She froze. “Vincent, please—”
“Take my mother’s diamond off your finger, Arya. Before I have the investigator remove it for grand larceny.”
With shaking, frantic fingers, she stripped the platinum band from her knuckle and set it on the corner of the desk. She didn’t look at it. She looked at me, her eyes wet with the bitter, ugly tears of someone who had gambled her life’s reputation on an invalid and lost.
“Get her out of my sight,” I told Lucia.
The investigator stepped forward, touching Arya’s elbow. She didn’t scream. She didn’t fight. She walked out of the library like a condemned prisoner marching toward the scaffold, her heels dragging across the wood she had planned to sell.
The moment the library doors clicked shut, the strength evaporated from my arms.
My shoulders gave out. My hips dropped like a felled tree, and I plummeted backward into the heavy leather executive chair, gasping for air as a violent spasm shot down my lower back.
Tessa stepped out from the shadowy alcove behind the bookshelves, carrying a cold cloth and a glass of water. She didn’t say a word of praise. She didn’t offer a theatrical congratulations. She simply unbuttoned my cuffs, rolled back my sleeves, and began working the cramping muscles of my forearms with firm, rhythmic strokes.
