Page 18 of Death Game: Supernatural Battle

I never expected to be able to hold her again—hear her voice or her laughter.

“I’m okay, Basil,” she hushed, squeezing me just as tight. “I swear.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said, pulling her toward the house as I scanned her from head to toe. “What was the latest verdict from the doctor?”

Why I was rushing toward what had to happen next, I had no idea. My only reasoning was that if Tommy’s heart had to be broken, it was up to me to do it and I should do it without delay.

“I’m right as rain now. Took ten days or so to feel human again. They said an hour or two more and I wouldn’t be alive.”

I closed my eyes as we entered the office.

“I’m so sorry that I wasn’t here, Tom. Really.” Shutting the door, I switched on the noise-cancelling.

She rushed me. “What the fuck did he do to you?”

“What?”Theodore?

“That fucker. He held you prisoner? Did you do another exchange?”

She meant Kyros.

I exhaled slowly. “Not a—” I gurgled with the effects of the restrictions on my mind. Crap, I hadn’t had to worry about the compulsion while in Kyros’s company.

I focused on the thought of a mouse in a trap.

“Not prisoner,” I managed.

Taking her hand, I led Tommy to the chaise. “Sit, please.”

She sat but bounced straight back up, face stricken. “It’s Theo, isn’t it? Your private investigators found something.”

There weren’t any private investigators. I’d asked Fred to string her along until I got back.

I’d considered my lines carefully before coming and really hoped to get through this without the compulsion cutting me off. Kyros would have already been alerted by my slip before.

This was it.

I had to believe our friendship could survive the coming moments. But unless I owned up to this now, I could kiss Tommy goodbye forever.

Pulling my hair back, I leaned so she could see the jagged red scars on my neck. It was a mess of a thing. Looked like I was cut with a broken bottle. I had no idea how Kyros was able to save me.

Her mouth rounded and her shocked eyes flew to mine. “You were hurt. That’s why you couldn’t come. I knew it. That bastard!”

“It wasn’t Kyros,” I told her.

She inspected the scar. “What do you meanit wasn’t Kyros?”

I captured her chestnut gaze, wondering if I’d be physically sick. Unfortunately, saying names had never been an issue. “Not Kyros. It was Theodore.”

Tommy stared at me, unmoving.

“Theodore,” I repeated.

“I don’t understand,” she said, slowly standing.

A lie.

I could see her put everything together, and fuck, how Iwishedrepeating the details of the triplets’ plan to win the Le Spyre fortune was easy as blurting them out. Because maybe then she’d believe I’d had no choice. The explanation was going to take hours. I wasn’t even sure if I had the creativity to force the direction of my intention for so long. It was fucking hard.

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