I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
I didn’t even bother heading back to city life, just headed over to the Constantine compound and stayed at the safest distance I could manage with a chauffeur.
Yet again, I was a fool risking it all for a woman I should despise. I was a beast craving a filthy little goddess and her innocent soul.
Trenton tried to reach me on my cell, but I avoided the sonofabitch’s calls. I wanted nothing to do with him.
I tried to reason with myself. There should be nothing inside me that wouldn’t happily write her off as done. The Power brothers would take her, and that should fill me with joy. Conflict between the Powers and Constantines would only distract and weaken them both, leaving my own family line free to prosper and build. It should bring a smile to my face, cunning and sadistic.
It didn’t.
Morelli Holdings and keeping my position intact should be the only thing that mattered to me.
It wasn’t.
Seamus and Duncan would be waiting on the sidelines, and I knew it. I knew they would be waiting for any excuse to step in and attempt to infringe on my power and dominance in the Morelli kingdom. Again, I should’ve been determined to cast them aside and slam their efforts down as nothing.
I wasn’t. I was far too determined in pursuing Elaine and her beauty and her fears.
Elaine’s chauffeur left the Constantine compound early on Sunday evening. Just the smallest glimpse of her bouncing blonde hair as she slipped into the limo made my dick hard. I followed her back into the city, bailing out of my limo a block away from her apartment to make my way closer on foot.
I stood next to the tower and stared up at her suite windows on the top floor, and I wondered what she was doing up there, and how chewed up inside she was over my butchering of the London prick.
I blamed her, of course. I blamed Elaine. I blamed her for every stupid step she’d taken into her own chaos, and for dragging me along with her. I pictured her wide eyes, and her nervous shivers, and the abject terror in her stare whenever I looked at her.
I wanted more.
My cell was pinging, but I didn’t care enough to look at the screen. My gaze was fixed up high, watching the lights turning on in the top floor windows as the evening turned to dusk. I didn’t move. I didn’t have anywhere I wanted to go.
I didn’t want Violent Delights and the club house full of games and filth. I didn’t want to summon any innocent little bitches and tear them apart for my whims.
I wanted Elaine Constantine. Even though my palm was still sliced ragged, begging me to hold true to my oath, I wanted Elaine Constantine.
It was the most insane move I’d ever made when I took the pair of glasses from my inside jacket pocket and took off my tie to loosen the top few of my shirt buttons. It was the most risky thing I’d ever contemplated to walk straight through Elaine’s tower foyer and up to the security reception with a cold hard smile on my face.
“Terence Kingsley,” I said at the counter. “I’m here to see Elaine Constantine.”
“Terence Kingsley,” the woman on reception repeated as the two security guards cast a glance in my direction. “She’s expecting you?”
“Yes,” I told her. “Please alert her to my visit, and I’ll make my way up to her suite.”
My actions could have killed me on the spot. Security could’ve killed me on the spot.
They didn’t.
The woman put on a smile and dialed up to Elaine’s suite, and I waited, deadly cool as the woman spoke.
“Terence Kingsley is here for you. He says you are expecting him.”
I waited.
Every second stilled to nothing as I waited.
There it was again, simmering down deep, that forbidden fucking thrill that set my heart on fire.
The woman ended the call and gave me another smile. “Elaine says to go on up. She’s on level twenty-nine.”
Interesting.
Interesting and thrilling, right to the seedy fucking depths of me.
“Thank you,” I said, and flashed the security desk one final look before I made my way through the foyer.
The elevator ride was long and slow. My mouth was dry as I stepped out onto the top level suite and walked right on up to Elaine Constantine’s front door. I rapped my knuckles three times, my fist still held up in the air as my pretty little fool Elaine answered.
She’d been crying.
The tracks of her tears were fresh down her cheeks.
“You’re insane,” she hissed as she swung the door open. “What the hell are you doing here? Have you lost your fucking mind?”
I pushed past her without a word, taking a look at the opulence of the apartment around me. It was huge, cream, and sparse. Hardly a trace of personality in the place.
“I’m here because I’m Terence fucking Kingsley,” I sneered at her. “I’m here to visit the troubled little bitch who nearly got herself fucked up in the back alley of loser town last night.”
Just as expected, those pretty blue saucer eyes of hers widened.
“You really are insane,” she said again. “You nearly got us both killed then, and that was stupid enough, but if anyone thought for one single second you were here . . . now . . .”
She seemed different.
Elaine seemed different.
Scared to a whole new tune. One I hadn’t seen in her before.
It was then that I looked beyond her to the coffee table next to her designer leather couch. It was then that I saw the concoction of sleeping pills and other bottles of meds waiting in a row next to a half-empty bottle of champagne.
And more . . .
A scrawled letter, complete with the fountain pen cast down at the side . . .
I headed close enough to
