Devious Vow: Chapter 29

All things considered, living in a luxurious hotel suite overlooking Central Park is pretty darned good. It’s like being on permanent vacation, spending my time lounging, taking long bubble baths, eating decadent room service, and obviously, having phenomenal, toe-curling sex with Alistair.

In the back of my mind, I know there’s danger lurking out there. And I know this can’t last forever. I mean, I can only be on a “business trip with Taylor in Chicago” for so long before it gets suspicious.

That said, Massimo hasn’t once reached out to me, which is…slightly alarming. It’s not as if my terror of a husband has ever been the type to text or call “just to see how I’m doing” or anything like that. It’s more like “where the fuck are you”, “be sure to look good tonight”, and various other vague or not-so-vague threats.

But the fact that he hasn’t reached out at all is slightly unnerving.

Especially since Rocco is dead. Or, at least as far as Massimo knows, is missing and possibly in south Florida. But again, there’s been radio silence. Not even a text mentioning the fact that his guard dog is MIA, like he hasn’t noticed—or if he has, it hasn’t affected him at all.

To be honest, it hasn’t affected me the way I thought it might.

After I saw what I did that day, I worried I’d have nightmares, or horrible replays on a loop in my head watching Alistair literally kill someone right in front of me with his bare hands. I worried it would change how I saw him, or erase that safe, homey feeling I have around him.

I needn’t have worried. Because if anything, after witnessing that, I only feel safer around him. Even more protected, like he’s a fortress built around me. I haven’t once looked at Alistair since that day and seen “murderer”.

I’ve just seen a dark knight in black armor.

My dark knight.

But it’s on the third day of my hotel staycation when the cracks in the walls I’ve built around myself and my dark knight begin to appear.

The first one is stupid, and it’s my own fault for prying, and I know it’s dumb and something I should just brush off. But when it happens, all I can feel is a green, jealous twisting sensation inside my chest.

It starts when Alistair is over late one night, having a video chat with Taylor, who’s still in Chicago. He’s sitting in a chair by the glass doors out to the balcony, his headphones in as he chats away with her. When he roars with laughter, I look up from the book I’m reading. At first, I just grin, looking at him—at the way the corners of his eyes crinkle, and the smile lines in his perfect jaw. The way his eyes glint with both a promise of danger and a genuine happiness.

But then my eyes shift to the reflection of the laptop screen in the glass behind him. My lip retreats between my teeth as I see Alistair laughing away, with Taylor’s face on the screen laughing as well.

Taylor’s gorgeous, stunning, successful, powerful face. Alistair’s gorgeous, stunning, successful, powerful face.

Merde…

It’s like there’s a little piece of Camille inside me—a tiny snippet of her batshit crazy that somehow lingered in the womb and managed to infiltrate my own DNA. I know—I mean, I know—from just watching them together and from the abundance of gossip at Crown and Black surrounding the three name partners that there is nothing romantic between Alistair and Taylor. Nor has there, allegedly, ever been. I’ve even heard him and Gabriel casually refer to Taylor as “their sister”.

But ultimately, she’s not Alistair’s sister. She’s a wildly beautiful, confident, successful woman seemingly without a shred of baggage who works in very close proximity to Alistair. Whom he’s known, closely and intimately, since law school.

Right after he forgot about me.

I know. It’s ridiculous. But again, it’s like there’s a little piece of Camille in me. Because when I see the two of them cracking up and making each other laugh so easily over video as they chat about things clearly unrelated to work, the jealous monster inside of me rises up and snarls.

The monster’s still lingering inside me the next day. It’s early evening, and I’m sitting in nothing but a pair of panties in the kitchen area after a marathon fuck-fest with Alistair.

I glance over at him and grin to myself. He’s not exactly all smiles, but he’s also not the dark thundercloud that walked through the door a few hours ago.

Apparently, there was a…physical altercation with Ansel at the Crown and Black offices today. Alistair won’t tell me what it was about. But, I mean, I can guess.

The long-term problem isn’t just that he hit a client, or that he broke said client’s nose, or even who the client is. It’s that he’s now been reported to the New York State Bar Association, which long story short might result in him temporarily losing his license to practice law. It would be bad for him and horrible for the firm.

So I’ve spent the last two hours fucking him silly to take his mind off that.

“You’re so wrong it’s embarrassing,” he grins at me across the kitchen. We’re taking a small break for much-needed hydration and snacks. Which is how we have ended up here in our underwear playfully arguing about Star Wars, of all things.

It’s also not lost on me when Alistair glances meaningfully at the can of lemon seltzer water in my hand, rather than a drink.

I haven’t had one in days. A real drink, that is. And I have to say, it feels good.

I know probably everyone with a problem says this at some point, but I’ve truly never felt like I really had “a problem” with alcohol. Or at least, I never had a problem with alcohol that “just snuck up on me”. Or “got the better of me”.

I know I had a problem, because I did it on purpose. I did it to escape and to dull out the life I was forced to live. And it’s almost as if the more I’m unchained, by Alistair, from that life I don’t want to live, the less need I feel to dull out the world around me.

Or maybe, as nauseatingly cutesy as it is, I’ve just found a new addiction that is far more fun than drinking.

Alistair.

“It’s ‘Luke, I am your father’,” Alistair grins, rolling his eyes. “This is indisputable.”

I snicker, shaking my head. “Objection.”

“Overruled. It’s like the most famous line in the original trilogy.”

“It’s the most famously misremembered line in the original trilogy. The actual wording is ‘No, I am your father’.”

Alistair throws an infuriatingly confident yet way too sexy look at me. “You’re wrong.”

“Let’s find out.”

“Do it. When you’re wrong, you can get on your knees with your mouth wide open, right here, right now.”

Heat simmers in my core. “Oh?” I grin. “And if I’m right?”

“Then you can lie back on that couch over there and spread your pretty thighs for me to crawl between and lick your clit until you see God.”

Holy hell.

“Deal,” I blurt, my face burning. I glance around. “Crap, my phone’s charging in the bedroom.”

He nods to his, sitting on the kitchen island right by me. “Use mine.”

I’m googling the answer…which, by the way, I know I’m right about…when the text pops up.

I don’t realize I’m glaring death at his phone until Alistair says my name for maybe the fourth time.

“Well?” he snickers from across the kitchen. “Am I right?”

It’s none of my business. I don’t have any right to say a single thing about⁠—

“Who the fuck is Janelle?”

Alistair’s brows furrow as I fire a lethal glare at him.

“What?”

“Boom Boom Room Janelle?” I snap. “You know, to narrow it down for you?”

His face remains neutral.

“All coming back to you now, is it?” I mutter. “She just texted, if you’re interested.”

“I’m not.”

“She’s offering to wear that dress you like so much,” I spit. “Oh, and noooothing eeeelse,” I drawl out in a dumb blonde voice. “Shall I tell her what time to swing by⁠—”

“Eloise.”

I shrug, looking away. “Whatever. It’s not like we’re⁠—”

“For the record, I haven’t spoken to that woman in eight months.”

“Good for you.”

He rolls his eyes. “Scroll up if you don’t believe me. Look when the last text exchange was. If I recall, I wasn’t too nice.”

My lips purse petulantly. I want to say that I don’t care. But I so obviously do, and he so obviously knows it. I scroll up. Sure enough, the last exchange is from well over eight months ago, where bitch-cow Janelle is asking Alistair if he wants to “come over and fuck her however he wants.”

Rage shoots through me until I see his reply.

God, he’s being a dick but still being somewhat of a gentleman about it. That’s almost more infuriating, because why is he so freaking perfect.

So—he’s right. This isn’t some ongoing current hookup. And yet, that knowledge does almost nothing to quell the jealousy churning inside of me.

“How many other Janelles would I find in your phone if I looked?”

Alistair’s face darkens a touch as his eyes slide up to mine.

“I don’t know, Eloise. How many current husbands, whom you are fucking MARRIED TO, would I find in yours?”

There’s a cold edge to his voice. I shiver, but I glare back.

“Just the fake one I’m not actually in any sort of real relationship with in any capacity!”

“You’re married to the motherfucker,” he snaps. “That’s real.”

“Excuse me?!” I hiss back.

“It’s a legally binding contract,” he shouts, his face getting angrier, “between you and that fuck-face. So please, Eloise, come after me with your jealous bullshit concerning a woman I barely even remember from over a year ago.”

I bark a cold laugh. “Oh, are there just so many of them that you lose track!?”

Alistair looks away, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’ve had a shit day, Eloise.”

“I didn’t ask you to fight Ansel Albrecht for me!”

He glares at me. “Look, concerning my dating life, I’m thirty-four years old, Eloise. I’m allowed to have had other adult relationships. And you and I were a long time ago⁠—”

“Oh, there was no you and I. I was just one of the random Janelles you fuck once and then drop.”

His face turns livid. “I think we’ve covered—at length—what happened in the past.” His lips curl. “And it wasn’t just once, was it?”

“I don’t know, you tell me!” I hurl back. “If you can even remember with all of the girls you’ve plowed since⁠—”

“Since you got married?!” he roars back. His brow deepens. “Speaking of which, why the fuck have you not filed for a divorce already? Unless the thrill for you in all of this is fucking me while you’re still happily married to that⁠—”

“Oh, yes, so happily!” I yell. “You caught me, Alistair! This is my kink: sleeping with you while I’m happily married to a sociopath who hits me!”

“Then file! You could do it literally right now, and I’d help!”

“I can’t!” I scream. “What about my father? Or Camille?!”

“Fuck Camille!” He roars. “A, she’s a conniving, manipulative, emotionally abusive bitch. B, she’s got enough money to hire her own security.”

“And my father? I guess just fuck him too, and let Massimo come after him while he’s in a coma?!” I yell back. “He’s my father, Alistair!”

“Yes, you seem to have so much respect for a man who sold you to Massimo fucking Carveli for some smuggling operation. Real class act, that father of yours. I can see why you care so much.”

My face turns to stone as I look at him coldly.

“That’s not fair.”

“That’s reality.”

“Don’t you dare project your own parental issues onto mine!” I seethe.

The hotel suite goes silent.

Fuck.

Instantly, I cringe inside. That was the line, and here I am about a mile past it.

“Shit, Alistair⁠—”

“It’s fine,” he snaps. He glares at me before turning and striding across the suite. He grabs his clothes from where they got flung earlier by the couch and starts yanking on his pants and his shirt.

“Wait, Alistair, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah? Good for you.”

I pale when he grabs his keys off the floor and then his jacket off the back of the couch.

“Wait! Where are you⁠—”

“I need some air.”

My face falls.

“Hang on, please⁠—”

“I’ll be back once I sort through my family issues,” he snarls, yanking the hotel door open. He pauses in the doorway without looking back. “Don’t wait up.”

The door slams, and my heart sinks.

Shit.