Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

Or both.

Lottie laughed when I didn’t deny it.

My eyes narrowed. “Are you drunk?”

She laughed harder. “Drunk? Am I drunk? You’re so fucking blind, Grayson Crowne. Blind to anyone but her. I get it. You need…something. A reason. To hate me. Will it make it easier when you fuck her then? It’s all crazy, psycho bitch Lottie’s fault.”

She stood up, looking absolutely miserable.

“Do you know what they say about me online? I’m a cunt. I’m…” She took a deep, rocky inhale. “I’m a frigid whore. Wicked. All because I had the audacity to marry you. Why is this my fault? Why should I have to lose my family and friends? You should. You’re the reason we’re like this. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t change. I still love you.”

She stared at me.

“How long have you been plotting this, Lottie?”

She didn’t speak for a minute.

“Did you try to divorce me?”

I blinked. “What?”

“My mother warned me, but I didn’t want to believe it.”

I worked my bottom lip between thumb and forefinger as remnants of the man I wanted to be clung to me with claws. The man I thought I should be. Every minute I watched Snitch with West, it became clearer.

To be a good man, I’d have to be bad to someone.

Living in the gray was dragging all of us down.

“Yeah,” I rasped. “It’s true.”

Lottie stumbled backward. “You know we can’t divorce, Grayson. There are too many jobs, too many lives, just too much riding on this marriage.”

It was a moment before I responded, and even then all I could say was, “I know.”

“You would have given up everything for her. Your inheritance. Your company. Your home. Your family. Everything. Why?”

“I love her.”

She bit her lip. “I think I hate you.”

I nodded.

It was the least I deserved.

“You’ve broken every promise you made to me, so I’ll make one instead. I won’t let you divorce me. If this is what we are…fine. You’ll at least treat me with the same respect my fucking mother got. You won’t choose her in public.”

“I wanted to be nice,” I said, voice lifeless. “I wanted to be good. You were my wife, and I didn’t want to be…”—my fucking father—“a dick. I want us to be civil, because we’re trapped in this hell together, but I don’t want you to get confused. She comes first. She comes first, second, third. You could try for a thousand fucking years, and you wouldn’t even break top ten.”

“It must be nice being so in love that every horrible thing you do is just romantic.” She chucked a box at me that I barely caught. “When you go to your mistress tonight, give her this. I thought after today she might need it.”

I tried to hide the suspicion in my voice.

“What is it?”

She laughed, but it was bitter. “Do you think it’s poison or something? Please, give me more credit. Of course, I’d have a servant do that, wouldn’t I?”

She left the room and I fell to the bed. I opened the soft satin box, pulling out a pastel-green plush animal.