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d through Kingsley
agged from a thick, syrupy darkness.
g, and the air was thick with a sweet, unfamiliar perfume. It
dull throb that echoed the pounding in his head.
ng to see Carmelit
led across the pillow. A stark contrast to
an icy abyss. He shot upright, y
lled over, her face shockingly pale ye
s quiet, troubled little sister. T
nyone's eyes-had been replaced by this woman who lay there with an unsettling stillness, her features arranged in a calm that felt a
e of fury washed over him. He had betrayed Carmelita. For a man who
They were deep, calm, and filled with a chilling mockery. She sat
s husky with sleep, but each word was a pois
ents jerky with a violated rage. "What did you do to me?"
g languidly, a perfect display of her
a Wall Street winter. He remembered her now, in the lounge last
nge, unfamiliar chill down his spine. This was not the Gretta
lived before she became this broken shell. She was not Gretta Ramsey. She was Eleanor, the eld
wn apartment building. They had pushed her-hard-and she had tumbled down the concrete steps, her body cracking against each edge. The worst pain came not from
, but no one came. Carmel
he needle she pressed into Eleanor's IV line held not medicine, but a lethal dose of insulin-enough to stop her heart and mimic a depressive's suicide. Elea
r eyes and the curve of her lips. "I was j
ords. He fumbled for his phone, desperate to escape
m under the pillow. She dangled it in front of him. A s
o of them, tangl
y captured Kingsley's face and t
the phone, but Gretta moved with a fl
apes his mentally unstable future sister-in-law on the eve of his wedding to the per
er head, her expression deceptively innocent
onal ruin, but of the catastrophic destruction this would wreak on his marria
himself into business mode, the onl
like shattering glass. "Of course
d into his. "What I want," she sa
to process her logic. She was nothi
calmly toward the bathroom. "You have ten minutes to ge
om door cl
cked room, his handsome face tw
life, he felt a complete
hite, a dry, cracking sound filling the silen
re out how to escape the
nce in his eyes. But her words, "I want you," and the vid
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