Page 62 of Mad Love

Everything in me hurt. I couldn’t tell one pain from the next, but I was aware enough to know that I was lying face down on the bed in my room, and I was naked. Terror spiked through my chest like a harpoon.

“D-did they… Was I…?” I couldn’t even speak it.

She sighed. “Raped? No, honey. They didn’t.”

“When d-did you get here?” I asked, needing to focus on her voice and not the humiliation of being stripped and beaten. I’d done everything I could to stop him, but it hadn’t been enough.

“I’ve been here since before you arrived,” she replied. “I simply stayed out of sight. I knew you wouldn’t care to see me. But when they left you in the hallway after… Well, I had someone from the kitchen help bring you upstairs.”

Oh, God. How long had I been out? “What t-time—”

“It’s almost six,” she answered, laying a soft bandage across part of my lower back.

No, no, no.

Fear choked me as I realized that all of my plans had gone up in flames that smoldered as ashes at my feet. Gary knew Chase was on my side, which meant he was in serious trouble.

Chase was supposed to be here tonight. I had to warn him, if it wasn’t already too late.

“I n-need your phone,” I stammered, cracking my good eye open to look at her.

She grimaced and shook her head. “I can’t.”

Determination tightened my core. “He’s g-going t-to—”

“I know,” she interrupted, her eyes full of regret. She looked down. “Maddie, he’s currently celebrating. I overheard everything that happened with your… With him. I know what Gary was planning to do, and it’s already been done.”

My breath caught.

He’s currently celebrating.

“The money he was waiting for was transferred into his account shortly after five.” She resumed covering my back with gauze. “When I went downstairs for more supplies, I heard him receive confirmation about your new…” Her lips pursed as her gaze skittered away. “There was a car accident. No survivors were found in the wreckage.”

I pressed my lips together to smother a sob. Dammit.

I’d gotten my friend killed. He’d chosen to help me, and now he was dead.

It wasn’t fucking fair.

The bad guys weren’t supposed to win. They just weren’t. And definitely not like this.

“You never should have come to this forsaken place,” she swore. “Your sister… I can’t believe she tricked you into taking her place.”

“She was trying to stop him.” I realized it was true even as I spoke it.

Madelaine hadn’t left me holding the bag. She hadn’t run off with Evan, a guy she claimed was her boyfriend. She’d been going to meet with Chase. The one guy who hated Gary Cabot as much as she did. The only chance she had at stopping him.

She’d risked it all, and he’d found out and killed her.

But even if she hadn’t been in Greece, he still would have killed her. Still would have found a way to find me and force me to access the inheritance.

He’d known Adam Kindell was sneaking into his thirteen-year-old daughter’s bedroom and had the freaking audacity to say Lainey had wanted it. The man was a certifiable sociopath with zero regard for anyone but himself.

He was always going to come after me.

Mrs. Delancey’s hands hesitated for just a moment, and when they returned to me, there was a slight tremble. “I think…”

I swallowed roughly. “Say it.”

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