The Burnt Heart (Toxic Hearts Book 1)

by Mae Pierce

Jesse leaned forward, his warm gaze hooded as it roamed over me. Briar twisted his hands, a clear sign he wanted to de-escalate, usually preceded by him fleeing the room. My sweet boy detested conflict. Only Logan seemed unaffected. He even looked at his watch, angling his wrist down. Breaking my heart was clearly cutting into the time they needed to get their new project started.

The desire to create their own legacy had ramped up since introducing a new investor who had whipped them into a frenzy of activity. I didn’t begrudge the months of late nights for all of them. The ones peppered with distracting phone calls whenever we were together. I hadn’t even mentioned when they missed our anniversary dinner last month.

I looked at my nails again, mourning that I would never look at this color without their words echoing in my ears. We want to break up. “We love you Adelaide, since we were eighteen years old. But we need to explore ourselves,” Jesse added, and I lifted my gaze to him. Hoping he saw the aching chasm gaping in my chest. He flinched, eyes dropping from mine. Coward. Words were still beyond me, stifled under a strangling sob that squeezed my heart. My chest shuddered with uneven breaths. How could they do this to me? Especially knowing how important tomorrow night was.

Then Logan said something that made pain sear through my gut. “You know, you’re not the girl we fell in love with.” He waved a hand up and down, raising his eyebrows. A chill ran through me, and I jerked upright, as if electrocuted. I heard his words, but I didn’t believe them. He was staring at my body with a cruel tilt to his lips.

“You think I’m too fat for you?” I choked out, closing my stunned mouth with an audible click. Jesse and Briar both turned to look at Logan with horrified expressions. “What? No, princess, you’re perf—” Jesse hastened to say, making a shushing gesture at Logan. “Yes,” Logan interrupted, despite Jesse’s widening eyes, “You’ve let yourself go, and we deserve better.”

“No, princess, you stay here, we’ll go somewhere else,” he insisted, and I leveled a scathing glare at him. “Don’t call me that. I’m not your princess. I’m your fat girlfriend who you’re tired of sharing, right?” As I moved to my lingerie, I was pleased to hear their chorus of chokes. Gone was the green strappy set that Briar had gifted for me. A pang of regret hitting me. It was one of my favorites that he’d bought me for Valentine’s Day. The silk slipped through my hands, tainted forever. What did they gain from this charade? I was busy sifting through my memories to find clues I had missed. “Sire—Adelaide, stay here, where you’re comfortable. We’re the ones who should go,” Logan coaxed. His voice was low and strained.

“Comfortable.” The word tasted bitter as it hit the back of my tongue. “What makes you think I’m comfortable here? I thought this place held our love, like a temple, but it turns out that was a lie. I don’t want to spend another second here. It’s a tomb of dead, rotting hopes and promises.”

I craved their comfort and was met with blinding pain at the realization that it was no longer an option for me. But as I heard their footsteps retreating, I couldn’t help but sob. My fingers tangled in the bedcovers that had once held such joy and contentedness.

Briar was my sweetheart, best with words and empathetic to a fault. His nature wouldn’t have allowed me to leave upset. His moral compass would have screamed at him to follow me. Give me some misguided solace. But he couldn’t give me the comfort I wanted. Their rejection would forever bruise my heart. No placating words could soothe that hurt.

There was a reason Adelaide was the queen of the Greenich Bay underworld. She forgot no transgression. She hadn’t cried because she wasn’t mourning, she was plotting how to destroy us. I would let her crush me beneath her boot, beg her for it even. But I wouldn’t let her go.

Now he could watch me and know it would never be for him to touch. He could stew in regret for his harsh words. Even if I knew they were only said to secure funding for their business. Oh yes. Whatever halfcocked plan they had decided upon had taken me all of five minutes to persuade out of my father. He certainly wasn’t about to deny the truth from his daughter. Not when he owed me for single-handedly saving our family’s massacred reputation. I recalled the terse phone call I’d had.

“Don’t pretend you’re not gleeful they threw me over. Not that it makes any difference. I won’t marry Ray,” I sneered, pleased I sounded controlled. Inside I was a tornado. Emotions whirling inside me with flashes of long forgotten memories. “I know,” father hummed. “Believe it or not, I was thinking of you. Harold was desperate enough to risk anything. They didn’t know who they were dealing with. You kept them too far apart for them to realize who they were getting into bed with.”

Adelaide had tried hard to befriend Nicole, but my girl could be jealous. I couldn’t reveal the truth of why I was indebted to her, it would mean revealing the one thing I had never told anyone. Nicole was my friend, despite what Adelaide thought. She constantly mentioned how Nicole looked at me “like she wanted to suck my dick.” More than once, she’d warned me that Nicole wanted to be more than friends with me, I’d laughed it off each time. Adelaide was everything to me, there was nothing that could shake my devotion to her. The moment I’d seen her bursting through the weeds in Calder Place. Torn, lacy white dress, like an angel falling from the heavens. Her confidence was like tiny lightning bolts on the skin. You couldn’t help but be exhilarated and intoxicated by her spark.

“Adelaide won’t see it that way. She’ll see you showing up with a girl she’d expressly told you she didn’t trust, a day after we told her we wanted to see other people.” Logan rolled his eyes. “Sometimes you are an oblivious idiot.”

“This isn’t a date,” I whispered, leaning close in case someone overheard us. Nicole inched closer still, her gentle exhale brushing my face. A soft smile quivered on her lips. “Let’s just pretend you’re mine tonight. Wouldn’t it be nice not to share for once? To have someone all for yourself and not spread between two others?” She passed me the shot glass and waited for me to respond before she continued. I fought the urge to set her straight. In all honesty, I would share Adelaide with a million men if it meant I got to have a sliver of her time.

Suddenly I felt a pull, my gaze snapping upwards and clashing with the green eyes of my love. They were dark with devastation. Her lower lip wobbled once before all emotions bled away. She was only a handful of steps away from me, but it was like an unbreachable chasm between us. Adelaide looked stunning in a dress that was very much Logan’s fantasy. A tease of soft, white cleavage, framed by her sleek golden hair. I noticed the hint of bags under her eyes, but she looked remarkably unaffected. Her focus left me and latched onto Nicole. Pure, unadulterated rage flickered over her features, and it amplified as she saw Nicole’s hand still hanging off my elbow. Nicole didn’t flinch. Her chin lifted and her eyes narrowed into a possessive glare. Was she leaning into the pretend role, playing the new girlfriend in front of the jealous ex? My stomach tilted on its axis, making the room spin.

That asshole. Briar must have known how I would react to seeing him bring Nicole as his date. I focused on my breathing, grasping for the rampant hurt that skittered through my veins. I forced it down into a box to be dealt with later. My heart still pounded in my chest and tongue felt thick in my mouth. Perhaps I was wrong, this wasn’t a charade my men had planned to appease an investor. Maybe this break up was real. It had been easier to believe they were being led by a man who had ulterior motives. One’s that were significantly improved by me being single.

I’d brushed past them without so much as a glance, hoping the rejection stung. That was before I saw Briar and Nicole. He had been whispering in her ear, laughing and smiling like he hadn’t smashed my heart into a million pieces. It was clear they were there together. Nicole had driven that home like a sledgehammer when she’d put her hands all over him. Bry. He let her call him that? The small action burned my heart like an inferno. Briar hated nicknames, had a visceral reaction to all pet names the entire time we’d been together. Him letting her call him that hurt.

She had grown up with my guys, I wanted to know all about how they were before they met me. Nicole had shut down any effort to be my friend. Her tiny nose would drift up in the air, followed by snide remarks about spoiled, wealthy people. If she knew what I was capable of, she wouldn’t be so pointed with her insults. But she was Briar’s friend and I let it slide. She knew I knew. Certain comments and micro expressions flew straight over my guys’ heads, even Logan and Jesse, who were determined to dislike her for my sake. I recognized the look in Nicole’s eyes when she thought no-one was watching. She loved Briar. But he wouldn’t believe me. And now he was here with her. She’d wasted no time glaring at me like she was staking a claim.

“I regret my rash, young self. I hope you know it didn’t have anything to do with you except that you represented a tie I didn’t want. Pops wanted that alliance. He saw the brightness in you and the potential as clear as a comet. If it helps, I’ve been paying for my defiance ever since.” Ray tugged on the lock, my skull hurting a little at the tight grip. “What would the world look like if I had realized my papa was wiser than I ever would be? I can still remember the look on your face, the complete mortification that my words had created. Your white dress was tantalizing, but you seemed so innocent. I was young and dumb, addicted to the women who fell into my arms in hordes. I was drunk more often than not, but to get married? It seemed like a death sentence to a horny eighteen-year-old.”

We can’t all be angels leeching out the darkness of damaged men like you, Adelaide.”

Ray pressed his body far too close, lips grazing my ear. His words stopped me from kneeing his groin. “Don’t look now, but one of your goons is approaching. What say we continue this conversation on the dancefloor and waylay him?” My heart leaped. Was it Briar? Coming to apologize for rubbing Nicole in my face? I looked up and sagged a little. It was Logan. He was plowing his way through the crowd with a determined stride to his gait. I snaked my hand down Ray’s arm and entwined our fingers. Tearing my face away from the jealousy in Logan’s eyes. I pulled Ray behind me to the dance floor.

“This dress is something else,” he murmured, spinning me around so it moved like a wave. “I must thank your exes after this. I doubt you’d have let me within ten feet of you otherwise.” “Don’t you dare.” A laugh escaped me, and I tried to stifle it. “Or do. I hope it’s agony for them. They deserve it for falling for whatever leverage your papa has over them.” Ray reared back. His dark eyebrows arched high on his forehead. “What aren’t you telling me?” Ray questioned, looking around the room to see where Harold was.

“He’s the reason I’m single. For some hare-brained reason my ex’s accepted an offer from him. He only had one stipulation before he handed over an obscene amount of money. They had to break up with me. Why do you suppose he wanted that so badly, Tail Light Ray?” I said, digging my nails in. He grunted and narrowed his eyes at me. “Don’t do that darling, you might excite me. Why would he want you---” realization dawned on Ray’s face, and he slowed to a soft sway on the floor. “I didn’t have anything to do with this, Adelaide.” He rushed to add. I swallowed past the knot that had formed in my throat. What a strange night this was, in the arms of someone who stood to gain so much from me. I wondered what the right step was to take. All I knew was things could never go back to the way they were before.

“Adelaide, I said those words for a good reason. Not the reason you think.” His lips barely moved, and his gaze scanned over my shoulder as if looking for someone. God, they were so terrible at this it was laughable. “Your ‘investor’ would have seen you, so you can forget being sneaky. You don’t know who you’re dealing with, but go on, comfort me with vague entreaties and see if it works for you.” I snapped; my patience frayed. I stepped back, disentangling our fingers. Logan made a noise, moving toward me like he wanted to haul me against him. “We just need to get through tonight.”

“Adelaide, are you ok?” Jesse’s narrowed gaze cataloged me, searching for the source of my distress. Wasn’t it obvious? It was them. Those who had promised to keep my heart safe and were instead squeezing the life out of it.

“This is for the best Adelaide. They were all miserable with you,” her smile was pitying. I froze. “Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jesse growled, whirling on her with a glare. “So, you don’t regret the fact that Adelaide can’t have children? Even though you always wanted to be a father?” She widened her eyes with surprise. A sharp noise escaped Jesse like he’d been punched in the stomach. Just as a strangled sob hurtled out of me. My arm cradled my lower stomach. I swore I could feel the puckered scars that lay underneath. “You told her?” I whispered, voice cracking from the pain. Jesse sent a scorching glare to Nicole, who cowered a little. “I would never.” He spat out, like the idea of it curdled on his tongue.

“Congratulations to our Charity Excellence Winner, Adelaide Orazio!” Everything I had worked so hard on had culminated in this. My family’s darkened reputation made glossy and new. I had clawed my family’s future back from the brink. My legacy was safe. Could anyone in this room achieve what I had? I doubted it. My gaze cleared, pinned on the men I thought were my soul mates. And the woman who had exposed their duplicity. I knew my worth. Just as I knew what I had to do. Ensure these men knew they were dead to me. My heart shriveled in my chest, poisoned by deceit.

“Jonah,” my voice rose, sounding dead. My trusted guard lurked behind me, a stolid warmth I could trust. I looked at the men I had imagined my life with and gave them the first blow. “These men are not to get close to me. They are a threat to my life. Understood?” “Perfectly, Miss Orazio,” he replied, becoming my shadow as I stalked away. I ignored the stream of protests that exploded behind me.

Adelaide was taking the stage, dabbing a tissue to her glistening eyes. Glamorous with her sleek blonde locks dripping over her shoulders. Anyone would attribute the emotion she was showing to the frosted glass award being passed to her. Not because her heart was smashed to bits moments ago. She hefted it into the crook of her arm, turning a wobbly smile on the crowd. “Thank you so much,” she cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. This is unexpected and I’m so pleased to be here and have the Orazio Foundation recognized for its hard work. First, thanks must go to my wonderful support Lara, who has the biggest heart and a magnificent stash of snacks I know she keeps stocked just for me.” A ripple of laughter coasted through the crowd at her words. “I am making light, but the Orazio Foundation has been a labor of love. It’s been my b-baby. I couldn’t have done this without my wonderful father.”

Our next project is the revitalization of the vacant lot on Calder Place. We plan to build a community center that caters to our youth. The space has long been an eyesore, overgrown and forgotten. Full of broken promises, devoid of any joy or love. So, we are going to bulldoze over the mess and create a space to be proud of. The younger demographic is our future, and they deserve the best, and it’s time they get it.” The room erupted in cheers, clapping, and whistling as Adelaide smiled and made her way off the stage. Her gaze found mine like a magnet and I saw the coldness there, like an icepick cracking open my ribs. It’s full of broken promises, devoid of any joy or love.

“Calder Place?” Logan whispered. He looked dumbfounded, Briar wilted in his hold, lips pursed like he was trying to hold in vomit. Everything Adelaide had mentioned in her speech had been a thinly veiled shot, meant to maim us. It worked, as her words sunk in, my sturdiness faltered and I sagged. “She wouldn’t.” I shook my head, dazedly. But I watched Adelaide meet Lara and bend to speak in her ear and I knew it was true.

We had gone too far and eviscerated Adelaide, who still didn’t know that we had lied. But to tear down the place where our love had taken root? That was unfathomable. Adelaide had bought Calder Place many years ago, vowing to keep it just as it was.

Against all odds, love grew in her heart as well. For all of us. And it had bloomed in Calder Place. Stolen moments I hoarded like treasures. We’d even carved our names in the thick tree trunk, immortalizing a hopeful, passionate love. If ever there was a place that captured us, it was Calder Place. And Adelaide had just vowed to raze it to the ground.

“No pleasantries again?” He tried to draw me in to his irreverent dance. But I was sick of men thinking they could flash a smile my way and get what they wanted. I let the silence stretch out uncomfortably long. Until even Lara shifted in her seat at the sharp awkwardness of it. His smile dulled, and Ray tilted his head. “You can be quite intimidating. Has anyone told you that? But if you dislike polite conversation so much, I’ll tell you the reason I am here. I need help. My reputation has gained an unruly sheen, and for someone who deals in the shadows, it’s not good for me to have so much notoriety.” “Taillight Ray,” I supplied for him, enjoying the slight wince he made.

“Marriage is off the table. You don’t want my body. But I have something you could use. You’re not interested in dating, and if you were, I doubt I’d make the cut.” Ray gave a self-deprecating bark of laughter. “I’m not entirely brainless, and I imagine you want to show those three exes that you’re fine without them, right? With this face and our shared intimate history? It’s a combination that will drive those idiots wild with jealousy.”

Harold Donato considered himself a master manipulator, and we were chess pieces for him to arrange. It worked on Briar, Jesse and Logan. All this pain for nothing. They hadn’t even received the money they wanted. The effort he’d made to ensure I was single was alarming, and I itched to unravel his end goal. I could do that better if I kept Ray close. There wasn’t anything the old man could do that would surprise me.

“I’ll help rehabilitate your reputation. If you help me make those three men, the sorriest they’ve ever been.” My throat seared with bitterness, but I swallowed the acrid burn. I wanted them to be as brittle and breakable as I was right now. “Pleased to be in business with you, Adelaide,” Ray smiled.

I gazed toward the main wall by habit and slid to a halt. A dismayed choke escaped past my bloodless lips. My photo, the one I had taken of the Orazio’s estate in Italy, was missing. It had been a drone shot I’d taken on our first trip overseas together. Capturing some of the manicured landscape and the sharp cliff, the ocean spanning the horizon. In its place was a colorful abstract. I pressed my hand to my stomach, sure there was a slash across the tender flesh. The picture had been a gift from me for when she’d designed this space. Its absence said more than any words could. Adelaide was a stickler for details. She noticed everything. To systematically wipe such a trace of us from her life filled me with a sense of foreboding.

Over the weekend Briar had tidied the clothes she’d left behind, putting them back into her drawers so it would be neat when she returned. He’d realized all the clothing she’d left had been gifts from one of us. She’d taken nothing we had given her, leaving any favorites if it was something from our hands. Desolation seeped through me, and I sank into a leather armchair, unable to look away from where the intricate artwork lay.

The Charity Excellence Award was already in pride of place on her shelves, but they weren’t the only changes. Gone was the photo she kept on her desk of all of us. Taken at Calder Place, when she’d laid across our legs, smiling and laughing. The empty space gaped, jarring and wrong, and I swallowed the lump in my throat. Her gaze was like liquid ice, freezing off pieces of me. Her make-up artfully applied. No traces of discomfort. Only the bloodshot eyes belied her cool, collected demeanor. “Can we make this quick? I have a big development to get started on,” she jibed, knowing it would sting to mention the destruction of our special place.

“We’ve known each other for six years. Yet you didn’t trust me enough to fill me in on your plans. Or perhaps you think so little of me that the pain and turmoil you caused didn’t matter? What I can’t understand is how you truly think you could just stroll in, and I would take you back. You chose money over me. I was an afterthought. Someone you could coddle into submission with a few lukewarm apologies.” I looked at Jesse, horror etched over my face. The assumptions Adelaide had made were wildly incorrect, but without the full story, she could never know why. It wasn’t money we were hoping for. Ultimately, it was freedom, after six years of never knowing when one hit might be our last. This was our final desperate attempt after trying everything else. Every time her father’s men beat us in the ground they taunted us, telling us to run home to Adelaide. To have her put a stop to the attacks. There had been so many times I had wanted to be honest. Like when she’d tend our bruises or question why we were moving stiffly. They would never accept us if we told Adelaide. We knew it, they knew it. And so, we’d kept Adelaide in the dark, trying to claw our way into something her father would respect.

“I wish I had the luxury of forgetting. I would love to wipe the moment that worm mocked me for my inability to have children. But I can’t. Did you forget about telling her that, too? What other secrets of mine did you whisper into her greedy ears?” Briar let her words hit him like blows. Wincing at her tone, sharp as a whip. “I know what it must have looked like, and I regret bringing her at all. I wasn’t thinking. But Nicole is nothing to me but a friend, an old friend. I slipped into old patterns and confided in her a few months ago when stress was eating me up. She was there when I needed someone to talk to, and I didn’t think it was hurting anyone. I love you, Adelaide. You are the only one I want. Jesse and Logan told me she said I wanted out of this relationship. She lied. I don’t know why she said it. I adore you. Only you and I would never choose to give up what we have.”

“Except that you did. And I’ll tell you why she lied, Bry.” She rolled her eyes while Briar flinched, cheeks becoming pallid. “Because you might think of her as a friend, but she certainly doesn’t think of you that way. I warned you, I pleaded with you about her, and you discounted me. She shouldn’t have been there if you listened to anything I had to say. But you didn’t. You put my wants and needs aside. Just like you all did with this ridiculous bargain you made. You could have used my money for your gym, but you made a deal with a devil.”

I didn’t like the reminder that Adelaide had nearly not been ours. If Ray Donato hadn’t rejected her, they’d be married now. I would have been deprived of the other half of my heart.

“Siren, you are the most precious thing in my life. I love you more than anything,” I gagged on the emotion and fear clogging my senses. Panic clawed at my insides. Adelaide shook her head, her lashes rimmed with glistening tears. “You love me, but you want to leave? Why did you never talk to me, Logan? Never once have you spoken to me about wanting to travel for your photography. I thought the gym was your dream.” Her voice was so small that I wanted to vault over the desk and take her in my arms, but I knew she wouldn’t allow it. Adelaide was guarded when hurt, and right now her shields were all the way up. How could I tell her the reason I was so desperate for our business idea to succeed? I understood why Jesse didn’t want to tell her. She was furious with us. If we told her about the threats, she might think it was us trying to manipulate her.

“You’re my family,” Jesse continued in anguish. “You, Logan and Briar. Us. Together. That is the only family I have ever needed. I don’t care if I have a biological child. We can adopt. We have time to decide.” He was frantic now, fingers tightening on her knees while she looked up at the ceiling. For the first time, I saw the cracks she had been hell bent on masking. She hitched an uneven breath and glistening tears covered her cheeks. Rough swipes dashed them away. “I don’t trust you.” Her words made me grunt with pain, cutting into me like a knife. “What other secret desires have you been holding inside that you’re too scared to talk to me about?” She cried, looking at each of us.

Her gaze slid to Briar next. “I can’t watch as you give someone else the things that should be mine. What you did with Nicole? You leaned on her and shared things that were none of her business. You call her a friend, but I can’t help but think deep down you wanted what she gave you. Flattered by the undivided attention. You won’t get that with me. I was clear from the very beginning that it would always be you three.” Briar looked like he’d been hit with a mallet, stunned into silence with his mouth agape. “I can’t give you babies,” she choked as she looked down at Jesse and her tears dripped onto her dress.

“Last month was our anniversary. We were supposed to celebrate at Reds. Do you remember what happened?” It felt like my world had suddenly been upturned and judging by the expressions on Briar and Jesse’s faces, they were feeling the same way. “What? No—” Briar looked around as if waiting for one of us to refute the claim Adelaide was making. When we didn’t, he pulled his phone out with fumbling fingers and scrolled through until he froze. I couldn’t move. I didn’t even remember our anniversary? What could I have been doing that was so important? “We-uh-we met with...” Briar couldn’t finish his sentence, his face drained of color. Adelaide gave an empty laugh.

“What about Calder Place?” Briar whispered, his fingers tight on the doorknob. My gut twisted at his question, and I looked at Adelaide, hope dying inside me at her blank expression. “Please,” I begged, knowing she understood what I was asking. Don’t destroy the place that held so many beautiful memories for us. Don’t wipe us away. “It’ll be better this way. A fresh start, like it never happened.”