Page 66 of Beyond Question

But his servant’s crime didn’t go unpunished.

Her body had been found in a ravine not far from his residence, mere hours after she’d helped me escape.

An accident,the single news outlet who reported on her death said, but I knew better.

I knew his cruelty far too well to believe in accidents.

Agatha.I vowed never to forget her name or the way she’d died so that I could live.

“And then you ran.” Cabot doesn’t phrase it as a question because it’s obvious that I did. “But not untilafteryou stole twenty-five thousand pounds.”

I nod.

Cabot’s eyes narrow. “From your father… or the duke?”

“The duke,” I whisper.

“I need a name.”

I straighten my shoulders and take a deep breath. I have never dared speak his name aloud, not in the nearly thirty years since I fled. It’s difficult to force my mouth to form the syllables, but after a long pause, I say, “Archer Grindley.”

I’m caught off guard by the weight that seems to rip free from my shoulders with just those two words. As if, keeping them inside me all this time has been a poison, a brimstone around my neck. By saying them out loud now, to these two people, I’m no longer alone.

I’m no longer carrying this horrific secret by myself.

“Okay.” Cabot nods slowly as he types something into his phone, then he moves closer to me, lowering to a crouch to meet my gaze. “And Bronte?” A muscle in his jaw flexes and I can almost believe he’s struggling to ask me this. “Is she…?”

“Yes.” I close my eyes and the first tear falls. “She’s his.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Travis

I groan and the teenager beside me continues talking as if she can’t hear my pain. I glance at her from the corner of my eye. She’s drinking at a bar, so she’s probably notreallya teenager, unless she has a decent fake ID, but the way she prattles on even though I’m very clearly not listening reminds me of my little cousins.

“I have a girlfriend,” I say again, hoping she’ll take the hint.

She laughs, then places her hand on my forearm. “Oh, I know. Relax, I’m not trying tosleepwith you.” She rolls her eyes, then leans in. “Unless—”

“No.”

She giggles and bats her eyelashes at me and I’m sure that works on other guys, but…

Oh god, is this what used to work on me?

I mean, not from jailbait like this chick, but from the other women I…entertain.

Or,didentertain, before Paige walked into my life and turned it onto its head.

Now I just entertain my hand.

Womp womp.

But back to this chick. She’s still talking, and now I watch the way she tugs on her long blonde curls with renewed interest. Not because I’m interested in her but because I’m interested in me. Am I that guy? The one that would watch the way she bats those false eyelashes and be into it? Would the desperate lip biting thing lure me in?

And the cleavage, God the cleavage. It’s pushed so high up her chest that she has to be in pain. You could bounce a quarter off those things and—

And I shouldn’t even be looking.

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