Destroyed Destiny (Crowne Point 4)

“There is nothing you can do to stop me, Grayson,” my grandfather continued. “And honestly, even if you could, I don’t think you’d want to.”

He placed something down beside me on my nightstand. I glanced to the side. They were square and slick.

Photos.

I picked them up. “What are these?”

“Proof that it’s over. Give in.”

I couldn’t process what I was looking at. Blood on the sand. More blood than I’d ever seen in my life. In the middle of it all, the green pocket square.

My green pocket square…abandoned.

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me. Your little whore never made it out alive.”

Sixty-Three

GRAY

I lunged at my grandfather, in an instant pulled back by his guards.

“You’re fucking lying!”

I couldn’t fucking breathe.

Gone.

She couldn’t be gone—they couldn’t be gone. That wasn

’t—it wasn’t—what the fuck was happening?

Gone.

I wouldn’t survive this pain. I couldn’t breathe through it. It was suffocating me. I didn’t want to survive it. The only reason I was even trying to breathe was to end him.

It had to be a lie. A trick.

My grandfather reached into his breast pocket, pulling out another photo. An aerial view of the beach, what looked like a satellite photo of two women.

Snitch lying pale on the ground.

Surrounded by blood.

The only thing keeping me standing was the guards holding me hostage.

“In your version, I got some shares of a company. In mine, I take everything the du Lacs own down to their very bloodline, and then I erase it off the planet. All Lynette asked was her daughter stay in the family.”

Who had the most to gain from all of this? For months I’d thought it was Lottie.

If not you, then who? Who has the most to gain?

“Lottie wouldn’t agree to that,” I rasped.

“When given the option between saving her own child and yours, who do you think she chose? There was only one spot in the ambulance.”

Hate.

Visceral hate.