Page 135 of The Sinner's Bargain

I felt Blue — Naya — tense.

I felt her sharp intake.

Felt her heartbreak in my chest.

I felt her pain even before I saw it in her eyes.

“Oh.” And that single, heartbroken whisper nearly destroyed me.

The weight of her in my lap shifted. I could feel her trying to get off. Her attempts to escape me only fueled my frustrations.

I pulled her back to me. Harder than I meant. Her ass collided with my hard thighs and she cried out, but I was desperate and frantic even as anger clouded everything when I grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me.

“Did you not hear anything I told you?” I growled with a serrated lacing of desperation around the edges. “Women I try to marry fucking die, Blue. They die. Horribly and painfully. I can’t fucking lose you. Don’t you understand that? I could marry and lose every woman on the planet, it would mean nothing, but if I lost you...” my fingers loosened. They slid off her chin to brush the solitary tear that slipped down her cheek. “Baby, if I fucking lost you, I would burn this fucking place to the ground with me in it.”

“So, what are you going to do?” she asked softly.

She wasn’t struggling, I noted. She wasn’t trying to get away, but she wasn’t leaning into me like she had been.

It was better that way, I told myself. She would definitely get up after I told her.

“Vance found someone,” I murmured. “We’re going to meet at the courthouse tomorrow.”

Her choked exhale was the sound of someone getting speared through the heart with a rusty dagger.

“You’re getting married tomorrow?” she whispered at last.

“Yes.”

She slid unsteadily out of my lap, and I didn’t stop her.

I couldn’t trust myself to. If I touched her, if I went anywhere near her, I would fall to my knees and beg her to marry me instead and I couldn’t. I fucking couldn’t. I would carve my own heart out before being the reason the house took her.

“I have to,” I told her.

“I understand,” she said to the floor, edging back, gripping the desk to support her escape from me. “I ... I suppose that means I should be on my way.”

I was out of my chair and in front of her before I could stop myself.

I was gripping her, arms locked around her waist, crushing her against me even as she struggled.

“No!” I snarled.

Eyes wet with tears and burning with rage shot up to mine. “You want me to stay and watch you marry another woman? Then what?”

“Then nothing, damn it! It wouldn’t be real,” I tried to explain. “It’s just for the will.”

She started to shake her head, but stopped herself and with a firm jerk, broke herself free of me. “I’m tired.” She made it to the other side of the desk, putting an ocean between us. “I don’t think I feel up to going to breakfast tomorrow so, you should head straight to where you’re needed.” Once cleared, she moved with wide strides to the door. “Good night, Mr. Lacroix,” she called over her shoulder without stopping.

I lay awake that night, staring at the wall dividing me from the only woman I had ever truly loved with every shredded piece of my broken soul and blackened heart. I’d been staring for so long that the paisley gray was beginning to shift and congeal against the black. The clouds had covered and revealed the fingernail sliver of moon four times. The house had groaned and settled, and still, I watched the wall. Every fiber, every molecule in my body tense for even the slightest noise.

I wanted to blame Vance, but he was doing his job. He had saved Lacroix House. He had found a woman willing to marry the man with the demons. I hadn’t even asked her name. Not her age. I knew nothing, except she would be at the courthouse at nine AM sharp.

Then I would bring her to her new home where she would ultimately die.

At least Ronin wouldn’t get his hands on the house, I mused miserably. At least it wouldn’t be Naya.

There was no guilt in the thought. This faceless, nameless girl meant nothing to me, nor would she ever. Her death wouldn’t destroy me.

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