The Threats

ANNA

Gavin had been right to assume the week would fly by.

“Annalise? Almost ready?” Gavin called from downstairs.

“Just about!” I hollered back.

“Okay, car’s running, sweetheart.”

I checked my phone as I slung my bag over my shoulder. These days, new notifications seemed to be cropping up constantly.

A text from an unknown number caught my eye.

Unknown

Still playing the whore to the billionaire, I see.

I deleted it with a roll of my eyes before blocking the sender. How my number was leaked to people with so much time on their hands was beyond me.

Alternatively, I wondered if it could be Chelsea still trying to get under my skin. She was obviously pissed.

~Maybe rightfully so.~

After a quick thank you to Margaret, Mark drove Gavin and me to the small airport where we boarded his private plane. I thought he was just dropping us off, but it turned out an entire security detail was joining us on our trip.

“Do you always travel with an entourage?” I asked, half jokingly.

Gavin shrugged, but his expression was surprisingly grim. Behind him, Mark shook his head slightly and jerked his chin toward my left hand.

“Is something the matter?” I asked, taking my seat.

“No.”

I waited for him to continue, but he pointedly avoided eye contact.

“Gavin,” I said, placing my hand on his knee. “Why does it look like we are traveling with the Secret Service?”

He sighed and scrunched up his nose. “I didn’t want you to worry about it this weekend.”

“Okay…?”

A muscle in his jaw flexed. “My office received a death threat.”

“Do you think it’s anything serious?” I feigned nonchalance. “You used to get them quite often, if I remember correctly.”

“It wasn’t for me.”

I felt the color drain from my face.

“Oh.” My stomach sank as I remembered the strange note I’d gotten the day Ashleigh and I went shopping.

“These guys will be with you for the foreseeable future.”

“All of them?” I squeaked, staring at the six burly men sitting stoically around us.

“Minimum of two on shifts of eight hours,” Gavin explained. “No exceptions.”

“Do you—” I swallowed. “Do you really think it’s that serious?”

“I haven’t had time to vet the threats, so for now I consider them very serious.”

~I have to tell him.~

“Gavin—”

“I’m not going to argue about it, Annalise.”

I bristled at his tone. “I was just going to ask what the threats said.”

A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Nothing important.”

There were a million things I wanted to say, a million arguments I wanted to make. But I was terrified now to bring up the note that had been left on the car.

If I was honest with myself, I assumed Chelsea had sent the note. No part of me wanted to give her the satisfaction of letting her know it’d bothered me.

At worst, I’d thought it was someone’s idea of a prank, and I had deliberately kept it from him so that he wouldn’t worry.

But knowing someone had also sent threats to Gavin’s office? What if there was more to it?

“Actually, there was something I’ve been looking into,” Gavin said, pulling me from my thoughts. He grabbed his laptop out of the bag next to him and put it on the small table between us.

When he turned it on, a picture of a German Shepherd popped up on the screen.

“What do you think about him?”

“He’s…beautiful,” I answered honestly. “Whose is he?”

“Ours.” He grinned.

“You picked out a dog?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “But these aren’t just any dogs. They are highly trained in protection.”

He scrolled down, and a number caught my eye.

“Are you insane?” I screeched. “You want to pay one hundred fifty thousand dollars for a dog?”

He didn’t even flinch. “I would pay one hundred times that to keep you safe. To be frank, I’m buying a friend out of the deposit he put on it two years ago, so we are paying two hundred thousand for ours.”

“That’s crazy.” I shook my head in disbelief.

Gavin quirked an eyebrow at me. “What do you think I pay these guys, Annalise? Everyone pays for insurance to protect the things they love.

“Unfortunately, some people see my success and think I’m a target. A security team is sort of insurance for my life.” He tilted his head. “I thought you always wanted a dog.”

I bit my lip and stared into the kind, intelligent eyes of the animal on the screen.

“I do,” I admitted. “I just thought it might be more of a pet.”

“He will be.” Gavin grinned, his previous seriousness all but a distant memory. “I chose this specific breeder because they promise a dog that’s just as much a companion as a protector.”

I sighed. “It’s hard to imagine, but I guess I’ll just have to trust you.” I felt a smile split my face. “When do we get to meet it?”

“Him,” he corrected. “He arrives next week. His name is Anubis.”

I stared at him for a moment. “You know, sometimes talking to you is so incredibly normal that I forget you’re a billionaire.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He winked.

“Yeah.” I nodded with forced seriousness. “Sometimes I think to myself, ‘Why am I just marrying this average dude from Colorado?’

“Then I remember we are sitting on your private jet with six trained assassins, talking about a dog worth more than most people’s annual salary, and it all comes back to me.”

Mark tried to cover his chuckle with a cough, and I smiled up at Gavin innocently. He narrowed his eyes, but I could see the humor behind them.

“Cute,” he said, running his hand up my inner thigh. “Sometimes I think I’m corrupting you. Then I remember you agreed to marry your boss of four years after a mere forty-eight hours.”

“You’re a hard man to refuse,” I murmured as his pinky grazed the hem of my dress where it had ridden up.

He leaned in closer and spoke quietly, “Definitely a hard man around you, Annalise.”

I looked at the bulge in his tailored pants and giggled. “It’s a little crowded. I’d prefer not to give everyone a show, Mr. Powell,” I whispered.

“Fair enough,” he smirked, and then pulled his hand away before interlacing his fingers with my own and kissing my knuckles.

I sighed, feeling both disappointed and grateful. If he had pushed the issue, I wasn’t sure I would deny myself the opportunity to have sex with him in his plane—a fact that surprised me, given the audience seated only a few yards away.

“We should probably talk about what to say to my parents.”

I froze. “What do you mean?”

He shifted slightly, and I could tell he was uncomfortable. “For better or worse, the optics of our relationship are not that great on the surface.

Whether we say we secretly started dating while you were still my assistant or that we chose to get married in a whirlwind after a couple of days, there’s bound to be…questions.”

“Okay.” I swallowed. “What are my lines, then?”

He looked away and took a breath. “It’s not like that.”

I stared at my hands. “We don’t have to pretend just yet, Gavin.”

He tensed before finally seeming to decide the argument wasn’t worth it. “I plan to tell them that I have fought the love that I feel for you for a long time. After the night you were attacked, I was no longer able to hide my feelings, and it turned out you felt the same.”

~Love.~

The walls felt like they were closing in. It was one thing to know our relationship was built on the foundation of a mutual agreement, but to have to lie about the one thing I longed for was painful.

“I know that it’s not fair,” Gavin continued. “But I would like my family to stay oblivious to the truth of our arrangement.”

“Right,” I whispered, but I refused to meet his gaze.

“It doesn’t change anything,” he said gently.

My spine stiffened even as I nodded. He was trying to make me feel better, but I was already nauseous at the prospect of playing up the charade the entire weekend.

If Gavin could so easily deceive the people who loved him most, who was to say whether anything between us was real at all.