Page 111 of Savage Promises

She swipes it herself, pushing my hand away.

Lord, give me strength.

I sit back and all I can think about is how many hours I can stay away from Shane before he hunts me down. He tracks my whereabouts through my phone, which I’ve turned off. And if he checks my Luxe cameras and the bugs I know he planted, he’ll see I never showed up.

I hope he trusts me and doesn’t bother checking. I breathe a sigh of relief when a team comes to bring Neve to the OR. As I follow her gurney, I pray Shane got called away tonight and won’t be home until dawn.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Shane

Iwatch Lennox leave the private dining room and something in her posture is off. She’s too rigid, too tense. Part of it could be that I was too rough taking her from behind her first time, but she encouraged me.

She loves being the boss at Luxe. My wife eats problems for lunch and picks people’s souls out of her teeth with a smile, like a true lioness.

But there’s no doubt in my mind that she just lied to me. How could she after how great things have been going between us?

I lean forward at the table, simmering with anger. And I might start taking it out on this tool of a contractor. I signal for the check and finish my meeting with my usual threats of expecting lower costs and an expedited timeline.

Tom Farrell leaves, dragging his sorry drunk ass from my sight. I sent a limo to bring him here, but he can figure out his own way home.

Alone in the private dining room, I check the GPS tracker I installed on my wife’s phone. It’s a move I justify as protection, but deep down, I know it’s about control. I bristle, seeing her phone is no longer tracking.

She turned it off.

Grumbling, I check the last ping and it’snotat Luxe. She’s at Harbor Hospital. InAstoria!

My blood goes cold.

“Fuck,” I mutter, shoving the phone into my suit jacket.

I leave the restaurant, not even looking to see if Farrell is still here. I push people out of the way, my head held high, my expensive suit giving me permission to be rudeand uncaring.

Creed opens the car door for me and inside, I grab the laptop I keep in the Sentinel. I hack into the hospital’s network and shake my head at how laughably easy it is. It takes me less than a minute to pull up the recent admissions log. I scan it until I see the name that stills my breath.

Neve Donnelly. Compound fracture of the right arm. Surgical consult ordered.

The rest is a jumble of medical terms and hospital speak that I’d have to ask Dr. Cormac O’Rourke to help translate. But I don’t care about Neve. Or what happened to her.

Only that my wife lied to me about rushing to her sister’s side.

I lean back, staring at the screen, my fingers rapping on the stainless-steel keyboard. Anger churns inside me. Then something heavier.

Guilt.

I know why Lennox didn’t tell me. I’ve made it clear where her family stands with me. Neve is still just a kid, I understand that. I should show some grace, be the grown-up, and dismiss her betrayal. But I can’t. Now Lennox is dealing with an emergency on her own because I made it clear I wouldn’t help.

As I ponder how to fix this, my phone vibrates in my pocket. Seeing it’s my credit card company, white-hot anger courses through me at the idea that I have to justify the obscene dinner check I just paid for. Maybe Farrell is still at the bar drinking on my tab with more four-hundred-dollar scotches.

“Alo?” I answer.

“Mr. Quinlan?” a male customer service rep says smoothly.

“Aye?”

“This is United Bank. We’ve flagged a $50,000 charge at Harbor Hospital. Can you confirm this transaction?”

My heart stops for a moment. “That’s my wife. Is she over her limit? Why are you calling me?”

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