Page 27 of Possession

My new assistant stands and moves toward the door. He doesn’t want to be here anymore than the rest of us. “Yeah, got it. Ah, see you around.”

Landyn watches him leave, and when the door shuts behind him, her eyes snap back to me. They’re alert, and her tone proves how irritated she is. “Why am I locked inside the bedroom?”

I lift my hand to motion around us. “You’re hardly locked in the bedroom. You came in here freely, didn’t you?”

“You know what I mean,” she snaps.

I ignore that too. “How did you sleep?”

She pulls in a big breath. “I have no idea what time it is, so okay, I guess.”

“Since it’s late afternoon, I guess you did.”

“You didn’t answer me,” she presses.

I’m not about to tell her she won’t be far from me as long as we’re in this fucking house together. “We have things we need to discuss. I told June we would eat dinner downstairs tonight. You need to be ready in an hour.”

Her eyes narrow. “I’m not hungry.”

I stand and make my way across the office until I’m almost toe to toe with my wife who needs to learn to act like it for both our sakes while we’re in this house. I take her hand and hold tight—despite the fact she does everything she can to pull hers from mine. I drag her through the bedroom and straight to the bathroom. I slam the doors and turn to her. “Dinner isn’t an option. Damian’s funeral is in the works, and we’re hosting a couple members of the family who live in the States. You need to be there, and you need to be a grieving yet blissful new bride.”

Her blue eyes aren’t only fully alert, they’re horrified. “You want me to grieve the man who bought me while chipper to have been forced into marrying … you?”

I stuff my hands in my pockets as I take her in. “That’s exactly what I want. And failing isn’t an option. You can throw your attitude when it’s the two of us, but if you think about doing it in front of family, we’re going to have issues. And just when you think you might know what those issues might be, I promise, you’re wrong. Dead fucking wrong.”

She mulls this over for two seconds, but her only comeback is lame. “You’re crazy.”

Most days, she’d be right.

But especially today.

“Seeing as how we skipped the courtship, I have no clue how long it takes you to get ready. While you do that, I’ll rip the cameras out of the bedroom. I can’t sleep more than one night knowing they’re watching me.”

I step to the side to move around her, but she catches my wrist. I turn back and raise a brow in question. “You slept in the room with me?”

“We’re married. Where else would I sleep?” She crosses her arms and looks like she’s trying to kill me with a glare that’s about as menacing as a puppy. My mind is on getting those damn cameras out of the bedroom, when I turn back. “One more thing.”

She drops her arms and exclaims, “As if I haven’t done enough.”

“Wear black.”

She rolls her eyes. “A blissful bride in black. That’s the first logical thing anyone has said since this whole nightmare started.”

Touché, my new wife.

Tou-fucking-ché.

Then I do what I’ve been itching to do since we got back—rip these fucking cameras down. If I could rip every memory of Damian from this place, I would. I told the guards it would happen today. Once I get them down, I can remove the listening devices I planted months ago that go straight to DEA headquarters and the CIA.

I’m aching for a tiny bit of privacy. This bedroom will be it.

7

DISRESPECT

Landyn

Iwonder if Damian Marino imagined I’d be wearing the black dress he ordered his personal shoppers to buy for me to mourn his own death?

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