Page 86 of The One Night Match
I haven’t allowed myself to consider what will happen when she inevitably finds a man who can give her the world. It will be torture seeing someone else make her happy, but it will just be another part of my punishment.
Just another way I’ll suffer because I allowed my kitten to be hurt on my watch.
I groan as I stretch my neck from side to side. I need to go to bed, but I can’t face Riley, which means I’ll be sleeping on the couch in my office.
The second I step over the threshold, Mr. Whiskers lets out an almighty meow from my desk.
“You mad at me too, bud?” I scratch him between the ears as I drop down into my chair.
He howls again, now scratching at the file that’s sitting open beneath him.
It takes me a second to realize what it is, given his orange butt is covering most of it, but then a wave of dread hits me.
The contract and the note I wrote before we left.
I wasn’t ready to give them to Riley yet, wasn’t ready to admit that she can do better than me and give her the out she wanted from the start, but it seems fate has fucked me once again.
For the first time in weeks, the orange demon swipes at me, getting me right in the cheek with his razor blades masquerading as claws.
“What the fuck?” I snap, dabbing the blood pooling on my skin. “I thought we’d come to an arrangement.”
He glares at me for a moment before turning his ass around and moving to the corner of the desk, where he starts knocking shit off.
I sigh and shove myself to my feet. “I know I fucked everything up. You should probably go with her when she leaves. You like her a whole lot more than you like me anyway,” I mutter to myself as I collect the files he’s thrown on the floor like the little dick that he is.
Mr. Whiskers scratches at the desk again, and I run my hand down my face. This desk cost an arm and a leg, and letting the little monster destroy it feels like a waste of such a beautiful piece of furniture, but I don’t have it in me to yell at him when he’s mad at me for ruining things with the best thing that ever happened to the both of us.
I glance up at the cat, intent to try to salvage what’s left of our relationship, when I notice the red smeared on his paw.
“Did you hurt yourself?” I ask him, reaching for the paw in question, but he quickly swipes my hand and starts scratching at the desk again.
I push to my feet, moving closer to look at the damage he’s done, when I realize it’s not Mr. Whiskers’s blood at all.
Right there beneath the files is a knife I use to open mail. Yes, I realize letter openers exist for a reason, but I don’t have one. Beside the knife is the letter ‘M’ written in blood, right where the orange demon has been scratching.
“Cruz?” Lexi shouts from somewhere in the house, and I take off toward her voice, my chest tightening with panic.
I skid to a stop at the end of the hallway when I find her at the bottom of the stairs, her eyes wide. “Where’s Riley?”
“I don’t know. She wasn’t in the bedroom when I woke up. I’m sorry! I know you said to stay upstairs, and we did. But I fell asleep, and I didn’t hear her get up.” Tears fill my sister’s eyes, and I breathe through the worry that’s setting up shop in my chest. “Do you think she would have left?”
I shake my head. “I think she found the ninety-day clause to end our marriage signed on my desk,” I admit. “But there was something else. Let me call Colten to check the cameras.”
I can do it myself, but I’m not as efficient as he is, and I don’t have the eye he does to move through the tapes quickly.
He answers on the first ring, but he doesn’t give me a chance to answer. “There’s a dead guard at the back door. Get the girls into the panic room right now,” he barks.
“Lexi, panic room, now,” I relay the message, and she looks like she’s about to argue before she turns on her heel and heads up the stairs.
This is the first time anyone will actually use it, but I’m glad I had everyone learn its location and how to get inside when it was first installed.
“Can you check the camera feeds for the last couple of hours and see if Riley left the house?”
“Left the house?”
I nod to myself, forcing a deep breath into my lungs. “She found the contract and the note.”
“For fuck’s sake,” he mutters. “I told you that shit was going to end badly.”
