Page 39 of Cruel Pawn
I smirked at my phone, even if my darling cousins had interrupted my very important task of the morning.
“What the fuck is that?” Priya asked groggily, sitting up in bed and finding both cuffs reattached. Her attention was on the box on the kitchen counter in front of me, or maybe the blister pack in my hand. “Arden. That better not be what I think it is.”
“Oh these?” I asked innocently, popping out another pill on the counter. “These are just some surplus birth control pills.”
“Mybirth control,” she snarled, fighting at the chains, her eyes like pools of lava. “Don’t you fucking dare!”
I dared. I popped them all out onto the counter and used the side of a knife—hers, the one she stabbed me with—to crush them into a powder that I promptly swept into the bin.
“There,” I said to my seething wife. “No more pesky little pills.”
“I swear to fucking god, I will get out of these chains and end you.” Her nostrils flared, her face growing red. Adorable.
“I look forward to it,” I replied, and meant it. She was so fucking perfect even when she was trying to kill me. Actually, it made my dick hard when she got that murderous look inher eyes; she should do it more often. “What was the man who assaulted you called?”
Her fire banked. I regretted the question, but I needed his name. The expression on her face could only be described as wary, her eyes narrowed, mouth in a flat line.
“Why?” she demanded. “That better not be my laptop,” she snapped when I sat at the small table in the corner of the kitchen and cracked open the glossy silver MacBook. “Arden, leave it. I’m serious. I don’t want to rake all this up again.”
I sighed, meeting her eyes for a long moment. Beneath the anger and wariness was fear, and it stabbed right into my soft heart.
“Alright,” I agreed. Lied. I’d have to get creative in finding his identity. No problem. I got through her laptop’s defences once, and I could do it again. “What do you want for breakfast? Pancakes? Baked oats?”
Her flat look could have melted glass.
“I’ll make both,” I decided, knowing my future wife better than she thought I did. She’d eat, she just refused to be beaten, and accepting food would concede a defeat. I wasn’t sure what battle we were locked in this time, but I didn’t mind pretending to lose if it soothed my girl’s ego. Even if she was seriously, devastatingly pretty when she glared.
I closed her laptop and got to my feet, getting ingredients together. While pancakes sizzled in the pan, I glanced at the group chat to see if Cameo had given me any gossip about the guy Stefan was obsessed with, but what I saw instead made my gut cramp and my spine stiffen.
CameoSawConquered:
btw i tracked down who sent an assassin after you and youre not gonna like it
brace yourself
it ran through a couple offshore accounts under different names but it traces back to coco holloway
which we all know is an alias of cricket hamish
I’m sorry, Arden, but your mum ordered the hit.
20
Priya
My captor had been cagy all morning, and it wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience when I was chained up at his mercy. I was used to exuberant Arden, bubbly Arden, professing-his-love-at-top-volume Arden. Quiet, sulky Arden was new, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what I’d done to cause it. I had noticed he kept looking at his phone and glaring.
By one in the afternoon, with my mind numbed by a repeat of a western film I’d seen a thousand times before, I finally snapped when Arden looked at his phone again and his lip curled back. I was lounging on the sofa since he’d deigned to extend my chains, but Arden remained hunched over at the table, his glare fixed on the screen of his own laptop. He’d left mine alone, thank fuck.
“What is it?” I barked, not bothering to soften my tone. “You keep looking at your phone and snarling like a damnedwolf. What’s so annoying about it? Has some other poor woman you’ve got locked up managed to escape?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he laughed, sounding like a stranger—irritable and flat. “You know damn well I’m only interested in you. Other women don’t exist for me, Priya.”
I scoffed and returned to staring numbly at the TV. He sure did type a lot on that phone for someone only interested in me. And whatever the other person said, he usually smiled, and sometimes even laughed. It didn’t bother me. He could talk to whoever he wanted; I was just his captive.
With effort, I unclenched my jaw and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
“You’ve been in a shit mood all day. What crawled up your ass and died?”
