ONE

Eight Months Ago

My heart thudded erratically in my chest like it had been placed inside a box and kicked down the grand staircase I was hanging on to. My fingers dug into the carpeted step, desperate not to fall, even as gravity seemed determined to pull me away.

Only it wasn’t gravity. The unstoppable force working to rip me from the stairs was solid and cold and named Macalister Hale.

The Minotaur.

I feebly tried to push his hands away, but whatever Alice had done left me crippled and powerless.

“No,” I whisper-sobbed when icy hands slid under my body and began to collect me. He blurred again into an indistinguishable shape as he sat on the steps and pulled my shoulders across his lap.

I did not want to die in Macalister’s arms, and certainly not moments after mistakenly telling him I loved him.

But I couldn’t convey anything, couldn’t organize my thoughts. They sifted through the holes Alice’s drug had created in my mind, disappearing forever. The only thing I could hold on to was my fear. Not that I was dying, even though I was certain I was, but that I’d never truly know how Royce felt about me.

Had his declaration of love just been for show? A lie told as he played his role as the prince of Cape Hill?

“Marist.” When a cool fingertip gently brushed a lock of hair back out of my eyes, it added to my horrible disorientation. Macalister’s voice was uneven. Nervous. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

The light from the chandelier in the entryway was growing darker with every slow blink, and the hideous halos around it stretched longer. I was running out of time, and my brain was shutting down.

“Hera,” I croaked.

The body beneath me tensed.

Zeus’s wife Hera was beautiful, but she didn’t have any redeeming qualities. She was jealous and vengeful and cruel toward her husband’s lovers. Even if Macalister didn’t understand my deeper meaning, he’d still know who I was talking about. The Hale family had dressed tonight for the masquerade party in a Greek mythology theme, and Alice had gone as Hera. The queen of the gods of Mount Olympus.

He would understand, though. He’d insisted on reading nearly every book on mythology I owned.

“What did Alice do to you?” His voice was quiet horror, but it still boomed down the stairs.

“Poison,” I whispered. “Dying.”

A pained grunt slipped from my lips as Macalister stood, shooting to his feet and carrying me up with him. The ache in my stomach was sharper and more violent, and I had no choice but to cling to the fabric of his tuxedo jacket. His first step down the stairs made my nausea increase ten-fold.

“What the fuck?”

It came from far away, across the room in a very angry, very male voice.

I tried to see him, but it was a hazy blot of white on black at the entryway. Instead, I had to picture Royce staring up at us. Me draped in his father’s arms, the train of my green Medusa dress dragging over the red carpeted stairs as I was swiftly carried down them. His father descended the staircase like I weighed nothing.

Macalister ignored his son’s furious tone, and once he’d reached the main floor, his shoes clapped out a loud, biting rhythm. It was a song of urgency as he stormed toward the door, and his voice was nearly as quick as his feet. “Is your driver still out front?”

“What?” Irritation simmered in Royce’s words. “Put her down.”

Macalister wouldn’t be deterred, not even when his son stepped in the way, blocking the exit. It brought him to a jerking halt, and he spat it at Royce. “Move.”

It was clear there would be dire consequences if he didn’t obey, but Royce didn’t understand something was wrong with me. All he saw was his fiancée cradled in his adversary’s arms, and tonight he was Ares, the god of war. “Fuck you. Get your hands off her.”

“I’m taking her to the hospital, because she’s dying. Get out of my way.”

I was close enough now I could mostly make him out, and Macalister’s statement went through him like a bolt of Zeus’s lightning. It froze Royce in place, which meant he was still blocking the exit. “What?”

Macalister’s grip was iron, but still I worried I was going to fall as I took one hand off and reached out for my fiancé. “Royce,” I whispered.

The second my fingertips found the smooth skin over his cheekbone, it spurred him into action, and we were moving again. It was darker, and wind ruffled through my hair, signaling we were outside, but it was nearly impossible to keep my eyes open. I was sluggish, and everything took too much energy to do.

Thinking.

Breathing.

My heart to continue beating.

Down the steps we flew, my body jostling in Macalister’s arms. The sound of a car door opening rang out, followed by warm hands on my shoulders. Royce’s. Both men worked together to load me into the back seat of the town car until I was stretched across their laps.

For once, getting the two Hales to become a team was easy. All I had to do was die.

A door slammed shut, sealing us in the dark, cramped space.

“Port Cove hospital,” Royce yelled at the driver. “As fast as you fucking can.”

The force of the car peeling out drove me against the two pairs of legs I was lying on top of. At least the bulk of my body was resting on the center of the seat. Royce’s arms circled around my shoulders as my legs draped over his father’s.

“What happened?” It wasn’t clear who my fiancé’s question was directed at.

“She said she was poisoned. Call the hospital and explain we’re on our way.”

There was something cold resting on my ankle, and at that moment I realized what it was. Macalister’s hand. He hadn’t stopped touching me since he’d found me on the stairs, like he was afraid if the connection were severed, he’d lose me forever.

I was shifted gingerly in Royce’s embrace as he pulled out his phone, but then his father was speaking, making a call of his own.

“Nigel,” Macalister said, “have Sutton or one of his men meet you at the house. Alice is not to leave the premises. In fact, I’d prefer she stay in her room until I return. No one speaks with her until I have.”

There was no conversation. He’d issued his orders and expected his assistant to execute them without question, the phone call ending as abruptly as it had begun. The cold hand wrapped around my ankle felt like a manacle, but I was too weak to do anything about it.

Shock and disbelief weighed down Royce’s words. “Alice . . . did this?”

“Yes.”

Macalister could have said I’d accused her. That it hadn’t been proven yet, but his resolute tone left no room for doubt. He didn’t just take my word—he absolutely believed his wife was capable of murder. If I’d had any energy left, I would have shivered.

The car careened through a corner, and tires wailed against the asphalt.

Royce was still on the phone with the emergency room when I jerked with new panic. Turmoil bubbled in my stomach, and I struggled to escape his arms, only to have him drop the phone and clamp down his hold. My only option now was to turn my head away from him as my stomach erupted.

I made a horrible retching sound while the drugged tea and champagne from earlier tonight spilled from my mouth, narrowly avoiding his legs. Royce let out a sound of surprise, but he didn’t let go of me.

“Oh, Jesus, Marist,” he whispered. He stroked a hand over my hair, helping to hold it out of the way. “It’s going to be all right.”

I might have believed him if he wasn’t trembling when he said it, but I took comfort anyway. It was strangely satisfying to feel him coming unglued. He was a great actor, but this moment was too real, too unscripted to be pretend. Maybe he loved me or maybe he didn’t, but at least he cared about me.

That was undeniable.

The upside to throwing up was it temporarily cut through my nausea. I used the back of my hand to wipe my lips and swallowed the acidic taste from my mouth as best I could, then focused.

“She gave me tea,” I said. Was there still any left in the teapot in the kitchen? Maybe they could test it and figure out what she’d used to drug me. I tried to think back, but time bled together, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be lucid or conscious. I peered up at the prince I’d once hated and now loved, seeing flashes of his chaotic eyes as the highway lights streaked past. “Royce.” My throat was burned raw, but I pushed through. “Tell me you love me. Again.”

The cold hand on my ankle tensed, reminding me we weren’t alone, but I didn’t care. The night of the initiation, Macalister had told me during our waltz his son wasn’t capable of love.

Maybe it was true, but I wanted him to at least believe he’d been wrong.

And I wanted to prove him wrong.

I didn’t get to hear if he responded. Perhaps with a little more time I could have, but it slipped through my grasp. It poured faster than the red sand had through the hourglass in the flickering candlelight of the dining room months ago. When the sand ran out now, everything slowed to a stop, including my heart.

The hallucinations were the worst part. One moment I’d be convinced everything was real, and in the next, reality would evaporate. I couldn’t trust anything. For a while, I was sure the drugs flowing into my veins from the IV weren’t saving me, they were just prolonging the inevitable, and Royce had to stop me when I tried to unhook myself.

It had been hours since that dark moment, and the delusions were finally tapering off.

Once again, Macalister and Royce were in total agreement about my care, and as soon as I was stabilized, my transfer to Mass General was cleared. I wasn’t sure which of the Hale men the staff at Port Cove Hospital were happier to be rid of. Macalister’s tone was the sharp sting of ice, but Royce was fire and fury, and no answer the medical team gave either of the men was ever good enough.

The helicopter flight to Boston’s premiere hospital was terrifying. I was sure at any moment the rotating blades overhead were going to stop turning and we’d fall from the sky. At least it’d be fitting that the first time I rode on the Hale’s helicopter, I’d bring it down.

It seemed everything I touched in this new world came undone.

The seats had the HBHC logo embroidered in the leather, and I sat slumped in the back bench, my throbbing head resting on Royce’s shoulder. Across from us in the rear-facing captain chairs sat Macalister and his personal physician, who’d come along to monitor me during the short flight. However, he’d been on the phone since we boarded, on hold with the lab to hear the results of the toxicology report.

As his private helicopter cut through the night, Macalister’s gaze never wavered from me. I was the opposite. My focus flitted away. I was barely able to look at him or the emotions teeming in his eyes. It was unnerving.

He stared at me with both concern and heavy longing.

And he glared with outright jealousy at the man at my side. Macalister didn’t bother to hide that he wished to be the one I was leaning on. He wanted to trade places with his son.

The thought made me shiver.

Royce’s lips pressed against my forehead the moment before he whispered, “Still cold?”

He didn’t wait for my answer. His arm pulled me tighter against him, and I was grateful. Not only for his warmth, but for the display. It reminded his father who I belonged to.

Not you.

He may have been the one to find me collapsed on the stairs, but he hadn’t rescued me. He was just the first one home, two minutes ahead of the son he refused to share a car with after they’d left the impromptu board meeting. Macalister wasn’t the hero. He was indirectly responsible for how I’d ended up on the staircase.

I was cold, though.

My beautiful green dress had been left behind at the hospital, so all I had on was a thin hospital gown beneath Royce’s tuxedo jacket, and a throw blanket pulled from one of the cabin compartments.

I’d been hot earlier, but being confined in this small space meant Macalister’s ice could get to me faster. It grew worse when he undid his seatbelt and tugged off his own tuxedo jacket.

“No, that’s—” I said, but it didn’t matter.

The patriarch of the Hale family was on his feet, stooping so his head wouldn’t hit the ceiling, and draped his open jacket over me. Had he done it so he didn’t have to see Royce’s arm around me? Or was it simply a power move? I wouldn’t accept the gesture as an attempt to be nice. It had an agenda. Everything Macalister did was calculated.

“Yes, I’m here,” the doctor said into his phone.

As he listened to the person on the other end of the line, I evaluated the man seated across from Royce. The doctor was exactly what I would have expected. Older and seasoned looking, with smart eyes and a serious demeanor.

“Has the patient’s care team at Mass General been informed already?” He paused. “Very good. Thanks for letting me know.” The doctor tapped his phone screen and lowered it into his lap. “We have a positive result for glycoside. Further testing will tell us which type.” He spoke directly to Macalister, as if he needed to have the information, and not me. “I haven’t been out to the house recently, but your gardens are extensive. Do you have any foxglove or lily of the valley flowers growing in them? Lily of the valley is white, bell-shaped—”

“I know what they look like,” I said. “The florist wants to use them in our wedding.” My stomach twisted horribly. They were the flowers Alice had picked out. A vision of her in her Hera mask sliced through my mind before my gaze flicked unavoidably to Macalister. “And Alice grows them in the garden closest to the house.”

My tone was full of accusation, but there was no reaction in his steely blue eyes.

The doctor focused on me. “They’re safe to handle but can be quite toxic if ingested. Anything made from its leaves will give you a high dose of convallatoxin, which is what caused your cardiac arrhythmia, but we’ve got that under control now. With the toxin identified, your doctors can get it flushed out of your system and you could be recovered as quickly as a few days.”

“Mr. Hale,” the pilot’s disembodied voice came through the cabin speaker, “we’ll be landing in ninety seconds.”

The doctor slipped his phone into his slacks and subtly tightened the belt across his lap as the helicopter began its quick descent. “Although death is extremely rare from lily of the valley poisoning, you’re a lucky woman, Marist.”

If I wasn’t so miserable, I might have laughed. I’d been poisoned by my future stepmother-in-law, and with Macalister’s relentless gaze on me, I felt anything but lucky.

I’d barely been settled into the enormous private suite before Macalister’s sharp order punched through the air, disrupting the quiet. “Clear the room.”

The nurse, who’d been writing her name on the dry-erase board, froze mid-scribble. “I’m sorry?”

It carried the same weight as if he’d told her to fuck off. “Out.”

She stiffened, capped her marker, and set it on the rest before hustling from the room.

He turned his sneering expression toward his son, who sat in the chair closest to my bedside. “That includes you, Royce.”

The sun had begun to rise outside, painfully reminding me we’d been up all night. I was as exhausted as Philippides after he’d run the fabled twenty-six miles from Marathon to Athens to declare victory. My fiancé likely felt the same, judging by his heavy, red-rimmed eyes. His bowtie was undone, as were the top buttons of his white dress shirt, and his hair was ruffled from hands he’d raked through it countless times.

It did nothing to diminish his attractiveness.

As he rose deliberately to his feet, his exhaustion faded, and Ares came out, preparing for battle. He clasped a hand on my bedrail, not for support, but to assume a defiant stance. It communicated he wasn’t going anywhere, and my gaze couldn’t help but trace his long fingers or the muscles twisting along his forearm and disappearing beneath his rolled-back sleeve.

Jesus. He should have been an artist instead of a banker, because he had such beautiful hands.

“If anyone’s leaving,” Royce’s tone hinted he was barely restraining his fury, “it’s you.”

Macalister lifted his chin like Royce had taken a swing at him and just missed landing the blow. His eyes were shrewd. “Marist and I need to discuss a personal matter.”

He spoke so professionally, but my heart thudded inside my body, searching for ways to escape. The personal matter had to be what I’d mistakenly said on the stairs. I despised how weak I sounded, but I was frayed to the point of breaking. “No. Royce stays, and we have nothing to discuss.”

How things had changed. When I’d first moved into the Hale house, Royce had been the enemy, and I had eagerly withheld information as he’d done to me. I’d cut him out and gone to Macalister alone. But nearly dying had given me a new perspective, and I knew who the real enemy was now.

I drew in a deep breath. “What I said when you found me—”

“I’m not interested in that at this time.” Macalister waved his hand, brushing my statement aside. “The more pressing issue is Alice.”

Words failed me, but the tendons in Royce’s arm flexed and his knuckles went pale as he squeezed the railing. “You’re fucking worried about her? After what she did?”

Macalister’s stone-cold gaze swept from me to his son. “To say I’m disappointed in her would be a grave understatement, but no, the only concern I hold for her is how her actions will reflect on the Hale name.”

Now it was Royce’s turn to be speechless.

In an instant, I understood with terrible clarity what Macalister desired. Status held the utmost value to him, and he’d do everything in his considerable power to stay scandal-free. My gaze dropped to the blanket stretched across my lap. “You can’t have a Hale go to prison.”

Royce’s tone was begrudging. “Like that would even happen.”

“No,” Macalister agreed, “I’m confident our lawyers would prevent that.” His focus shifted back to me. “But it cannot get that far. Do you understand how disastrous the optics would be? My wife arrested for poisoning my future daughter-in-law. The media would be all over us, in every facet of our lives. Imagine how low the stock will drop when the story comes out. We’d have to put everything on hold, and table the takeover attempt of Ascension we voted to make.”

Royce stiffened.

My body went cold as I asked the question I already knew the answer to. “What are you saying?”

“You agreed to protect both the Hale name and my company, Marist.” Macalister grasped the edges of his tuxedo jacket and straightened it to hang properly on his broad shoulders. “I’m aware it’s not an easy thing you’re required to do, but you will do it regardless, because you are a part of this family now.”

Not legally yet, but it didn’t matter. I was bound to them both financially and with my word.

“When the time comes,” he continued, “you’ll explain that you made a mistake. A misidentified plant with unfortunate side effects. You didn’t speak to Alice last night. She wasn’t involved in any way.”

All the breath left my body. “You want me to lie.”

His tone was absolute, a direct order from the king. “To save the reputation of our family, yes. You will.”

Well, I was a fucking Hale now, wasn’t I?