The Maybach stalled at the curb by the time I escaped the building. Cara must’ve alerted Jared.
I hustled into the back seat, producing my phone from my pocket.
“Where to, Boss?” Jared examined me from the rearview mirror, tipping his hat down.
Dallas once pestered me about relieving him of his uniform. Claimed he must have felt like a circus monkey in it.
Dallas.
Next time she made a suggestion, even if it was donating both my kidneys to science, I would fulfill it without delay.
If there was a next time.
“Home.” I managed not to shout. “As fast as you can.”
Jared offered me a curt nod and fished a bottled water from the mini fridge next to him, handing it over to me, as he always did.
I didn’t have any goddamn time for his routine.
Tucking it under my arm, I shot a text to Zach and Oliver.
ROMEO COSTA
@ZachSun How fast can you track Madison Licht’s location?
OLLIE VB
County jail? FBI holding facility?
Or, if there is a god, a CIA black site?
I sipped the water, trying my hardest not to lose my composure as I waited for a real response.
I’d get there in time.
I had to.
ROMEO COSTA
He’s out on bail.
OLLIE VB
Shit.
ZACH SUN
If he has his phone on him, a minute.
Hold.
ROMEO COSTA
@ZachSun, you done? It’s been a fucking minu
A chill bolted through my skin, hiking up every hair on my body. As if I’d been electrocuted.
Must be static friction.
But I couldn’t finish typing out my sentence.
A roll of nausea crashed into my gut like a fist. A guttural growl escaped my lips. I raised the water bottle, intending to sip again, and noticed my hands shaking.
My hands never shook.
I inventoried my symptoms.
Trembling hands. Sluggish breaths. Hazy vision.
My entire body twisted inside out like snakes slithered within it.
Jared’s eyes met mine across the rearview mirror before scurrying back to the road ahead. I knew guilt when I saw it.
And I could taste betrayal from a thousand miles away.
I’d been poisoned.
Madison or Bruce?
I didn’t even have to think twice.
Madison, of course.
Bruce was conniving but too conventional to murder. The man was as edgy as a softball.
Madison must have paid my driver to kill me. Problem was, I had no idea what he’d laced into the water. No way of knowing how grim my situation was or what the antidote might be.
I doubted Jared knew, either.
One thing was certain—mentioning it to him now, while I was too weak to breathe properly, would be a mistake.
Returning my attention to my phone, I wrote one word.
ROMEO COSTA
Poisoned.
Within half a second, Zach’s name flashed on my screen.
I accepted the call, too ill to speak. Just as well, as Zach didn’t want my conversation. He needed my location through his GPS app.
“I can’t wait to get home,” I croaked out, so he could hear where I was headed. Judging by the scenery, I’d make it there in four minutes.
Texts darted down my screen.
OLLIE VB
I sent an ambulance over to your house.
Heading there now.
Side note—I love how you insisted on putting a period after the word poison, even on your deathbed.
Your passion for good grammar is commendable.
Oh, and keep whatever you drank or ate with you, so we can run a check and see what’s in there.
I was grateful my friends, despite exhibiting the mental age of thirteen normally, were resourceful in crunch time.
Relief swept through me when I realized Madison would probably leave Shortbread alone. No point harming her without me alive to witness it.
Jared’s shoulders rattled with nerves. He tossed glances at me through the mirror, clutching the steering wheel in a death grip, leaving indents of sweat on the plush leather cover.
He either expected me to drop dead and was wondering why I was still seated, looking calm and collected, or was having second thoughts.
There is minus-zero chance I’ll let you walk away from this.
If I get out of this alive.
I’d never been a big fan of life. Growing up, I’d spent countless days wishing I’d never been born.
So, the foreign panic that seized my chest surprised me.
And with it, came an unsettling realization—I didn’t want to die.
I wanted more time with Dallas “Shortbread” Costa.
With my wife.
I wanted to hear her laughter. To try new food with her. To dance together in ballrooms—this time because she wanted to give me those dances, not because of societal pressure.
I wanted to seduce her and be seduced by her. I wanted a do-over of our Parisian honeymoon.
Hell, a part of me wanted to see our child.
Would it be a boy or a girl? Hazel or gray-eyed? With her temper? Or my dry sense of humor? And her laugh? Was she already pregnant?
Fuck, what if she was?
I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
The car pulled in front of my mansion. The thought crossed my mind that it could very well be the last time I greeted Dallas in our home. If she was still there.
Pushing the door open, I stumbled out, zigzagging my way to the door.
Jared flew out the driver’s side, hot on my tail. “Boss, you don’t look well. Should I—”
I burst through my entryway, collapsing to my knees.
My body was shutting down. One organ at a time. Crawling toward the stairway, I passed Hettie on her way from the kitchen, a bag of oranges cradled in her arms.
“Keep Jared out of the house,” I mumbled.
She didn’t ask what was wrong. She did as I said and blocked the driver with her slender body.
The journey up the spiral staircase was excruciating. Each step seemed to cost me a year of my life. Sweat rolled down every inch of skin. White dotted my eyesight.
Finally, I reached Dallas’s bedroom. Though she slept in ours these days, she still loved the room she first occupied when she moved here.
It was full of her books. Of her scent. Of her sweet existence.
She spent most afternoons reading on the windowsill.
The relief I felt at seeing her curled in front of her window, a paperback in her lap, was immediate. At the very least, I could tell her what I wanted to say.
She looked like a painting so unique, so special, even Zach wouldn’t be able to get his hands on it. In a pale turquoise dress. Her backdrop a winter realm of pearl-hued snow.
Tendrils of her hair escaped her messy bun. I cursed myself for all the times I wanted to tuck them behind her ears but didn’t.
Life was too short not to be crazy fucking in love with the girl who wore you down.
Shortbread’s gaze hurdled from the pages of the book to me. Her jaw slackened.
The sky was falling through the reflection of her eyes. Even if I never heard her return the words I was about to say, I knew that was enough.
“Rom!” She tossed the book aside. It ricocheted on the floor.
It gave me great satisfaction that she mishandled her book for me. Her books were her entire world.
She rushed to me, collecting me in her arms. Crouching down, she lifted my head, cradling it.
I gathered I looked about as ghastly as I felt because her fingers shook so much, she dropped me on her lap with an unceremonious thump.
“What’s going on?” Her pupils danced hysterically in their sockets. “Why do you look so pale?”
“Poison.” I didn’t even have the energy to tack on the “-ed” on the end.
She sucked in a breath and pulled her phone out, calling 9-1-1. I somehow lifted a hand, knocking it back. I couldn’t feel her touch. Her warmth.
It felt like I was cocooned in a temperature-less cotton.
“Ambulance on the way.”
“I’m going to kill him.” She buried her nose in my shoulder. I couldn’t smell her rose-scented hair. “Madison. He did this to you.”
My eyelids fluttered shut. I harvested every ounce of my remaining strength. I would only get one chance to say this. It needed to be firm. Clear.
Our eyes locked.
“I have something to say.”
Oddly enough, I was busier telling her what I came here to say than being furious at Madison.
Turned out, Dallas had been right, after all.
Love trumped hate. Good conquered evil. When you drew your last breath, you didn’t think about the people you loathed. You thought about those you loved.
“This is very important, Shortbread. Are you listening?”
Though I couldn’t feel her body, I could feel her pain. She looked like heartbreak. The way she had on the night I’d met her at the debutante ball.
Oh, fuck. Even back then, I was powerless against her, wasn’t I?
From the moment I saw her in that ballroom, in her own little universe, surrounded by sweets and a head full of faraway fictional lands, I wanted her.
“Yes.” She trembled, clutching my cheeks harder. Our faces fused together. “I’m listening, Rom.”
“I’m in love with you, Dallas Costa. I love every piece of you. Every cell. Every breath. Every laugh. You’ve bewitched me, and I don’t want to leave this world thinking you don’t know how much you’ve changed me.”
“No, Rom. No.”
Dallas rested my head on the floor. The realization that I’d lost complete control over my body boomeranged into me.
She unbuttoned my shirt in a desperate attempt to save me. Her eyes roamed my skin, searching for a telltale sign. A bite mark. Anything she could work with.
For the first time since I met her—and knowing her, maybe this decade—a single tear beaded in the corner of her eye.
It crawled down her cheek, trudging past her chin. Just one tear, yet that tear brought me the most joy I’d ever felt in my life.
Turned out, my defiant, stouthearted wife could cry.
And it only took me dying to happen.
Suddenly, tears washed her cheeks, splashing from her chin to mine. Her brows furrowed at the sight of liquid trickling down my jaw.
She catalogued my eyes before realizing it hadn’t come from me. With an unsteady hand, she brought a fingertip to her cheek, collecting a tear.
Dallas studied it, almost bewildered. “I’m crying.”
I love you, too, Shortbread.
Ambulance sirens filled the room with their hysterical shrieks. I shut my eyes, wondering why I couldn’t even die in fucking peace in the arms of the woman I was reluctantly in love with.
“They’re coming to save you. Please, wait.” Dallas kissed my cheek. My forehead. The tip of my nose. My eyelids.
When had I closed my eyes?
I couldn’t remember, but it happened, because I couldn’t see her anymore.
I needed to see her.
Just one more time.
“Please, Rom, stay awake. Please. For me?”
“I’ll do anything for you,” I heard myself say, before the world turned black and the ambulances ceased to whine. “You’re my favorite plot twist.”
