“Your sister—”
“Fuck my sister, Pax! My father?”
“Cancer, dude.” Pax shrugs and it even comes off as genuine. “And I got a hold of his will—”
“How?”
“Would you just shut the fuck up? I’m not telling you how. Trade secrets, asshole.” He scowls at me and then continues. “Anyway. That will you thought you were cut out of?”
“Yeah?” My heart is racing.
“Not so, my soon-to-be billionaire friend. Your sister was the one cut out. Turns out your old man was quite the cheater before you were born. Claudette isn’t your sister. Well, she is, I guess. At least half. She was cut out several years ago. You were added back the day your father was diagnosed. He’s not doing well. They expect him to die any day.”
I just stand there, stunned. Pax grabs another glass and pours me a drink. I take it and gulp. “What the fuck?” I ask him, grimacing from the whiskey.
“Well, I’ll try to piece it together as best I can. But bear with me, I just got all this tonight.”
I am suddenly disgusted at the thought of Paxton digging through my family history.
“Listen, I know you don’t like me, but I’m straight with you, right? I’ve always been straight with you guys. So what I’m gonna say needs to be taken at face value and then we gotta get your girlfriend out of here so—”
He’s interrupted by the doorbell. “Who the fuck is that?” I ask.
Pax has a huge gun out and he’s pointing it in every direction at once, morphing into some Navy SEAL clearing a building on the spot. “Here,” he says, whipping another gun out of his jacket. He tosses it to me. I catch it, because it’s a fucking gun and no sane person throws one at you. “Keep it close. This shit is going down now.” And then he waves the gun at the hallway and says, “Answer the door.”
Chapter Forty-Two - Ivy
The mattress sinks down as Nolan gets back in bed. “What was that all about?” I ask sleepily.
He grabs my hands and is wrapping them in rope before I can even open my eyes. “What are you doing?” I smile, try to turn, and take a punch to the head.
My vision blurs and then everything goes black as a hood is placed over my head and a cord of rope ties it around my neck. “Nolan!” I scream. “What the fuck? Stop! Stop!”
He doesn’t stop. He hits me again, and again. I am shocked beyond belief. And then the words I was so successful in keeping at bay tonight as we had our fantasy pop into my head.
He really is a rapist. And I’m the dumbest girl on earth.
I kick and land it somewhere, his chest or his back. He goes flying and I scramble in what I think is the opposite direction. I fall off the bed, hit my head, but keep going. I’m crawling across the floor when he grabs my ankle and pulls. I twist my body, kick him once, and land it squarely on what I think is his jaw.
He roars in anger and pain and this is when I realize… I’m not being attacked by Nolan.
A heavy body rests on mine. I gasp for breath as a hand cups my mouth on the other side of the hood. I breathe in the foul-smelling chemical and everything just disappears…
Chapter Forty-Three - Nolan
“It’s the cops.” I can see them the second the glass-front doors come into view as I turn a corner. Pax is approaching from off to the left, so he can’t see them, but I can see him.
“Shit,” Pax says. “OK, play it cool. We don’t know why they’re here, so let’s figure that out first. Just…”
“I know what to do.”
And I do. We’ve been here before, right? I know all the loopholes. I know exactly what to say. And what not to say.
I walk up to the door and pull it open. “Is there a problem?” I ask. There is most definitely a problem. Six patrol cars are in my driveway with lights flashing. More sheriff deputies are on my doorstep than I can count offhand.
“Sorry to disturb you this late, Mr. Delaney. But we’re looking for Ivy Rockwell. Is she here with you?”
“How did you get through my gate?”
“Um…” The deputy looks nervous, but another officer is there to save him.
“The gate was open, sir.”
“The gate was not open. I didn’t come here tonight using a road, so the gate was not open.”
“Is Ivy Rockwell here, Mr. Delaney?” the first guy repeats. “We got an anonymous tip to check on her house tonight and found her door wide open. We went inside and found this letter signed by you.” The deputy holds up the letter I wrote Ivy and placed in the box I had her dress delivered in.
“Close the door, Nolan,” Pax says from off to my left. He’s got his gun ready, pointed up towards the ceiling, and he’s hidden from view by the hallway. My gun is in my hand, hidden behind my back. They will shoot me if they see it. I know this for a fact. They will fucking shoot me if they see it. “Close. The. Door.”
I tap the door and it swings closed with a smart click.
“You don’t want to do this, Delaney,” the deputy says through the glass. “You don’t want us to come back with a warrant.”
He’s wrong. I do want to do this. And if they have to leave and come back with a warrant I can get a hold of the situation. Because everything happening right now is a little bit too familiar.
“Step away,” Pax says. “Get out of their line of sight.”
I turn the lock on the door first. Not that it will stop them. But if they break the glass, there will be a fantastic alarm and security companies will be notified. They are all yelling at me from outside now, but I don’t care. I back away.
“What the fuck?” I ask Pax once I’m in the hallway with him. “Why the fuck are they here?”