Page 129 of Torn In Two

Cursed from loving two men. By kissing a third. All while married in the eyes of the Lord to a fourth.

I needed to say goodbye to Grayson.

To write a letter for Hayley Jade that he could take to her.

I needed a minute to catch my breath and work out where I was going, without a cent to my name or any way of getting there.

Grayson was the one place Josiah’s podcast hadn’t mentioned. The one place that might be safe for me right now. But my phone was lost somewhere at the hospital, so I couldn’t even call and ask him. “Do you know where Grayson lives?” I asked Willa.

She nodded. “I went to his housewarming party. He’s literally the only doctor I’d do that for. The rest can go to hell. But he’s one of the good ones.”

“Could you take me there, please?”

Willa didn’t ask questions. Just steered us to some nice apartments in Providence, and stopping outside the doors. “I don’t know the security code to his building, but his apartment is the penthouse. You can buzz him to be let in.”

She reached across the center console and squeezed my fingers. “I wish I could tell you to go to the police. I wish I could assure you they’d protect you from whatever it is you’ve gotten yourself into. But I know from firsthand experience they’re more likely to hurt than to help.” She smiled sadly at me. “I have a feeling you aren’t coming back to work, are you?”

I so desperately wished I was. I’d have given anything to turn back time to a few weeks earlier, before Josiah had set his dogs on me, when it felt like I had everything I wanted and needed for the first time in my life.

I wished I’d known to savor it a little longer. To cherish it a little more.

The memories would be all I had to take with me, and that was a crippling sort of pain, one I knew I would never come back from.

I pulled away from Willa with tears in my eyes, thanking her for her help but knowing I couldn’t sit there another minute, or I might cave in and ask her to take me back to my daughter.

I dragged myself from the car, and with a heart that felt like it was breaking, pushed the intercom button on the penthouse apartment. There was a click when Grayson answered, but he didn’t even get a word out before I burst into tears and a babble of sorrow. “I need you,” I choked into the intercom. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

The door buzzed, unlocking the door, and I leaned on it, entering his fancy building. I made sure the door locked after me, just in case anybody did make the connection between me and him and made their way here. Then took the elevator to the top level, the doors opening into a tiny hallway that only had one door. I practically fell onto it, giving in to the silent desperation and guilt and shame eating me alive.

The door opened.

Strong hands grabbed me before I could slide to the floor.

“Well, well, well,” a voice that wasn’t Grayson’s purred in my ear. “Here I was, expecting my son of a bitch brother. Instead, I get his pretty little wife replacement.”

Fear turned my blood to ice, my head swirling. I scrambled to get away from the hulking man, but his fingers were tight around my arms, nowhere for me to go. “Who are you?” It was on the tip of my tongue to explain Josiah was never going to pay him a cent when his words registered through the confusion.

Grayson’s brother.

He chuckled, dragging me inside and kicking the door shut with his foot. “The look on your face is kind of insulting. He never talked about me then? Surprising. He used to love to tell everyone all about how I killed his wife and her cunt of a sister.”

Shock stole my breath.

Grayson had spoken of a serial killer, warned me he thought there was one who targeted sisters. Confessed he believed that killer to be his wife and her sister’s murderer.

He’d never mentioned the murderer was his brother.

The man pulled me tighter and inhaled the scent of my hair deeply. “What a brother he is, bringing me another, just like the first. Has he ever told you how much you look like her?” He ran his tongue across his lips. “Or how pretty her face was when I put a cord around her neck and strangled her?”

The end…for now.

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