Page 134 of Oathbreaker

“Not at all, H,” he says smoothly. “Her running off is dumb as fuck. You in love, though?” He positions the tumbler in front of his mouth. “That’s hilarious,” he says. He tips the glass and takes a long sip.

I don’t validate that statement with a response.

Instead, I tap on my phone, cross-checking Winter’s location with the address.

Genevieve Clarke, PhD, PsyD, LPC

She’s with her therapist. I let out a deep breath. But what happened to make her seek out her therapist now—and in person? What caused her to run?

Or maybe she didn’t run? Maybe someone has her, and they’re tricking me into comfort.

The vision of my father’s decomposed body flashes behind my eyelids, so I snap them open, blinking up into the overhead light to temporarily blind myself.

The day before yesterday, prior to stepping foot on Isla Cara, I had all kinds of plans for my reunion with Winter. I planned on surprising her by sliding into bed with her and waking her up with a hot kiss to her snatch.

Now, not only do I have to deal with the fact that she’s run off, I have to figure out what to do about my father and his death.

Ella will be devastated.

I go to take a sip of my whiskey but end up taking a gulp instead.

“Make sure everything arrives safely at Amelia Manor,” I tell Leo. I keep the tracking app up on my phone, making sure it doesn’t move at all. Misha’s guys wanted to pack up everything in the vault right after I finished puking up my guts into the ocean. I let them do it because what did it matter?

But when they made Leo and I stay on the main island for an additional day so a new crew could come clean up the body in the office and give them a non-putrid space to find whatever the fuck they were looking for, I started feeling a little pissed off.

So instead of letting them roll me over and take everything with them back to Misha, Leo and I decided that everything was going with us. We ditched them at the airport in Martinique after I paid six muscular Martinicans to haul all the stuff into our plane and hold off Misha’s goons.

It was a relatively painless process, seeing as there wasn’t any bloodshed.

“Heard,” he says, not looking at me.

We’re both silent for a long while, long enough that I feel the nose of the 767 starting to tilt in its final descent.

“I know someone else who wore one too,” Leo says, and my eyes snap to his. I don’t have to ask him if he’s talking about one of the gold rings.

“When?” I demand.

He inhales deeply, holding his breath in his chest.

“With Isabel. When she was taken—” He picks up his whiskey, finishing it in a large gulp.

“When Isabel was taken, the Sheikh was there. He wore a ring.”

“Hm,” I say, rubbing my upper lip back and forth with the flat side of my thumbnail. “Morris Winthrope wears one as well.”

Now it’s Leo’s turn to hum.

“So now to figure out what the fuck it means and what it’s for,” he says.

I raise my glass. “And to that end, I think we’ll find a whole lot of shit we want to know nothing about.”

Leo presses his head back on the headrest of his seat, closing his eyes.

My phone beeps, and it’s a text from Rio with a picture of the outside of Winter’s therapist’s door.

Arrived and confirmed she is here.

I don’t respond. He sends another pic with all the guards in the frame, and I relax. But only a little bit.

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