Splinters of You (Retired Sinners Book 1) by Anne Malcom

Author:Anne Malcom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-29T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

I had a nightmare.

It was vivid. Violent.

Emily lay in bed with me, whispering while her organs spilled out over on the sheets. Her blood was still warm. Sticky. She smelled like expensive perfume and death. Leaves were tangled in her stained hair.

She didn’t tell me any secrets. Dead women rarely did.

I didn’t remember what she said when I woke up. There was no blood or rogue organs on the sheets, which was welcome.

The bed was empty. It smelled like Saint. His sheets were expensive. Egyptian Cotton. Dark gray, like the rest of his bedding. Luxe without being over the top. I hadn’t noticed the bedding earlier, for obvious reasons.

I hadn’t even noticed the fact I was passing out, sometime after the third round. I’d always been sure that was fiction made up by hopeful women. That there was a man out there to offer multiple orgasms so powerful your body expired.

But here I was, proof. And I would never tell a soul. Certainly not write it into my books. There was no hope or romance in those.

His room was tidy, obsessively so. Decorated in more grays, and dark wood. Expensive dresser. Art that wasn’t personal, but unique. Getting out of bed, not bothering to cover myself, I inspected one painting in great detail.

It was just a view of the woods. Nothing special. At least, it shouldn’t have been. But there was something enchanting about it. Sinister. Like Rose Madder was hiding in there, waiting for me, inviting me to walk right into the painting.

A familiar scrawl in the corner interested me more.

Of course it was Margot’s painting.

Not because it was her—this wasn’t her style at all. But the fact she’d managed to capture the essence of Saint and inject it into a painting of trees; yeah, that was Margot.

What fascinated me was the fact she obviously painted it for him. There was no question about that. Though, she’d never mentioned she was close enough with Saint to know what to paint for him. To paint him.

I had been sure she was an open book. Full of secrets she was ready to share. But not everything. Not other people’s, it seemed.

That was the most exceptional painting in the room. The rest were dark, manly prints. He had two plush chairs pointed toward French doors that opened onto a balcony. Once I opened it, my body recoiled at the cold with no barrier to protect it. I still didn’t cover up. Instead, I stepped out, my bare feet shocked at the frigid wood. He had a view of the same lake as me. But it looked different from up here. It looked like a place I could just stare at. Curl up on one of those chairs with whisky and my laptop and write.

There was a menace in the air here. Something even I couldn’t bring into my house. Emily’s house.

I had the pad and pencil in my hand without even knowing where I got it from. I barely knew what I was writing.

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