They Sold Me in a Crate to Pay His Debt, and the Devil Knelt and Called Me Wife novel · Chapter 2 of 16

Chapter 2: Hold for D. Wolfe

At Elias's penthouse Eliza learns the crate was bound for Damian and her trust is worth billions, and Damian calls to tell her to ask Elias where he was the night her mother died.

Elias's face turned into something I didn't want to look at.

Then he looked down at me.

And he smiled.

It was cold and sharp.

"Good," he said. "We'll go."

He put me in the back of the first car himself.

He climbed in beside me and kept my bad leg across his lap the whole ride.

Every pothole made me flinch.

Every time I flinched, his jaw got tighter.

His penthouse sat on top of a tower on Central Park West.

A doctor was waiting in the living room with a folding table and a tray of needles.

She was gray-haired and brisk and she didn't ask a single question about how I'd gotten there.

She cut away the slip.

She cleaned my wrists.

She looked at my ankle for a long time without saying anything.

"Three places," she finally said. "Maybe four. Whoever did this aimed."

I knew they'd aimed.

I'd watched them.

"Will she dance?" Elias asked.

The doctor glanced at me, then at him.

"She'll walk. After surgery and a year of work. Dance, I can't promise."

I turned my face into the couch cushion.

I'd been cast as Giselle.

The premiere was in three weeks.

I'd practiced the mad scene until my toenails came off.

The doctor tipped my chin up with two fingers and shone a light down my throat.

"Lye," she said. "The swelling's bad. But the cords aren't gone. Some voice may come back. Rest it. Don't force it."

Elias walked her to the door.

When he came back, he set a phone in my hand.

"It's yours. Type. It'll talk for you if you want it to."

My thumbs shook.

It took me three tries.

Why do you care what happens to me?

The phone read it aloud in a flat woman's voice.

Elias sat on the coffee table so his eyes were level with mine.

"Because I made your mother a promise. I've been keeping it from across the street for nine years."

I frowned.

"The guy in the third row at every one of your shows," he said. "The one who never clapped. He was mine."

I remembered him.

A big bald man in a gray suit.

I'd thought he was somebody's bored father.

The elevator dinged.

The same bald man walked in, shaking rain off his coat.

"Nico Russo," Elias said. "He's watched you dance more than I have."

Nico nodded at me like we were old friends.

Then he laid a strip of splintered wood on the coffee table.

A shipping tag was stapled to it.

The ink had run in the rain, but I could still read it.

BLACK HARBOR PIER 9. HOLD FOR D. WOLFE.

"Our pier boss opens every crate on your standing order," Nico said. "Prescott thought he was paying you. But Damian booked the shipping. It was never going to reach you."

The room went cold.

The men in the warehouse hadn't meant Elias.

Wolfe breaks all his toys.

They'd meant the other one.

I typed fast.

Who is Damian?

"My half-brother," Elias said. "Three years younger. He's wanted my chair since the day our father gave it to me."

Why would he buy me?

Elias picked up my hand and turned it over so the ring on my chain fell into his palm.

"Your mother's trust is three point two billion dollars. The Ashcroft Line piers. The ballet theater on Sixty-Fourth Street. My family has held it for you since she died."

He let the ring go.

"It goes to you when you marry a Wolfe. And whoever you marry sits beside it."

I stared at him.

Damian hadn't wanted me.

He'd wanted a signature.

A broken girl who couldn't scream while he took it.

And Simone was marrying him.

Of course she was.

My phone voice said it for me.

She knew.

"She knew," Elias agreed.

His own phone rang on the table.

The screen said DAMIAN.

Elias watched it ring three times.

Then he put it on speaker.

"Brother." The voice was warm and lazy. "I hear you opened a box that didn't belong to you."

"It had my wife in it."

Damian laughed.

"Your wife. Listen to you. You haven't touched a woman in seven years, and now you're playing house with a cripple."

Elias's knuckles went white around the edge of the table.

"Is she there?" Damian asked. "Is she listening?"

Elias looked at me.

I nodded.

"Eliza." Damian's voice turned soft and sweet. "I'm going to be your brother-in-law, so I'll do you a favor. Before you sign anything for him, ask him one question."

The line crackled.

"Ask my brother where he was the night your mother died."

The call ended.

I looked at Elias.

He didn't say it was a lie.

He didn't say anything at all.

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