Page 6 of Wicked Heiress

Midway through the movie, Cole moved his hand to the space between us, tapping his long fingers on the leather chair. I felt a strange connection to him and inched my fingers closer. We didn’t touch, but I could feel the heat radiating off his skin.

I leaned over and whispered, “Can I tell you a secret?”

He angled his body to look at me. “You can tell me anything.”

“My name isn’t Grace.”

I had been dying to tell someone.

A frown tugged at his mouth. “I know.”

“It’s been years, and my grandfather won’t let me use my name.”

Cole took a deep breath, shoving his fingers through his white-blond hair. “You’re in danger. Bad people are looking for you. But you don’t have to worry.” He gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. “The Knights will protect you.”

The Devil’s Knights was one of many secret societies overseen by my grandfather. He had his hand in everything.

“So you follow my grandfather’s orders, too?”

He nodded. “Fitzy is a powerful man who controls our futures.” A hint of sadness crossed his handsome face. “We all have to answer to someone. And that someone is your grandfather.”

We were the same.

Not completely free.

Our lips almost touched when he leaned closer. “I meant what I said, Grace. I will always protect you. You never have to be afraid again.”

Chapter Three

GRACE

I studied every inch of the house as we left the theater, still not over the fact the Marshalls had a bowling alley. When I asked Cole about it, he said, “We only have eight lanes.”

The horror.

I assumed since he lived in a house the size of a small city and it had a name like Fort Marshall, what seemed like great accommodations to me were nothing to Cole. He was used to a lifestyle my grandfather never afforded me.

Cole gave me a house tour, showing me one wing at a time. We started in the East Wing at the theater, making our way to the bowling alley before we landed in the solarium.

“It’s a sunroom,” I said as we entered the glass room with a vast terrace.

“Yeah.” Cole laughed. “Solarium is just a fancy name for it.”

The solarium was bigger than any house I lived in with my dad. You could have built another house on the patio and still had room. This place was unreal, a dream come true.

We stopped at the library, which was two stories and had a domed ceiling and stained-glass windows. There were more books than I could ever read lining each wall. Ladders attached to the shelves went up to the top floor. I wasn’t afraid of heights, but climbing that high for a book worried me.

“When I’m home, I spend most of my time here,” Cole said. “Feel free to take any books you like. If there’s something specific you want to read, and we don’t have it, we’ll order it.”

I’ve died and gone to heaven.

I saw myself getting lost in the library, buried under thousands of books. Growing up, I didn’t have much entertainment. My grandfather only let me read. That was the one pleasure he never denied me because he believed reading was a superpower. He said the world’s smartest and wealthiest people read daily, and I would be wise to follow their lead.

So I did.

That was the reason I chose Library Science as my major. I hoped one day to be free from my family and use my college education to become a librarian.

“If there’s ever a time you can’t find me,” I said on our way out of the library, “there’s a good chance I’m trapped under an avalanche of books.”

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