Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
“No, what?”
The night was as quiet as Ani’s breath.
“Nothing.” Heart pounding, I dug up a faded smile. “I think I need some sleep, too.”
* * *
—
I expected to spend the night haunted by ghostly wind chimes, but instead, it was another, far more familiar ghost that came to visit me.
“Joss,” I breathed out.
Breathtaking, selfish, dangerous Jocelyn Wai smiled at me, ready for her pound of flesh. “You didn’t think you got away with it, did you, my young lover? I swore I’d haunt you forever for what you did to me. It hurts when you fall that far, that fast. I felt my bones break when I hit the pavement.”
Chapter 52
Jocelyn
“Tavish, top me up.” Jocelyn held out her tumbler.
“This is your third whiskey of the night,” her handsome, dark-haired lover said as he splashed the amber liquid into the fine crystal.
“What? Only three?” She leaned her head against the tall back of her antique armchair and laughed at his stern look as he capped the bottle and put it on the mantel. “I’d hardly know you were Audrey’s son, with how uptight you can be.”
“Audrey hardly knows I’m her son,” was the droll response, Tavish leaning one arm against the mantel.
The man wore a suit well—this one was a dark gray she’d had custom fitted to his slim but muscular frame. “You know what she said to me?” Jocelyn said after a sip of the whiskey.
“Who? My mother?” A cocked eyebrow. “Let me guess, she tried to talk you into casting Raja in your next project. Just FYI—he’s into Botox now, could stand in at the wax museum as one of the exhibits.”
Jocelyn laughed again, this time from deep in her belly. God, but he was clever, his words sharp enough to draw blood when he wasn’t watching them—and he’d learned not to watch them with her. Charm grew boring very quickly, but that kind of vicious sharpness? Oh, it was delicious.
“No, that was the last time,” she drawled afterward. “I had to remind her that I only helm my own productions once a year—the rest of the time, I’m a gun for hire, just like her.”
“Oh, I bet she loved hearing that.”
Jocelyn shrugged; she didn’t much care for Audrey the fucking Saint of Hollywood. “She said I should be ashamed, that I was old enough to be your mother. I pointed out that she’d been bouncing on younger cock only a month ago.”
Tavish gave no indication of a reaction to the crass reference to his mother. “It’s only because you’re leading the Oscar stakes,” he said. “She doesn’t usually keep track of my life.”
Jocelyn was never gladder that she hadn’t had kids than when she ran into the unhappy and self-destructive children of her peers. She generally didn’t sleep with them, either. Tavish, however…he might be messed up, but he wasn’t self-destructive in the true sense. He was out for number one.
Jocelyn had always followed the same philosophy. “Did you win in Vegas?” She’d been annoyed to miss the jaunt.
“A little.”
“Truly, Tavish, why am I wasting so much of my skill on you if you’ll just piss it away?” She put down the whiskey. “Bring out the cards. I’ll show you how to beat the house until you fucking own the house.”
A tightness to his lips, the first indication of anger she’d ever seen in him.
Quite frankly, it thrilled her the same way the poker tables thrilled her. The unpredictable danger of it, the awareness of dancing on the razor’s edge. “Oh, Mr. Tavish Advani doesn’t like to be told what to do.” She smiled with all her teeth. “Well, tough luck—I’m the boss bitch in this relationship. Now, come sit at my feet like the little puppy dog you are.”
That was the first night she ended up with his hands around her throat.
The high was better than poker or cocaine.
Chapter 53
I woke myself out of a nightmare, my throat so raw that I knew I’d been screaming. It would’ve been Joss’s name. It always was.
The clock blinked 3:07.
I saw the concrete coming at me, felt it fracture me to pieces. Just like that fire fractured your in-laws. Funny how that happens around you, isn’t it?
My entire body revolting at the poisonous echo of her voice in my head, I ran to the bathroom and threw up what little I had in my stomach.
Afterward, I sat in bed, just staring at the door as I waited for the night to end. The nights when Joss came for revenge…they were the worst ones. And she didn’t let go once she had her hooks in me—just like in life.
To escape, I’d had to tear those hooks from my flesh.
I didn’t even know when my tired body kicked me back into the dark…but it wasn’t Joss waiting for me on the other side.