All Chapters of TABOO (A DEAL WITH THE SHADOW ALPHA): Chapter 1 - Chapter 4

ADDISONThe polished marble floor of my parents' dining room felt like ice under my feet. I pushed a piece of meat around my fancy plate, the quiet so thick you could hear the clock ticking in the hallway. I had to tell them, and I had to do it now. There was never a good time, but with the whole family here for Sunday dinner, it felt like now or never.I put my fork down. The sound was too loud and I knew with the next words I was about to cause a massive explosion, but I was hear to bare it that live in torture with that bastard. "Mom, Dad... I broke up with Feign."The clinking of silverware stopped dead, I swallowed down, not just the food but my fear of what their reaction would be. I swayed my legs beneath the table anxiously, thinking of what mom might say next. My mother's head snapped up. Her eyes, the same color as mine but always so much colder, turned narrow. "You broke up with Feign?" she asked, her voice too calm. Mom’s voice was always calm; she never raised her voice,

ADDISONFour days.The number was a drumbeat in my head, a constant, panicked rhythm counting down my doom. Five days since the suffocating dinner, and I had precisely forty-eight hours left to produce a human shield wealthier and more powerful than Feign Paxton.My “research” had been a spectacular failure. The list from Devin was a graveyard of maybes and no-chances. The tech bro, the London-based heir, the notoriously rude old money… all dead ends. The only viable, terrifying option was Bane Killian, the womanizer. My brother had, in a last-ditch effort, actually set up a date with him for tomorrow night. The thought made my skin crawl.Which is why I was currently lurking around the Castino’s lobby like a total creep for the fifth day in a row. My target: Axel Rex. I’d spent hours perched on a plush velvet bench, pretending to read a magazine while my eyes were glued to the private elevator bank that led to the penthouses. I’d seen no one who even remotely matched his description.