Dusk Snow Hides All Return (Rowan and Adrienne) novel Chapter 12

Chapter 12.

Desmond must have slipped it some point without her noticing. He stood in the doorway, watching Adrienne’s trembling back and the journal in her hand. A flash of jealousy and hatred shot through his eyes, then got buried fast under a pitiful, wounded expression. “Addie… Rowan… he’s probably just in a bad mood. Went out to clear his head. He’ll be back in a few days…”

“Clear his head?” Adrienne whipped around. Her eyes were blood red. Her voice was shredded like a broken bellows. “With the Voluntary Declaration of Severance of Parent–Child Relationship and the Engagement Dissolution Agreement in hand?!”

She closed the distance between them, one step at a time. Her gaze was sharp as a blade. For the first time, she was looking at this person she’d once protected with everything she had–with scrutiny. With ice. With something that looked an awful lot like hate.

“Let me ask you.” She bit off every word, each one coated in frost. “The Walk–in Freezer. The car accident. All those bruises on you. Desmond. Search your conscience and tell me–did you not lie? Not even once?”

Desmond’s face drained white, paper white. He stepped back on reflex. “Addie… fou… you suspect me? Even you don’t believe me anymore?”

“Adrienne!” Mrs. Ashford came rushing in at the noise. She yanked Desmond behind her and glared at Adrienne. “How can you to Desmond like that?! Rowan left on his own. What does that have to do with Desmond?! He’s always been too sensitive, overthinks everything. Whose fault is that?!”

talk

Adrienne looked at the “mother and son” clinging to each other. She looked at Mr. Ashford Sr. hovering in the doorway, his mouth opening and closing before he finally just looked away.

And suddenly it all struck her as absurd. Completely, sickeningly absurd.

Five years. What kind of sick, ridiculous lie had she been living in?

What had she done–to the one man who’d actually loved her, who’d waited for her for five years, who she’d shoved into hell with her own two hands?

“Get out.” She pointed at the door. Her voice had no warmth left in it at all. “All of you. Get out.”

Mrs. Ashford flinched at the savagery in her eyes. She started to say something, but Mr. Ashford Sr. grabbed her arm.

He threw Adrienne one last complicated look–at this woman who looked like she was losing her mind–sighed, and pulled Desmond and a still–protesting Mrs. Ashford out of the room.

The door clicked shut.

Adrienne collapsed onto the cold floor, her back against the edge of the empty bed. Her hand was still clenched around the ultrasound report and the leather–bound journal, knuckles bone white.

Then something hit her. She scrambled for her phone, fingers shaking, and dialed a number.

“It’s me. Adrienne. Pull every surveillance feed from Brookridge Estates and the whole route from the Detention Center to the Ashford Estate this afternoon. Yes. Now. Right now!”

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