Page 77 of Such A Bad Girl

Midnight.

Come alone.

Bring the money.

One slip up and everything goes to TMZ.

“Fuck!” I growled, throwing my phone against the wall.

I had three hours to execute the plan I’d diligently planned.

I grabbed my phone and the bag I’d stashed in my desk and quickly headed down to the temple.

It was too early for anyone to be down there, and I was grateful for the opportunity to pass unnoticed into the side rooms. I hit the hidden switch behind the curtain to open the door to the secret room we’d built into the wall.

I walked in and closed the door behind me. I faced the big wall safe we’d had installed.

As soon as I’d gotten that first text demanding money, I’d put my plan into action. It had taken a lot of sneaking away to make private phone calls to my accountants and personal bankers, but I’d managed to make it happen.

The cash I’d stashed in our safe yesterday would make all this shit go away and then Everleigh and I could begin our lives together.

Tonight, everything I needed to solve this was right there in neat little stacks smiling back at me like the answer to all of my problems.

I didn’t care how much it cost.

Money was nothing compared to what I was gaining.

As quickly as possible, I began shoving the cash into the open duffel bag lying at my feet.

Chapter Fifty-Two

EVERLEIGH

“What the hell?” I threw my phone on the couch after looking at it for the tenth time. Theo still hadn’t texted me back. I hadn’t heard from him since he’d left and it was driving me crazy. Where was he?

Surely, West hadn’t actually murdered him…

We’d made love in a way I’d never experienced before, and it was so weird to endure this silence now.

I was absolutely sure he’d felt the same way.

I hated not knowing what was going on. Waiting patiently for anything was not something I was good at.

The girls had left earlier and I wandered around my house aimlessly, trying to process the events of the last few days. I felt like I’d endured a tornado of trauma, followed quickly by the best few hours of my life in Theo’s arms.

I was a mess, and the booze didn’t help, but I was already three drinks in, so I kept going, my mind spinning as I tried to make sense of everything while I waited.

To think that if that one night hadn’t happened with Avett, I wouldn’t have been here right now was wild. The magic I’d felt in Theo’s arms today never would have happened.

In a flash, I could see us clearly that night as we ran off into the darkness of the thick woods surrounding Town Lake.

My skirt was torn and my red lipstick was smeared across my cheek. Both of our hearts raced with fear and shock, the pounding of his heart beat pushing against mine in my palm as he gripped my hand tightly. As we ran, Theo had grabbed it, guiding me through the dark woods, but now that we were a mile away, standing together under the street lights on a deserted road, there was no reason to keep holding it, but he was.

“Are you okay?” He asked, his voice urgent and pleading.

“I think so,” I whispered, looking around. We were alone, the stars twinkling over the trees. A firefly sparked over his head, just a quick flash of light that I took as a blessing in the moment, a little sign from the universe that we were okay, we’d figure this nightmare out together.

We weren’t alone.

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