The moment I say the words, they hang between us like the blade on a guillotine.
For a minute, I stare wild-eyed at Jonathan, not sure why I think he’ll chop my head off.
Wait. Is he going to?
His expression doesn’t change, but the lust that covered his features disappears. Instead, I’m faced with his stone-cold expression. The ruthless one.
The one meant to hurt.
I instinctively push back against the mattress. I might not be scared of Jonathan, but his silence snaps my shoulder blades together. It’s like I can’t breathe normally when he’s this close yet feels far away.
So far away.
His hand is still wrapped around my throat and I gulp, expecting him to squeeze the life out of me.
But that part, that stupid little part that’s slowly eating my heart, is serene, peaceful almost. That part believes that Jonathan would never hurt me. He snapped at me for aggravating my wound, after all. He wouldn’t do anything to me.
But that part keeps forgetting what Jonathan did to Alicia.
“What are you talking about?” The neutral tone of his voice and the fact that he’s not getting off me is pushing my thoughts in all different directions. I don’t know whether he’s bluffing or genuinely asking.
I could deflect or backpedal, but someone with a strong perception like Jonathan would read straight through me.
Not knowing what to say, I turn my head away and stare at the broken lamp on the side of the bed. Maybe if I study it hard enough, Jonathan will get bored and leave me alone.
I scoff internally. The chance of Jonathan leaving me alone is probably as impossible as the likelihood of that lamp magically repairing itself.
His fingers caress the pulse point in my neck in a deceptive type of softness. I have no doubt he’ll squeeze anytime he chooses to.
“Your time is up, Aurora.”
My frantic gaze slides back to his. “U-up?”
Is he going to kill me?
“I’m done waiting for you to talk. You will do it right now.”
Oh, so it’s not actually ‘up’ as I thought. A rush of relief floods me, and I hate how light my chest feels.
When I remain silent, Jonathan’s fingers squeeze lightly, almost as if he’s reminding me of his power. “If you don’t talk, I’m liquefying H&H.”
The relief settling at the bottom of my stomach slowly disappears. “You can’t do that!”
“I can and I will. For the record, your black belt friend was here earlier and she made the mistake of threatening me, so I might be in the mood to ruin her life.”
Oh my God. Lay! I should’ve known she’d get her claws out if I disappeared on her. Not that her claws can do anything to a man like Jonathan. She’ll only end up hurting herself.
Shit.
Knowing Jonathan, he’ll also go after her family to drive the point home.
“I hate you,” I snarl at him.
“You didn’t hate me when you came all over my tongue.”
My thighs clench at the reminder of the pleasure he brought out of me not too long ago.
“Now, fucking talk, Aurora. What’s with the nonsense about Alicia?”
“Fine, let me up.”
“So you’ll throw one of your tantrums? No.”
“I’m uncomfortable.”
“Liar.” His lips twitch. “You’ve been rubbing your thighs together.”
“Which means I’m uncomfortable.”
“You’re aroused, not uncomfortable. You think I can’t tell the difference?”
Damn him and how observant he is.
I take in a deep breath, but it comes out chopped and broken — just like the whole chaos in my chest.
Being cornered is one of the feelings I loathe the most. I’ve fought so hard to escape my father’s shadow, but I’ve never managed to.
Even though Jonathan has threatened everything precious to me, there’s a vile need to tell him everything. To just spill it out and…be out there for the first time in my life.
I know it’s dangerous and that it’ll probably come back and bite me in the butt, but I’m so exhausted. My body is full of bruises, cuts, and a healed scar that still hurts.
It could be due to the physical pain, the lack of sleep, or both, but I murmur, “Ever since the first day I came here, I’ve been receiving messages from Alicia.”
“What type of messages?”
“Recordings on flash drives. It seemed like her will to me. At the beginning, she said that if I got them, it meant she was dead. Then she went on to tell me that someone wanted to kill her. She also said that our mother told her to cut all connection with me. In the last message, she was crying and told me…”
“What?” I expect him to squeeze my throat for good measure, but his fingers loosen until he’s almost caressing me.
“She…she said you were poisoning her. You were trying to kill her.”
I expect him to deny it, to tell me I’m wrong, but he continues studying me with that calculative gaze of his. I wait for his words with bated breath, but they never come out.
“So?” I whisper.
His face is covered in that blankness that I can’t get past, no matter how much time I spend with him. “Where are those recordings?”
“In my car.”
“Where in your car?”
“In my glove box.” I’m bemused. “Why is that the main point here?”
He pushes off me, and the skin where his fingers were wrapped around my neck is suddenly hollow and desolate.
The fact that he stopped touching me so suddenly feels wrong. Why does it feel so wrong?
I try not to focus on that as I follow his movements and sit on the edge of the bed beside him. Jonathan places a phone to his ear. “Moses. Search the glove box in Aurora’s car and bring me the flash drives in there.”
Why would he need them?
Wait… “Are you going to get rid of the evidence?”
Jonathan hangs up but keeps his phone in his hand. His expression is still that bland one, but something about it bothers me. The emotions he’s hiding behind his façade seem wrong. “There’s no evidence, because that nonsense didn’t happen.”
“Alicia said you poisoned her in order to kill her.” I probably shouldn’t be accusing him this openly, but it’s out there now, so I might as well hear his take on it.
“I want to hear it for myself.”
“More like you want to destroy the evidence.”
“If I wanted to kill Alicia, I would’ve done it right after she gave birth to Aiden. I wouldn’t have waited until eight years later.”
“Why would you even want to kill her? She was the softest person alive.”
“She was, and that softness ruined her.” The warmth in his tone takes me aback. It’s the first time he’s actually talked about Alicia without his usual impersonal touch.
“What happened, Jonathan?”
“Why do you want to know?” He narrows his eyes on me. “So you can engrave me in your head as your sister’s killer?”
It’s the exact opposite. Despite hearing Alicia’s message, a rebellious part of me refuses to believe Jonathan hurt her or would hurt me. That’s why I want him to talk, so that I’ll be able to murder that part of me.
“I told you my side of the story. It’s your turn, Jonathan.”
“Is that why you ran away and tried to escape?”
I bite my bottom lip.
“You don’t trust me?” Though his voice is calm, there’s an angry undertone to it.
“I trust my sister.”
“You shouldn’t. At least not blindly. She was mentally unwell.”
I puff my chest. “My sister was not crazy.”
His mouth twitches at the corner. “And you wonder why I call you wild one. You look the part right now.”
“If you expect me to stay still while you badmouth my sister, you have another thing coming.”
“I’m not badmouthing her. I’m stating facts that she tried her hardest to hide from you and the world.”
I inch closer to him until my thigh nearly touches his. “What do you mean?”
“Alicia’s father was the King family’s arch enemy. Lord Sterling was out to destroy my father and any legacy he left behind because my mother didn’t choose him. After my parents’ deaths, I decided to destroy him.”
I gasp. “Is that why you married Alicia? For revenge?”
“Yes.”
“How could you do that to her? You tyrant! Brute!” I curl my palm to punch him.
Jonathan cuts me a sharp glare. “Reopen your wounds and I’m tying you the fuck up, Aurora. I meant it earlier.”
The thought of being helpless causes a shudder to overtake me. I let my palms fall to my sides, but he doesn’t stop glaring at me, the sense of injustice on my sister’s behalf enveloping me whole. “Why would you do that to her?”
“She knew.”
“W-what?”
“I told her about my reasons from the start.”
“And…she agreed?”
“Indeed.”
“But why did she?”
“Because she hated her father for your mother’s death and wanted to bring him down. She didn’t have enough power to accomplish that, so I lent her that power and gave her the ability to see her father on his knees. He came to our doorstep, begging us to loan him money to save his business. I made sure no one else would, so his only solution was us.”
“And?” I scoot over, and this time, my thigh touches his. I want to watch his expression closely as he tells me about the past. But it doesn’t change much, except the part where he seems trapped in another timeline.
“She gave him money.”
“Oh.”
“She was that soft.”
“Did you…” I trail off, the question catching in my throat.
“Go ahead, ask. If you don’t voice your question, you might never know the answer.”
“Did you ever love her?” My words are small, barely audible.
“I thought I did, in my own way. Alicia was my wife, the mother of my only son, and she did everything I asked without giving me attitude about it.” He stares down his nose at me, driving the point home.
“Well, sorry I’m not a replica of her.”
His lips pull in what resembles a smile. “That, you aren’t. So far.”
“What do you mean by so far?”
Jonathan’s phone vibrates and Moses’s name flashes on the screen.
He puts the phone to his ear, listens without speaking, then hangs up. The line between his brow creases as he stares at me in a strange way.
It’s the second time Jonathan has looked at me like this — like he’s seeing a ghost. The first time was at Aiden’s wedding.
“What is it?” I murmur. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“There were no flash drives in the car.”
“Of course there were. I put them in there myself. Are you sure Moses didn’t get rid of them?”
“Moses would never do something without my order.”
“They’re in the glove box. I’ll go check myself.”
He grips me by the arm, disallowing me from leaving his side. His expression falls, almost like he’s disappointed, but in what? And why the hell do I hate that he’s directing that expression at me?
“Why the hell do you keep looking at me like that?” I snap.
“Are you sure you received those messages?” His tone, although not harsh, feels like a slap across my face.
“Of course I did! Do you think that I…I made it up or something?”
He says nothing, but that expression doesn’t disappear. If anything, the line in his forehead deepens.
“I received recordings from Alicia, Jonathan. I did!”
When he continues his infuriating silence, tears form in my eyes — angry ones. Why the hell is his disbelief affecting me so much? All I want is to reach out and erase that look off his beautiful face. I don’t want him regarding me that way, not now. Not ever.
“Paul!” I snatch his phone. “I’ll call the concierge of my building. He’s the one who contacted me whenever I had a wooden package that contained a flash drive. I’m going to put it on speaker so you can hear that I’m right.”
Energy bubbles in my veins as I unlock the phone using Jonathan’s fingerprint and punch in Paul’s number. I learnt it by heart from how much I manically checked to see if I’d gotten a new message.
Jonathan doesn’t stop me as I place the phone between us while it rings.
“Hello,” Paul’s voice comes from the other side.
“Hey, Paul. This is Aurora from 19.”
“Hello, Miss Harper.”
What’s with the formality in his tone? Anyway, that’s not what’s important right now. “Paul, remember when you used to call me whenever I received a small wooden box?”
“I’m sorry, Miss?”
“The boxes, Paul. The ones you pulled from under the counter and said they didn’t have a sender address on them, and you usually found them in front of the building.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss. I’ve never seen such packages. Besides, you already directed all your packages to your new address.”
“There were boxes.” My voice rises as my hold tightens around the phone. “I received the first one two months ago and the last one came yesterday.”
“I didn’t see you yesterday, Miss. I took the day off for my dentist appointment.”
No, no, no…
“Stop playing with me, Paul.” My voice is brittle, but it’s also on the verge of breaking all hell loose.
“Excuse me, Miss?”
Jonathan takes the phone from my fingers, even as I try to fight for its possession. “Thank you.”
Two words. Two mere words and then he hangs up. His gaze trails up to my face as if I’m an injured animal on its death bed.
“Stop looking at me like that.” My voice cracks.
“Like what?”
“Like you think I’m insane. I’m not.”
“All right.”
“I am not. I received those packages.”
“Okay.”
“Stop it.” I hit his chest. “Stop it! Stop it! I’m not crazy, okay?”
Jonathan prisons both my hands against his chest, stopping my tantrum. They lie limp in his hold, exhaustion and confusion rearing at my nerve endings.
“You need rest, Aurora. You haven’t slept properly in two days.”
He stands up and reaches for me, and I pull back, leaning on my hands.
“You’ll aggravate your wound.” He places one hand on my back and the other underneath my legs and carries me in his arms.
I don’t fight. I feel like if I do, I’ll really be labelled crazy.
And I’m not. I had those vocal messages from Alicia. I don’t care what Jonathan or anyone else says about it.
He quickly crosses the distance between my room and his upstairs. The entire time, I keep watching his face, the way that line remains between his brows.
God damn that line. Why the fuck isn’t it disappearing?
Jonathan places me on his bed, then softly pulls the cover to my chin.
But he doesn’t join me. He doesn’t even attempt to. And the realisation that he won’t share a bed with me slices me deeper than I’d like to admit.
“Sleep, Aurora.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“I never said you were.”
“But you believe it. You’re thinking about it right now. I can tell.” I clamp my lips shut to not spout all the nonsense my brain is bubbling with. That will make my case harder, not easier.
“We’ll talk in the morning.”
“Where are you going?”
“I need to make some work calls.”
Work calls, my arse. More like he’s avoiding me. He won’t even look at me like before anymore, will he?
Refusing to think about that, I direct my thoughts to something else.
“I want Layla.” I jut my chin. “You said I could get out and meet whomever I want.”
“She’ll be here when you wake up in the morning.” He reaches a hand, which usually means he’ll stroke a stray hair off my face, but instead, he readjusts the cover, not attempting to touch me. Then he retracts his hand and leaves.
As the door closes behind him with finality, a tear slides down my cheek.
I am not crazy.
