Page 41 of Devious Lies (Cruel Crown)
The girl stood frozen, her jaw unhinging. Her furrowed brows dipped into her mask. “What?”
“We’re done for the weekend.” The clipped tone seemed familiar. I wanted to study him, but it was more reason not to. I refused to be recognized while confined to a small box. “Wait for the elevator to return to the lobby. I’ll add a bonus for the taxi.”
She clutched onto his arm as the elevator pinged. “But I thought—”
“I don’t pay you to think.” He took a step back, extracting himself from her grip. I refused to glance at his face. “Your flight is booked for 8 A.M.”
In six hours.
I nearly winced for the poor girl, but I was supposed to be minding my business, my head down, my damn name tag still in this stranger’s fingers. Plus, if it had been up to her, the elevator doors would have closed on me.
She dipped her head down and left the elevator without another protest.
He was an asshole.
Clearly.
But it was not my problem.
Nope.
I just wanted my name tag.
“Can I have my name tag?” I shifted at the awkwardness in the air.
I’d met men like him before. I didn’t need to look at his face to know his type—classically handsome with all the money and power in the world. A man who thought he could toy with people as he pleased. A man like my father.
I loved my dad, but I didn’t love who he had turned out to be. Obligatory love, my mom had called it when I’d tried to explain the pain in my soul. It seemed too inadequate of a description.
The man toyed with the metal in his hand and whispered, his voice as deep and rich as his Westmancott suit, “Emery.”
My name sounded like it’d touched his lips before. It spoke of a familiarity that alarmed me, and I prayed against all odds he hadn’t recognized my name.
It wasn’t only my dad people dragged through the mud. My mother and I bore emotional battle scars from the last four years, but I supposed I might have had it easy compared to her. She refused to leave Eastridge.
No one wanted us there.
“Look at me,” he demanded, shocking me.
I refused. It felt like the coward’s way out, and I’d never been a coward in the past. I criticized my dad, but I’d failed to mention what I thought about myself.
The person I’d become since The Winthrop Scandal would never have earned my respect back then. One moment, fearless to the point of reckless, jumping with little regard for consequences. And the next moment, spineless, both victim and victimizer. A bear ensnared by a simple trap, once mighty, now fallen.
Once a tiger. Now a whelp.
Aside from Dad’s victims, that was, perhaps, the biggest tragedy of it all. I’d lost my dad, but I’d also lost myself. Not all the time but enough for my pride to shrivel.
The man placed the name tag in my palm and curled my fingers around it. The gesture was innocent, but it felt too intimate for strangers. Electricity traveled from my fingertips to my heart, spearing me until my chest heaved in a pant.
What the hell was happening?
Witchcraft.
Had to be.
I jerked my hand back, falling off balance when the elevator screeched to a halt with a synchrony that had me wondering if fate had spent my entire life conspiring against me. My body stumbled forward at the same time the lights flickered off.
We were trapped, and I was dizzy.
