Page 147 of Fall Into Me

A dress I hadn’t seen yet. Hard as I’d tried to peek into the garment bag hanging in the hall, Cali had threatened to delete the entire new sex list from her phone if I so much as thought about it again.

The impulse had quickly dissipated.

The ding of the elevator split through the space around me at half past six in the evening, precisely as Ash said it would.

I didn’t bother to turn around. My heart didn’t so much as flutter in my chest when the heavy footfalls that had once stalked me, even in the fleeting moments of peace I’d found growing up, drew closer.

They didn’t haunt me now. They didn’t so much as make me flinch.

The fear I’d once carried—of growing into the same kind of monster as the man responsible for my existence—had long since paled in comparison to the monster I’d chosen to become.

This monster—the one standing here to ensure nothing and no one touched the people I loved? I didn’t mind him.

The footsteps stopped abruptly, and I turned just in time to see the mild amount of shock he felt at finding me in his home.

It felt like an insult to the word to refer to this place as that. This was not ahome. William Mackenzie wouldn’t know a home if it slashed his fucking throat.

“Fane.” He straightened, standing a little taller, like that would do anything to improve the way I so thoroughly towered over him. “I hadn’t expected to see you here.”

I tilted my head slightly, slipping my hands into my slacks. “No, I’d say you didn’t. I believe her name was Octavia—the woman you thought would be in your bed right now.”

“You’re dressed a little more formally than usual,” he said, his gaze flicking to my tailored suit.

I shrugged, letting the faintest edge of a smile tug at my lips. “I wanted to do justice to the occasion.”

His steps were slow and measured, a performance I’d seen countless times before. He wasn’t in any rush to cross the room, each step deliberate, meant to remind me that he controlled the pace of this meeting.

I fucking loved how wrong he was.

His eyes were searching, right on the cusp of locking up, when I let the faintest hint of a smile touch the edge of my mouth.

What a fucking imbecile.

Where there was power unjustly earned—stolen and wielded with the intent to create fear—there was ego. My father didn’t know what a threat looked like because he believed that if there was one, he’d be able to see it. That if there was one, it would be as stupidly obvious as he was dense.

Because of that, all it took for his shoulders to relax a fraction was the hint of a smile he didn’t know the meaning of.

“You did me a favor,” he said, his laugh low and ugly. “She wasn’t, let’s say, the freshest mare in the stable.”

I laughed too. Because he might as well have been turning the soil to dig his own grave, and the show was far more entertaining than I’d expected.

“Ah. Of course,” I murmured, my eyes tracking his movements as his body relaxed further.

“I was starting to worry, you know,” he continued, making his way to the liquor cart that sat between two plush, blood-red sofas, also just like Ash had said.

“Oh?” I hummed, nodding when he gestured toward the crystal decanter of whiskey.

“It’s been weeks since we last spoke.” His eyes flicked up, flashing for a second with how deep his displeasure ran at the very idea that I’d made him wait. “I was starting to think you hadn’t heeded my advice.”

I crossed the room slowly, deliberately, taking the glass he held out, a shallow finger’s width of liquid inside.

“Oh, you mean that I should think of my mother.” I nodded once, rounding the sofa with the glass in hand. “And my wife.”

“Wife?” His eyebrows shot up. “I hadn’t realized you’d gotten married.”

The tug at the corner of my lips this time wasn’t rehearsed. “Soon,” I said. Thinking of how I’d referred to Cali as nothing but my wife since that night on the highway and how every time I did her eyes would roll. But there was no way for her to hide that peachy blush that colored her face or the way her eyes lingered on me when she thought I wasn’t paying attention.

I was always paying attention to that woman.

---