Page 165 of Strange Seduction
The line went dead.
?????
My phone buzzed in my pocket just as I stepped back into my office. I glanced at the screen.
Jasmine Kingsley.
I hadn’t spoken to Carmen’s mother in weeks—maybe months. We weren’t exactly on each other’s holiday card lists.
I answered anyway. “Hello, Ms. Kingsley. How are you?”
“Enough small talk, Theodore,” she snapped. “I’m looking for my daughter.”
Straight to the point, as always.
“Carmen’s at the hotel,” I said, straightening up. “I’m at work. What’s going on? You can’t reach her?”
“Aren’t you observant?”
Maybe she turned off the phone when she saw you calling.
I let out a slow breath, trying to keep things neutral. “Would you like me to take a message?”
“No.” Her voice dropped. “What I want you to do is get off your corporate ass and go comfort your girlfriend.”
I blinked, caught off guard. “What?”
There was a pause. And then:
“Her father has died.”
I stood there frozen for a moment, the air sucked clean out of the room.
“What?” I repeated, barely recognizing my own voice.
“Passed away this morning,” she said briskly, as if saying it faster would dull the blow. “I thought she would’ve told you by now. Maybe you’d actually be there for her.”
My grip tightened around the phone. “She didn’t say anything. I—I’ll go to her now.”
“You should’ve already been with her,” Jasmine said coldly. “But at least do the right thing now. She needs someone.”
And just like that, she hung up.
I stared at the screen, still processing.
Fuck.
I don’t remember the drive back. My hands gripped the wheel, jaw locked so tight it ached, the city blurring past in shades of gray. I barely waited for the valet to take the keys to the car before I bolted through the lobby, heart pounding in my chest like I was the one who had been hit with the loss.
The elevator took too long. Every floor it passed felt like an hour.
When I finally pushed open the door to our suite, the silence hit first.
I called her name.
Nothing.
Then I heard it—the slightest sound unraveling in the dark.
