Page 31 of Mad Love

Again, Royal pushed me back.

“Moved her where?” Dr. Browne demanded, eyes wide.

Jared’s expression turned uneasy as he looked at us and back at her. “Is everything okay, Dr. Browne? You sent us a message over an hour ago that she was transferring facilities. I just finished putting everything on your desk.”

Dr. Browne looked at me, and there was no denying she was as confused as we were.

“Dr. Browne?” Jared posed her name as an uncertain question, his gaze once more flickering to Royal and me.

“Thank you, Jared,” she finally replied with a tight smile. She glanced at me. “Let’s discuss this in my office.”

“Actually, while you’re here,” Jared began, “the patient in room eleven-oh-nine had another seizure. We’re thinking it might be the strobe lighting—”

“I’ll look at the file in the morning.” She cut him off sharply. “Thank you.”

Dismissed, Jared kept going down the hallway but glanced over his shoulder at us, as if he still wasn’t sure everything was okay.

Royal huffed a low laugh. “Strobe lighting? You’re a fucking piece of work, lady.”

She squared her shoulders. “Sometimes unorthodox procedures are necessary for—”

“Oh, save it,” Royal snapped, rounding on her. She stepped back, his sheer size intimidating enough without the look of blazing hatred in his eyes. “I’ve known people like you my whole life. Entitled assholes who get off on seeing just how many ways they can hurt a person. You’re not helping people here—you’re using what little power you have in your pathetic life to bully others weaker than yourself.”

Fire ignited in the doctor’s eyes as she stared up at him. “You’re just another useless grunt, and I may not know where the girl is, but I’m thankful it’s far away from you.” She turned to me. “Both of you.”

“If you don’t know where Maddie is, then you’re no longer useful to us,” I answered, ice water filling my veins. “Now you’re just the bitch who hurt the woman I love.”

A low chuckle rumbled out of Royal. “You’re fucked, lady.”

I glanced at Royal. “Get rid of her.”

“Wait!” She threw up her hands, her face pale as Royal reached behind his shirt for the gun he’d stashed there. She stumbled back a step. “If there’s a transfer order in place, Jared left the paperwork on my desk. I’ll take you there.”

“Good fucking idea,” I replied, folding my arms across my chest and waiting for her to move.

Shoulders slumped, Dr. Browne turned and led us down several hallways before stopping in front of a set of doors with frosted glass inserts, her name written in block letters in the middle of the glass.

With a barely audible sigh, she pushed open one of the doors and turned on the lights.

I was mildly surprised her office wasn’t locked until I saw a locked room beyond, likely where she kept her patient files. This room was nothing more than an office with a desk, a seating area, a few fake plants, and a wall full of framed accolades.

In the middle of the glossy top of her cherrywood desk was an envelope. Dr. Browne grabbed it and opened it. She barely had the papers out before her gaze snapped to me. Her hand shook as she wordlessly passed them to me.

I snatched them from her grasp. The sticky note on the top page caught my attention first.

You lose.

—G.C.

Fucking Gary.

The paper under that made my breath catch and pain sear through my chest. A signed annulment document invalidating my marriage to Maddie.

He’d done it. He’d managed to take her away when I’d finally made her mine.

I swallowed down a roar of pure fury and looked at the next page. A restraining order barring me from coming within five hundred yards of Madelaine Cabot.

But beneath that was a newspaper notice. Who the fuck actually read newspapers anymore?

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