tore up the fucking island, looking for you. There were lockdowns and home searches. He put out a bounty for anybody aiding you. The story was that you’d been kidnapped by political rebels.”

“I wasn’t kidnapped by political rebels. I was actually rescued. My aunt, for all intents and purposes, sold me to Sterling Gillespie in exchange for him saving the family’s paper company. I was fortunate enough to have loved ones who got me off the island before the wedding could happen.”

“Yeah, I was confused as hell. Ellia and I both were. We kept asking each other how you could go from competing to do our wedding to having a wedding of your own. We were choosing you guys, you know? After we’d seen presentations from four event planners on the island, we were going with you and Faylise.”

“Oh, Faylise. Have you seen her? Is she okay?”

“I think she’s having a hard time of it. Last I heard, Gillespie had installed one of his nieces into the company, supposedly to help her out in your absence. But everybody knows she’s a plant. She’s just there to report back to Gillespie if you make contact with Faylise.”

My heart fell. “Are they still looking for me?” I was scared of the answer, but I felt it was better to know than to wonder.

Shaun stepped closer, and when he spoke again, his voice was lowered. “This ain’t common knowledge, but you know, I hear things. People talk to me . . . tell me things because of who I am.”

I nodded encouragingly, hoping he would get on with it.

“Word is that Gillespie put that pressure to the attorney handling your inheritance and made it so that you have to come back to sign the paperwork in person.”

“Ugh!” That was frustrating to hear.

“Yeah.” Shaun nodded his head. “He’s after blood at this point. Your aunt has been doing jailhouse interviews with any camera crew willing to come in there. She’s singing like a bird about all the slick shit she and Gillespie were doing. She sat down with Jemina Mooyoung.”

Jemina Mooyoung was the most influential and well-respected journalist on Iredia. “What?”

“Yep. She told Jemina that she basically arranged a marriage between you and Gillespie for financial gain and political influence. She told the entire island that the two of them held you hostage until the day before the wedding when you were kidnapped by Gillespie’s political foes.”

“She admitted that she held me hostage?”

He nodded. “She said that she knows she deserves to be where she is and that she’ll accept her fate, but she wants Gillespie to do the same.”

“Wow. He’s probably going to have her killed in prison, huh?”