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15. Can't Handle Hand-me-downs
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2025-06-04 08:01:26I eyed the champagne flute warily as the boutique attendant placed it gently in my hand like it was holy. Dom Pérignon, a vintage, no less. Liquid money in a crystal glass.
Tempting.But I was a lightweight. Embarrassingly so. One sip too many and I’d either start crying about betrayal or serenading the entire boutique with Taylor Swift ballads. Both were solid options for a breakdown, but neither was ideal when I was supposed to be playing the perfectly happy Mrs. Ashford.I was about to refuse when I glanced across the boutique.Ezra’s jaw was locked. Meredith had her arms crossed, her pastel sundress now slightly rumpled as she snapped something under her breath. They were standing in front of the ring case, gesturing and frowning, clearly struggling to find something that could outshine the Legacy Vault set I had chosen.Oh, this was worth the risk.I took a sip. Then another.A warmth spread down my throat and into
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Accidentally Kidnapped the Warlord and Became His Wife 100. One Drop at A Time
I pulled against the cuffs, testing their give. No budge. “Since you liked the zap upstairs...” Truck One clipped one lead to the chair arm, the other hovering near my inner forearm. Skin there thin, nerves chatty.The smaller one I dubbed Truck Two, wheeled the stainless cart closer, towels folded in neat stacks beside a cracked plastic jug of water. Controlled drowning, waterboarding with hardware store chic. Why not.“Silas hates hospitals,” he added, crouching low enough for me to see the tobacco stains on his teeth. “He sends clean bodies out, no complications, no charts. And you,” he jabbed a finger in my chest, “You drugged one of his guys and handed him to civilians. Like dumping trash on the wrong curb.”“More like recycling,” I muttered.The bigger one barked a laugh and hit the switch.Electricity tore through me like a white-hot wire in my veins. Every muscle clamped. My vision whited out, and when it came back the overhead light was swinging harder. A taste of copper and
Accidentally Kidnapped the Warlord and Became His Wife 99. Since You Like the Zap
The Vescari mansion was a jagged silhouette against the night sky, lights burning like hostile eyes. I got out of the cab and stepped through the front doors alone, stale cigarette smoke clinging to me. I’d had too high an expectation for that particular brand, coming from a meticulous man like Silas.Too bad. I have better taste.Inside the grand hall, Silas waited with one hand buried in his trouser pocket, the other around a half-empty bourbon. His gaze flicked past me once, expecting a certain chatty idiot, and then snapped back, narrowing.“Where’s Roth?”“Hospital,” I said, kicking the door shut behind me. “Crashed out.”Silas set his glass down with a sound like a gavel strike. “Crashed on what?”“Coke.”The single syllable hung. Confusion creased first. Silas didn’t do surprise often. Then the switch from confusion soldered into a colder anger.“He doesn’t use,” he stated, “None of us do. That’s the rule
Accidentally Kidnapped the Warlord and Became His Wife 98. Margins of Fear
Ernest Klemens stared at the folder like it contained a live charge. In a way, it did. Paper cuts deeper than bullets when the ink carries weight.“Go on,” I said casually, “You already know what’s in there.”He opened it slowly, eyes moving in jerks across the first page. The Southpoint zoning reclassification. I watched his micro-reactions. Brow compression, a fractional breath hitch, the shift in posture when fight-or-flight pings his nervous system. Classic stress tells.“You’ve signed similar before,” I reminded him. “Same process. Different parcel.”Klemens’s eyes stayed on the folder, but the set of his shoulders changed. Angles sharpened. He wasn’t broken yet. “You think you can walk in here and—what? Scare me?” His tone had weight now, brittle but braced. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”There it was. The shift from fear to posturing. Common defense reflex. False spine built on habit.“Wrong variable t
Accidentally Kidnapped the Warlord and Became His Wife 97. Language, Senator
The skyline was a strip of bruised neon when I killed the lights. Selina’s perfume clung to the air like heat trapped in velvet, woven with shower steam and expensive lies. Her heels had clicked down the hall five minutes ago, each step sounding like a countdown in my head.Now there was nothing but the hum of the HVAC and my own pulse syncing with the city outside the glass. I sank into the couch by the window, a dark silhouette in a room meant for someone else’s hunger, waiting.Patience is leverage. Most men twitch it away. They tap phones, clear throats, check time like their skin itches with minutes. I became furniture.The door sighed open at 7:42.Ernest Klemens’s presence announced itself with a slow drag of breath, steady and sure, the kind men take when they’re walking into something they believe they own.“Selina?” His voice floated warm, teasing, like he’d rehearsed it against her ear a hundred times already. A smile lived in
Accidentally Kidnapped the Warlord and Became His Wife 96. Pretty Problem
The noon heat burned like a welder’s torch, turning sidewalks into silver streaks. I moved through them quietly, scanning glass fronts and skimming reflections more than faces. By two o’clock I had a string of half-leads and one solid thread. Klemens always dropped off grid every Friday at three, exactly two hours, no calendar entry, no visible tail.That wasn’t golf.I pulled the pattern, ran his comm gaps against transit pings. James sifted the back-end metadata, ghosted tower handoffs, and scrubbed ride-share blurs until an address hardened from noise. Uptown midrise. Sister towers that some developer named the same brand with a 1 and 2 tacked on like an afterthought. Our man’s signal geofenced to Tower One most weeks, service-core level, high floors.By four I was in the service stair of Tower One with purpose.Sometimes the cleanest way into a skittish asset is to come in wrong.Through a narrow pane of tempered glass I wat
Accidentally Kidnapped the Warlord and Became His Wife 95. The Good Samaritan
Great. Direct line to 911 courtesy of Pigeon Grandpa.“You told him—I didn’t—don’t log this—please.” Roth’s breathing sheared into quick shallow pulls. His knees stuttered. His pupils were blown saucer-wide and wet. We were seconds from a full coke spiral, public meltdown version.I scanned the street. Horns. A small wave of people fanning backward with their cameras up. That delay of those few stunned beats were the only thing between us and uniforms.“You’re done.” I grabbed Roth's collar, pulled him nose-to-nose. “Walk.”“I can’t—he’ll—” His words clipped, stuttered, collapsed. Then his body pitched as adrenaline crashed, chemical overload, panic white-out. He stumbled sideways.No time.I cuffed the side of his head with the heel of my palm, enough to trip his balance and shut the panic loop without fracturing anything. He folded. I caught him under the arms before he met concrete.Public park. Witnesses. R
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