Page 108 of A Secret and a Lie
“I’m sorry Allison. I—I’m sorry.”
“Me, too, Henry.” I raise my hand, cupping his wet jaw with my palm, brushing his cheekbone with my thumb. “Me too.”
Leaning forward, I press a kiss to his forehead, my lips sweeping over his skin, before rising onto trembling legs and crossing to the dresser. Where I stashed it in the bottom drawer, I pull out my revolver.
Henry doesn’t turn around, just looks straight ahead, silence swarming the room as I lift my arm. I know without asking or looking that his eyes are closed. Is he thinking about his kids? His wife? His sister? Me?
A tear slips free from the corner of my eye as I squeeze the trigger, the bullet finding the back of his skull.
Ford
“Thank you for coming,” Corinne proclaims the moment the elevator doors part. “She’s been in her playroom for almost four hours now. I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried talking to her, even took her some tea, but couldn’t make her drink it. She’s never been like this after…”
She trails off, but I put the pieces together. She’s saying that the murder of a client has never affected Gen like this before. I would’ve pulled the trigger for her if she would’ve let me.
“I’ll see what I can do.” My hands in my pants pockets, I nod, striding for the glass door of Gen’s office.
When I shut the door behind me, the glass becomes opaque, obscuring Corinne from view entirely, and I move toward the bookshelf behind Gen’s desk.
I hate to admit that I know this office relatively well, better than I should, since I helped comb through the contents of this room, but I chose to stay out of her playroom, leaving that for the other agents. I wasn’t interested in replacing the few memories I had with Gen in that room with the images of her drawers being rifled through as the forensic team collectedevidence.
That’s why I opted to be the one to cart her back to headquarters. Well, that, and I wasn’t ready to let her out of my sight.
According to the FBI file, there’s a powder bathroom on theother side hidden by a twin shelf. When I pull the chain on the lamp on the shelf at eye-level, the door pops open, and I slip into the dark corridor that’s illuminated by gold sconces. I shut the door behind me and prowl down the hallway until I reach the end, wrapping my fist around the hardware and accessing Genevieve’s playroom.
Genevieve’s head doesn’t so much as twitch in my direction as I step inside. She’s perched on her couch, still dressed in thigh-high lace-up black boots and a fitted leather bodysuit.
She’s undeniably beautiful like this, oozing decadent eroticism. While I’m not interested in kneeling for her to whip me, I can certainly appreciate why other men would bow at her feet and beg for her cane.
Right now, there’s a cold sadness that radiates from her. She stares straight ahead at the St. Andrew’s cross on the other side of the room, but I’m not entirely positive she’s seeing much of anything.
Her full, red-painted lips are pinched, the lines on her face deep, and my heart aches.
“Gen,” I venture, moving fully into her space.
She’s silent until I sit down on the sofa, wrapping my arms around her. She softens in my grasp, and I kiss the top of her head. “It’s okay to mourn Henry.”
A piece of me wants to ask what she did with his body, but I choose not to. I have to believe she has that handled. She’s clearly cleaned herself up to a certain degree too, since I don’t see any blood on her hands. I decide not to inquire about that either.
“That’s stupid, though, right?” she whispers, her voice hoarse. “He betrayed me. He made me vulnerable and weak. While I don’t regret taking his life, I’m…sad about it.”
“It’s perfectly human to mourn someone you cared for, even if they disappointed and hurt you. We both understand that better than most people.”
She knows I’m referring to our parents, and since she hasn’t mentioned them, I have to assume that they’re still as estranged as I am from mine.
Gen is silent for several minutes, her head on my shoulder. Eventually, she explains, “He sold me out to Percy York, so he could run his own sex ring with me out of the way.”
So, Drake was right.Damn, I hate to admit that it makes sense. But this raises a host of questions, including: Does York know Gen is onto him? What are we going to do with this information? And how do I keep Gen safe since the attorney general clearly hasn’t gotten what he wanted?
I’d expect nothing less from a man like Percy York. Disguising his agenda ascleaning up the cityand tasking the agencies that report to him to do his bidding is honestly impressive. Diabolical, but still impressive.
“Are you going to publicly out him for operating a solicitation ring of his own?”
She sighs, untangling herself from my arms and leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees.
“No. I can’t do that if I want to keep my own business running.”
Carefully, keeping all judgment from my voice, I ask, “Is that really something you want? To keep being a Madam?”
