All Chapters of THE BRIDE OF DECEPTION: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Tobin's POVI knew that Annie needed to be strong and I also wanted my enemies to understand clearly that Annie wasn't weak either because they needed to see her as someone under my protection who carried my authority with her wherever she went.Every organization in this city needed to know that touching her meant going to war with me and everything I had built over the past decade of blood and calculated moves.The truth that I had been trying to ignore for the past few weeks was becoming harder to deny with each passing hour and I knew very soon Annie would become my greatest weakness that my enemies could exploit to bring me down.That realization should have made me push her away and cut all ties before it was too late but instead I found myself pulling her closer and deeper into my world where she would be surrounded by violence and death at every turn.I had been feeling something different with her since the exact moment I realized she wasn't Claire and that the woman standing

Annie's POVWhen we got back to one of Tobin's penthouse. Miranda had given me a tape.I sat alone in a dark room holding the tape and my hands would not stop shaking no matter how hard I tried to steady them. The tape felt heavy in my palms like it weighed more than it should and I stared at it for what felt like hours before I finally found the courage to put it in the old player Miranda had left with it.The room was so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears and I wondered if I really wanted to know what Tobin had recorded before he went into that building and never came back out.Part of me wanted to throw the tape away and pretend it never existed because then I could keep believing maybe he survived somehow and would walk through the door any minute.But I knew that was a lie I was telling myself and I pressed play.The screen flickered to life and there he was sitting in what looked like his office with that cold expression he always wore when he talked to me.

Annie's POVNobody dared speak after I killed that man and the silence in the room stayed still, like it was pressing down on all of us.The other men looked at each other and then back at me and I could see them making calculations in their heads about whether following me was worth the risk of ending up dead on the floor like their colleague.One by one they nodded and murmured their agreement that they would follow my leadership and accept me as Tobin's successor but I was not stupid enough to believe any of it was genuine.I could see it in their eyes when they looked at me that they were just waiting for me to fail and the moment I showed weakness or made a mistake they would turn on me and probably kill me themselves.They thought I was too young and too inexperienced and probably too emotional to handle running an organization like this and maybe they were right but I was not going to give them the satisfaction of seeing me doubt myself.Jack's phone buzzed in his pocket and he

Annie's POVMy heart was beating so fast I could feel it in my throat, my palms were sweating and I kept thinking about all the ways this could go wrong and end with me dead on the floor of Marco's private room.But I also kept thinking about Tobin and how he had trusted me to do this and how I could not let him down by being too scared to finish what we had started."You're nervous," Marco observed while walking past me toward a bar in the corner. "I can see it in the way you're standing and the way your hands keep moving.""I'm not used to being alone with men like you," I replied and I kept my voice soft and uncertain like Isabella would have sounded. "Men who have so much power.""Power is just a tool Annie," Marco said while pulling out a bottle of wine and two glasses. "What matters is how you use it and whether you're smart enough to recognize when someone else has power you can benefit from."He was pouring wine into both glasses with his back turned to me and I realized this

Annie's POVI drove to my parents' house three days after my mother's phone call because I could not ignore her forever even though every instinct told me something was wrong with how interested they had become in my life.Tobin's warning on that tape kept playing in my head about how something did not add up with my family while I navigated the familiar streets toward the neighborhood where I grew up.The house looked exactly the same as it always had with its white paint starting to peel near the gutters where my father never bothered to fix anything.I parked in the driveway behind my mother's car then sat there for several minutes trying to calm my breathing before I went inside to face whatever questions they were going to ask me.My mother opened the door before I could knock like she had been watching for me through the window. She pulled me into a hug that felt too tight while my father appeared behind her wearing an expression I could not quite read."Annie we've been so worr