Page 72 of Bronson

“It can’t wait?” She’s still upset from our fight.

“No. It can’t wait another second.”

She gives me a cross glance. But she lets me in.

I follow her up the stairs, try not to focus on the curves of her ass beneath her nightgown.

We reach her room. She turns to me, puts a finger over her lips, signals me to be quiet.

We go into the room. She closes the door without a sound.

I sit on the bed.

She sits beside me. She smells of vanilla, roses, sleep.

“What couldn’t wait?” she asks.

Will she tell me to leave?

Hate me?

Tell me she never wants to see me again?

I shake my head, freeing it from my fears.

She’s all the way awake. She looks at me fully for the first time since I’d arrived. Her face creases with concern. Her voice is soft as she says, “Sweetheart, you’re a mess.”

I feel like I might cry. But I won’t. Instead, I clear my throat. I dive straight into my story. The darkest wound from my past. “I have something I have to tell you. Something from my past. There was a man. A good friend of mine. The son of a woman you know.”

Her brow knits. “Ingrid?”

“Yes. After… he died… I offered to keep her at the most expensive home in the city, the one her son was paying for. She refused to allow me… after what her son had done. She picked this place. Now that I see what care they get, I’m so glad she made the choice she did⁠—”

Paige interrupts my ramble. “We love Ingrid. But tell me, how did her son… die?”

It is hard to say the words. “It was a few weeks after he’d become engaged. To a woman who you know as well.”

“Who?” she asks.

“Alice.”

Her face wrinkles in disbelief. “Alice? She’s never mentioned him.”

“She won’t speak of him. None of us do.”

A small gasp escapes her lips. “What happened?”

“We found out he wasn’t who he said he was. He wasn’t what any of us thought. Especially Alice. He’d joined the Bachmans with an ulterior motive. He was in it for the power. He wasn’t going to be satisfied until he became the head of the family.”

“But that’s your position,” she says.

“Exactly. He spent a year planning, plotting. Got into our tech. He broke into my house one evening. We think his plan was to do away with me. Make it look like an accident, a break in, a suicide, we aren’t sure. He came after me with a knife⁠—”

Her eyes widen in recognition. “The scar? The one on your side?”

I give a nod. “I was so surprised, shocked. I didn’t react at first. That’s how he got the chance to cut me. Had I turned any slower, grabbed his hand just a second later, the knife would have plunged into my side, as he had planned. Instead, I’m left with the scar, but I kept my life.”

Her words come in a breathy rush. “You killed him?”