Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

Sixty-Two

STORY

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My love story started with a mistaken kiss, which led to a marriage proposal by the wrong man and ended here, bound to him. In a car to god knows where.

I hoped I’d just made enough wrong decisions to finally put Grayson and me on the right path.

“Where are we going?” I asked West.

“Scotland.”

I blinked. “What? Why?”

“It’s the last place he’ll look for you. He’d never think to check under his own fucking nose.”

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I looked away. “He won’t look for me.”

I rubbed my palm hard.

I guess it was always my fate to leave Crowne Point. To go to Scotland.

I just thought it would be a happier occasion.

A freeing one.

West laughed. “He’ll never stop. And I’m counting on it. Once the divorce is final, we’ll be back in time for Christmas.”

My brow furrowed at that.

I thought West was taking me away from Grayson.

“Every way you look at this, I win. He touches you, I get everything. He so much as lays a finger on you, I win. If you never touch him again, then I still fucking win.”

“Do you have someone in mind already?” I asked softly. West’s eyes narrowed. “Someone to marry.”

“She means nothing. She’s well aware of the arrangement. Past the wedding, I’ll barely see her.”

Past the wedding…I wondered how much West stood to lose if he didn’t go through with it. If it was as much as Grayson.

If he could lose more.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

Silence descended on the town car.

I looked out the window, imagining the world Josephine had described. A world where I was seen as a mistress. A world where the baby in my belly wasn’t Grayson’s.

I could do that. I could survive being seen as my mother, in my soul, knowing I did the right thing. The thing my mother never would have done.

I pulled out my phone. At least I had this, this shred of me.

I told Grayson I would write to him, and I meant it.

I opened up my Instagram—then nearly dropped my phone. I had more than ten thousand followers. In the grand scheme of people with millions, it was nothing. To me, it was everything, especially now that everything that made me me was about to be stolen indefinitely.