Fated to My Cruel CEO novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Study

On Friday night my father and Colt went to the Toledo Club for the hospital gala.

They wouldn't be home before eleven.

Ansel hadn't touched me since Monday, and I had counted every hour of it.

He didn't mention it.

He drove me to Perrysburg and parked at the end of the lane with the lights off.

"The study is on the first floor, past the stairs," I said.

"I know the layout."

"How?"

"I paid a man to walk through it at a charity open house two years ago."

I stared at him.

"Don't look at me like that," he said. "You asked."

"I didn't ask."

"You were going to."

He handed me a small flat flashlight.

"Twenty minutes. If a car comes up the lane, I text you once. If it doesn't stop, I text you again."

"And if it stops?"

"Then I come in."

I got out and walked up the lane in the dark, past the columns I'd grown up under.

The housekeeper had gone home.

I still had my key.

Inside, the house smelled of lemon polish and old cigars.

I stood in the front hall for a moment with my hand on the banister.

I had run down these stairs on Christmas morning.

I had done my homework at the dining table with my father reading the paper across from me.

I had believed he was the kindest man I knew.

I turned on the flashlight and went down the hall.

The study door was locked.

It was always locked.

I knew where the key was.

I had watched him hide it when I was twelve, in the hollow base of a brass lamp in the hall.

It was still there.

My father's study had dark paneling, two leather chairs, and a safe behind a painting of a lighthouse.

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