Heartless Hero (Crowne Point 1)

She tsked, shaking her head. “I’ve upheld my end. Edward was off the property. Abigail had guards. We broke the engagement for the summer… we never discussed the fall.”

Evil. Tansy Crowne was straight-up evil.

“You, however, you’ve been everywhere, haven’t you? Checking with the staff to see how she’s eating and sleeping. Sending her food. Buying her presents. Bribing my son as if I wouldn’t realize who was pulling the strings. You were supposed to leave, and you never left.”

“We never discussed how I would leave,” I said, throwing it back at her.

I swear her face twitched with a smile.

“Where is she?”

She looked at her clock. “Fulfilling empty threats.”

I ground my knuckles into my palm, resisting the urge to tear the entire goddamn mansion apart. I was done playing by their rules. It was a mistake to ever think I could. I should’ve played to my strengths. People like them stayed up in their ivory towers so blood never stained the soles of their designer shoes. It was time to get brutal, vicious, and dirty.

“As long as she’s a Crowne, you can’t be together, Theo,” she sighed. “Trying will just bring destruction. For you.”

“Maybe.” I wiped sweat off my lip with the back of my hand, staining my lip red with blood, eyes locked with Tansy’s. “But I hope you know you’ve just signed his death warrant.”

Thirty-Four

ABIGAIL

I found my mother in the room that started it all. It was hard to believe only a few months ago I’d stumbled in here, still drunk from the night before, about to have my life upended again. I was bleeding from wounds I wouldn’t acknowledge. Now I was healing, I sorta-kinda got along with my sister, and I’d loved.

I’d really, truly loved.

Blood was on the carpet—fresh blood—and I stopped in my tracks, forgetting the reason I’d come. Servants scrubbed it out of the pearly fibers, soap mixing with the blood into strawberry foam.

“What happened?” I asked.

“A dog got loose in the house,” my mom muttered. “You just missed him.”

Theo?

My heart hammered. Why had Theo come, and why had he left a trail of blood?

I shook my head.

I had to stick to my plan.

“I’ve eloped,” I said.

I saw the shock my mom tried to hide. Her jaw clenched, and she nearly knocked over a bucket of soapy water. The maid was there, ready to clean it up.

“I’ve got it,” my mother hissed.

Her eyes landed on mine.

“That joke needs some work, Abigail.”

I threw down magazine after magazine after magazine, just like my mother had done months before. On every cover was a picture of me and a blacked-out picture of a man. Variations of the same title slashed across the glossy fronts, ABIGAIL CROWNE ELOPES WITH MYSTERY BODYGUARD.

A small rectangular picture of Ned was in the corner. The worst photo I could find. They’d spent the time trying to guess whom I’d married over Edward Harlington.

Neither my mother nor Ned were those you can win by force. I couldn’t call the police. I couldn’t call my lawyers. In this world, you won with psychological warfare. You couldn’t get caught up in right and wrong. As my grandma once told me, You can be in the right and lose.

This time I came to the paparazzi with a scandal. The people who’d burned down my life over and over again, I’d handed the matches.