Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 21 - Chapitre 30

SAINTI don't answer Maren because I don't know how to answer her. She watches me from across the office, waiting for me to tell her she's wrong, but the words refuse to come. "You're letting this get into your head," I finally say.Maren's expression tightens. "Because you're refusing to look at what is right in front of you. You keep telling me this has nothing to do with Mia, but you've barely touched me since she disappeared. You hardly speak to me unless we're discussing club business, and even when you're standing right in front of me, you seem like part of you is somewhere else.""I'm trying to find my wife.""And I'm supposed to believe that's all this is?""What else do you want me to say?""The truth."I hold her gaze, but she doesn't back down. Instead, she shakes her head as though she's already frustrated by my silence."I never questioned what I meant to you. Even when you were married to her, I knew you would come back to me. We were still sleeping together while Mia w

MIA“What are we doing in a sex shop? Is this some kind of kink for you?"He looks at me and chuckles. Not the quiet, amused one he usually gives me, but genuine laughter that makes my embarrassment even worse. "Are you scared?""No," I answer too quickly before admitting, "Maybe a little."He walks farther into the store, completely unfazed by the shelves surrounding us, while I follow him because apparently my curiosity has completely overruled my common sense."Do you actually use all these stuff on women?" I ask, glancing toward the shelves. "Because I honestly don't know what to think about you anymore."He picks up a small boxed vibrator from one of the displays and examines it with the same casual interest someone might show toward a bottle of whiskey. He turns the box over, reads the back, then places it back on the shelf.I stare at him. “Seriously? He looks at the box, then at me. "What?”“You're standing in a sex shop holding a vibrator.”“Very observant.""Rhett."He puts

MIARhett gives him a small nod. "Yeah. I wanted her to see Black Reign for herself."The man's gaze drops briefly to my wedding ring before returning to my face. "Saint's wife."I feel the words more than I hear them.Rhett's expression hardens. "Not for much longer."The man studies me. "You've filed?""I—I sent the papers," I stutter a bit. "I'm waiting for Saint to sign them.""And you're here because you want to be?"Rhett remains silent.I realize what he's doing.He's giving me the opportunity to answer and defend for myself.I take a breath. "I know what Black Reign is. I know who Rhett is, and I know that choosing him means stepping into a world that comes with danger, enemies, and responsibilities I haven't had before. None of that changes the fact that I chose to come here."The man's expression softens slightly.Rhett doesn't interrupt.I look at him before finishing. "I chose Rhett because I don't want to go back to the life I had with Saint. Whatever happens with the div

MIA"My father used to have a problem like this."The words surprise even me.For a moment, I'm not sitting in Black Reign. I'm eighteen again, sitting outside my father's office with a book resting on my lap while men moved in and out of the clubhouse. I wasn't supposed to listen to their conversations, so I learned to make myself look absorbed in whatever book I happened to be reading while quietly taking in everything being said around me.My father thought I wasn't paying attention.I was."He had a shipment problem," I continue. "Money was disappearing, but nobody was taking large amounts at once. It was small enough that everyone assumed it was an accounting mistake."Rhett watches me without interrupting."My father kept asking where the money was going, but one of the men working with him insisted they were probably being robbed at the warehouse. My father didn't believe him. He said something I've never forgotten."A faint smile touches my lips as I remember it."He said numb

The divorce papers are still sitting on my desk since the butler brought them, and despite the amount of time I've spent staring at them, I still haven't managed to make myself believe that Mia actually sent them. Her name is printed across the top of the documents, followed by the legal language that makes the whole thing painfully clear, but every time I read it, I find myself expecting some part of it to change. It never does. I've spent enough time thinking about what happened between us to know she has every reason to be angry. But what bothers me is how deliberate the papers are, she didn't give me the opportunity to explain myself or ask her to reconsider. She simply had the papers delivered.That doesn't feel like the Mia I've known for the last three years, or maybe it does and I'm only beginning to understand that I never knew her as well as I thought I did.I reach for the papers again, intending to read them from the beginning, when someone knocks on my office door."Co