Heartless Hero (Crowne Point 1)

A barely-there smile broke. “Good girl.”

Fear lingered in the air, muggy and choked. As long as Abigail focused on me, stayed anchored to my gaze, I knew she wouldn’t dissolve into fear.

The words I was planning on saying were, Who did this? Who are you afraid of?

“I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, Abigail.” My grasp on her chin tightened. “Do you believe me?”

A pause passed like an eternity.

She swallowed. “Yes.”

ABIGAIL

Theo ripped apart my room.

“What’s going on?” He tore silk and satin pillows off my bed. Outside fireworks had begun to pop, lighting my window in shadowy glows of red, white, and blue.

Theo flipped over my mattress, reached down, and lifted up his suit leg, pulling out a knife. A harsh rip sounded as he dragged it down the middle. Then he laid waste to my satin and quilted pillows.

He’d thrown off his jacket, and it lay as a casualty in the middle of my floor.

Sufficiently satisfied I was hiding nothing in my bed, he turned to me. Feathers floated as snowflakes and fairy dust around him, and he looked like a conqueror amidst them.

“What’s going on?” he repeated.

His hair was wild and messy and I wanted to push it out of his eyes. His glare was somehow even more wild. Theo folded his arms, and I ignored the way his biceps popped, how with his shirt rolled to his elbow his veins bulged.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Then who gave you that, Abigail? Why did it freak you out?”

“No one. I mean, I don’t know.” Technically that wasn’t a lie.

The muscle in his jaw popped with anger in a much too delicious way. For a minute, I thought he was giving up. Instead, as if suddenly remembering, he took a sharp left. I realized he was heading for the spot. The one spot I kept all my secrets, desires, and fears.

Only one person besides me knew about it.

Of fucking course it was him.

I should’ve changed it.

Panic gripped my stomach, so I did the smart thing…I jumped on his back. He was too wide. I was too small. My legs spread out behind his back, and I clung to his neck. We must have looked ridiculous, me in my bespoke white party dress, him in his suit, utterly ignoring my existence.

He laughed darkly. “Nothing to hide?”

It was useless trying to stop him. I was literally on his back, and he carried me like I was a backpack, digging through my room without pause. He bent down, and I climbed higher, looking for leverage. Absently, I noted how tight the muscles on his back had become.

He paused. “What is this?”

I knew what he’d found by the tightening of his muscles even though I couldn’t see.

Oh, just my collection. So many photos of me. Some of them harmless, and many of them public, but somehow so sinister.

Like the tabloid upskirt photo, but zoomed in at an obscene angle.

The picture of me topless, again zoomed in and with the man in the photo’s eyes crossed out in red.

My stalker went into great detail about exactly what he would do to me when we were finally together, but they were all signed off beloved, as if he didn’t know he was being creepy.