I try to hide my pleasure. I get to kick it out here while Dad cleans up my mess? Sweet. Not that I consider it a “mess.” Delacorte had it coming. He’s deserved a beating since the night he tried to hurt Ella, but I got sidetracked from delivering retribution because I was too busy falling in love with her.

I plant my ass back in the plush waiting room chair, studiously avoiding the disapproving frowns that Beringer’s secretary keeps flashing my way.

Dad’s meeting with Beringer lasts less than ten minutes. Seven, if the clock over the door is accurate. When he strides out of the office, his eyes contain that triumphant gleam he usually has after he closes a lucrative business deal.

“All taken care of,” he tells me, then gestures for me to follow him. “Go back to class, but make sure you come straight home after school. Your brothers, too. No unnecessary stops. I need all of you at home.”

I instantly tense up. “Why? What’s going on?”

“I was going to wait until after school to tell you, but…since I’m already here…” Dad pauses in the middle of the huge, wood-paneled lobby. “The PI found Ella.”

Before I can even begin to process that bombshell, my father stalks out the front entrance, leaving me staring after him in shock.

8

Ella

The bus rolls into Bayview much, much too soon. I’m not ready. But I know I’ll never be ready. Reed’s betrayal lives inside of me now. It slinks through my veins like black tar, attacking what’s left of my heart like a fast-acting cancer.

Reed broke me. He tricked me. He made me believe that something good could exist in this awful, screwed-up world. That someone could actually give a damn about me.

I should have known better. I’ve spent my entire life in the gutter, frantically trying to crawl my way out of it. I loved my mother, but I wanted so much more than the life she gave us. I wanted more than seedy apartments and moldy leftovers and a desperate struggle to make ends meet.

Callum Royal gave me what Mom couldn’t: money, an education, a fancy mansion to live in. A family. A—

An illusion, a bitter voice mutters in my head.

Yeah, I guess it was. And the sad thing is, Callum doesn’t even know it. He doesn’t even realize he’s living in a house of lies.

Or maybe he does. Maybe he’s fully aware that his son is sleeping with—

No. I refuse to think about what I saw in Reed’s bedroom the night I skipped town.

But the images are already bubbling to the surface of my mind.

Reed and Brooke on his bed.

Brooke naked.

Brooke touching him.

A gagging noise flies out of my mouth, causing the elderly woman across the aisle to glance over in concern.

“Are you all right, sweetie?” she asks.

I swallow the ball of nausea. “Fine,” I say weakly. “I have a bit of a stomachache.”

“Sit tight,” the woman says with a reassuring smile. “They’re opening the doors now. We’ll be out of here in a jiffy.”

God. No. A jiffy is too soon. I don’t ever want to get off this bus. I don’t want the cash that Callum forced on me back in Nashville. I don’t want to go back to the Royal mansion and pretend that my heart hasn’t been shattered into a million pieces. I don’t want to see Reed or hear his apologies. If he even has any.

He hadn’t said a word when I walked in on him and his father’s girlfriend. Not one word. For all I know, I’ll walk through the door and discover that Reed is back to his old cruel self. Maybe I’d prefer that, actually, and then I can forget I ever loved him.

I stumble off the bus, holding my backpack strap tight to my shoulder. The sun has already set, but the station is all lit up. People bustle around me as the driver unloads everyone’s luggage from the belly of the vehicle. I don’t have any bags, only my backpack.

The night I ran, I didn’t take any of the fancy clothes Brooke had bought me, and now they’re all waiting for me at the mansion. I wish I could burn every scrap of fabric. I don’t want to wear those clothes or live in that house.

Why couldn’t Callum leave me alone? I could have started a new life in Nashville. I could have been happy. Eventually, anyway.

Instead, I’m in Royal clutches again, after Callum used every threat in the book to bring me back. I can’t believe the lengths he went to in order to find me. Turns out the bills from the original ten grand he gave me had sequential serial numbers—all he had to do was wait until I used one, and then he was able to pinpoint my location.

I don’t even want to know how many laws he broke to trace the serial number of a hundred-dollar bill in this country. But I guess men like Callum are above the law.

A car honks, and I stiffen when a black Town Car pulls up to the curb. The one that followed the bus from Nashville to Bayview. The driver gets out—it’s Durand, Callum’s chauffeur-slash-bodyguard, who’s as big as a mountain and just as forbidding.

“How was the ride?” he asks gruffly. “Are you hungry? Should we stop for food?”

Since Durand is never this chatty, I wonder if Callum ordered him to be extra nice to me. I received no such order, so I’m not at all nice as I mutter, “Get in the car and drive.”

His nostrils flare.

I don’t feel bad. I’m sick to death of these people. From this point on, they’re my enemies. They’re the prison guards and I’m the inmate. They’re not my friends or my family. They’re nothing to me.

It seems like every light in the mansion is on when Durand stops the car in the circular driveway. Since the house is pretty much a sprawling rectangle of nothing but windows, all that dazzling light is nearly blinding.

The oak doors at the pillared entrance fly open and Callum appears, his dark hair perfectly styled, his tailored suit clinging to his broad frame.

I square my shoulders, prepared for another showdown, but my legal guardian smiles sadly and says, “Welcome back.”

There’s nothing welcoming about it. This man tracked me all the way to Nashville and threatened me. His list of dire consequences if I didn’t return seemed endless.

He would have me arrested as a runaway.

He would report me to the police for using my mother’s identification.

He would tell them I stole the ten grand he gave me and have me charged with theft.