Page 42 of Revenge Vows

I lock the vault and turn to him. I walk up to the safe and key in the combination as Donatello watches.

I turn to him. “I won’t be showing up to the club tonight,” I say to him.

“What a shocker. I didn’t see that coming,” he says dryly.

“Relay my message to Bunny,” I say, dismissing him.

I take one last look at the safe in my study and leave the room with the guards following behind me.

I open the door to her room and walk inside. I half expect to see her at the windows waiting for me, wearing something outrageously scandalous.

Instead, she is tucked under the sheets, and the maid is sticking a thermometer under her tongue.

“How is she, Mary?” I ask the maid.

The maid nods. “She will be fine by evening. She was just shocked, that’s all,” she says.

She lifts a damp towel and presses it over Alyssa’s head. Her lips are dry and chapped, and her face is deadly white.

“Take good care of her, then,” I say, tearing my gaze from her and leaving the room.

My guards follow behind me as I walk down the stairs, outside the mansion, and get inside my car. As I get in, a guard hands me a file.

I flip it open, and my eyes scan the pages.

“Are you sure about this?” I ask.

The man nods. “Positive. Those are her only living relatives. A sister and a mother,” he says.

I flip to the page for the older woman, and I scan her profile. Then I flip to the profile of the younger woman who should be her younger sister.

Their physical features, eyes, nose, and hair color all match.

I close the file and recline in my seat. “We are going to pay them a visit. There is something that I need to see for myself,” I say.

He nods and rolls up the windows. I tap my fingers on the windowsill to gather my thoughts as they race through my head.

No matter how hard I think about it, I just can’t understand why she was in my study that day. Any excuse I bring up in my head doesn’t hold water. What alarms me most is my lack of anger about the situation. Yes, I was enraged at first, but not by her supposedly snooping around in my study.

I was more irritated by the man who tried to squeeze the life out of her—so enraged that it felt like nothing putting a bullet into his head.

My brothers have been right to worry that I’m changing. I have truly become a man who is cautious in my ways and dedicated to my duty. I am now a man who enjoys lying in the bed of a woman who attends to all my needs and makes me hunger for more.

Days where I would have stayed in my study poring over files and documents have been replaced by meals with her and times when I watch her brush her hair and get dressed, only for me to take all her clothes off again.

I sigh as I realize that I have genuinely fallen under her spell.

“We are here, sir,” he says. I notice the engine has stopped purring, and we are parked in front of a run-down apartment.

“Apartment 315?” I ask to confirm, and my driver nods.

I get out of the car, and a guard follows behind.

The apartment complex is covered with mildew, and half the roof seems to be sagging. I kick the squeaking rats out of the way as I stride down the hallway.

I finally get to apartment 315, and I search for a doorbell. There is none, so I knock. For the first few times, there is no answer. When a face finally pokes through the door, it’s the face of a tall, thin man.

He scans my face, and I read his. There is no mention of any man in the file except a dead father.

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