Destroyed Destiny (Crowne Point #4) - Mary Catherine Gebhard Page 0,121

me again.

And again.

The pain was at least focused on the one spot.

I should have been there.

I should have died with them.

My grandfather stepped back, pulling a silver handkerchief from his suit breast and wiping my blood on it.

“When I’m done erasing the du Lac name from history, I’ll write ours in stone. There are a couple of kings in Europe who’ve really pissed me off.”

“You’ll start a war,” I said. “You’ll destroy our entire fucking family before you’re done.”

He paused his ministrations. “Maybe. Or maybe I’ll finally sit where I belong. We’re owed a dynasty, Grayson.”

We’re owed a dynasty. Our names should be written in stone.

My grandfather dropped the bloody handkerchief to the ground, his lifelong revenge realized, as he took one final step to becoming the most powerful man on the planet.

Sixty-Four

GRAY

The months faded into one another, and soon it was July. I lay awake every night in our bed, sliding my hands through the silky sheets. I felt Snitch in the moon, in the wind—I feel her.

If Story was dead, then why could I still feel her?

I only had West’s words for company.

West had the coin for months, while we looked for it, the fucker kept it. If he’d just given it to us, none of this would have fucking happened. My wife was dead and I only had the man’s—whose inaction led to her death—words for company.

What sick kind of fucking hell was this?

Some days, I hung it over the fire, waiting for the flames to lick it.

I never burned it.

I thought about how much Snitch would have loved to read it, the insight it would have given her.

It just sat on my fucking pillow.

West’s words haunting me from the fucking grave.

A light rapping on my door sounded, followed by my mother. “You haven’t come down for dinner in weeks.”

There was no bell in her voice, she wasn’t trying to manipulate me. I imagined my mother sitting alone in a hollow room, at an empty dining table that sat twenty. For once in our lives, both of our masks were gone. I saw my mother and her rotten heart, and she saw me and my thorny one.

I had a bottle of whiskey and suckers—that was all I needed.

She came to me, sitting on the edge of my bed like I vaguely remembered her doing when I was a child.

“There has to be some way,” her voice shook.

Tansy Crowne was scared, because Grayson Crowne, her rock, was cracking.

“There isn’t.”

She grabbed my hand, holding on to me, tight. “I can’t lose you, too, Grayson.” Her other, shaking palm touched my cheek. “Please don’t do anything foolish.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

Story made me promise not to destroy my world, but Story was gone.

The minute I got that man alone, he was dead.

And then I’d follow.

Midnight struck and I couldn’t sleep again. I saw her wide, walnut eyes staring back at me on the pillow, and then she vanished into smoke.

So with a bottle of whiskey in hand, I went to our room.

The guards at the end of my wing were curiously absent, and I was too drunk to care. I stumbled through halls until I got to the no-man’s-land between Gemma and Abigail’s wing.

Then I pushed open the door.

Since it was basically a glorified storage room, nothing really changed, and it had become a museum of our love. I walked over to the corner of the room, staring at the luxurious Russian rug, still with jewel-toned pillows still atop them.

Story had looked so small and perfect lying on them. Not innocent…open. No walls.

I took a drink to swallow the rock in my throat. The harder I stared, the more she took shape. Her slightly shaking hand as she undid the zipper at her side. The way her hazel gaze never strayed from mine.

“Perfect,” I took a long drink, closing my eyes. “Fucking perfect.”

“Excuse me—”

“Story?”

I spun at her raspy, quiet voice. Shadows stared back, cobwebs of silence. Slowly turning from the door, I took a drink.

Clang.

I jerked back, heart racing.

It was tea—not now, back then, when I’d stolen her into this room and kissed her. I could see it now, falling from her small hands as she reached for me.

A tea tray.

I walked like a zombie to the door and slammed my hand against the wall beside it, closing my eyes, trying to summon her with a memory.

I’d never seen anything like her eyes.

Her sigh, her—

Gasp.

I jerked up at her breathy inhale—spinning into nothing. Darkness. An oppressive emptiness. I dug my nails