Page 149 of When Hearts Surrender

Blood. So much blood. Belle lying stiffly in my arms, her body broken as she clutched a letter in her grip.

Not again. Take me instead.

The thoughts make no sense, and yet they ring true. Nausea churns inside me and I turn a corner, keeping my back against the hedge.

Then I see them.

Belle, tied to a chair, her eyes terrified and pleading. She digs her shoes into the mud, an attempt to break free, but it’s no use. The ropes bind her too tightly.

Cole paces in front of her, tugging his hair. He looks distraught. He shakes his head. “I didn’t agree to this. I didn’t.”

Click.

I freeze. The cocking of a gun, a hardness pressing onto my back—the unmistakable imprint of a metal barrel, and then a familiar, raspy voice.

“Maxwell, I was wondering when you’d show up.”

“No!” Belle screams when she sees me.

I slowly raise my hands, shock tearing through me at the voice I’ve heard my entire life. Someone I’ve always considered…family.

“Morris? What thefuckare you doing?”

Chapter 55

Every muscle in mybody pulses at his voice. Memories barrel into my mind. The butler wrapping me in a hug when I came back home from Mom’s funeral, completely distraught. Him fixing me a hot toddy whenever I’d gotten sick. Him making sure I didn’t forget to eat when I was obsessing over my latest artwork.

I don’t understand.

My heart clatters inside my chest like a runaway train, the sudden betrayal searing me. I hold Belle’s terrified gaze, which is welling with tears as she struggles against the ropes once more.

It’s okay, I mouth, giving her a curt nod.

Everything will be okay as long as she’s unharmed.

A calmness settles over me—it doesn’t matter what happens tonight as long as she escapes. That’s my only goal. The fear that has accompanied me throughout my life is now a beam of focused energy.

To do anything to get her out alive. I don’t care what happens to me.

“Morris,” I rasp, turning my body around, only to be met with a sharp jab of the gun at my back again.

“Don’t you think about it, son. Drop your gun.”

“No!” Belle cries. “Don’t do it, Maxwell.”

She turns toward Morris, her voice frantic. “You wanted me all along, right? You got me. Let him go. He treated you like his family!”

“It’s okay, Belle,” I reply, keeping my voice calm even though my pulse is rioting and my breathing is uneven. Raising my hands, I slowly set the gun to the wet soil and stand back up.

“What do you want with us, Morris?”

Morris chuckles, the sound of his grandfatherly laughter now seeming sinister; so twisted I wonder how I had missed the darkness threaded in his voice all along. How could I have been so blind?

“What I want, you can’t give, Maxwell. Because you can’t bring back the dead!” he roars and gives me a surprisingly hard shove for an old man, sending me staggering a few steps toward Belle.

“Go. Tie up his hands and feet,” he hollers at Cole.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Cole mutters under his breath. “Y-You need to stop. This is not what we agreed to.”

---