He Left Me to Freeze, So I Burned His World Down Chapter 09

He Left Me to Freeze, So I Burned His World Down Chapter 09

The assistant hurried off, and the dead silence in the restaurant was broken by a friend from a nearby table.

“Graham, don’t let her ruin your night,” the man said, patting his shoulder. “Nora Blake paralyzed? That sounds a little dramatic.”

“Exactly. If something that serious had happened, would the Hart family be sitting quietly?” another chimed in. “The way they operate, they’d have turned Virginia upside down by now.”

“I think she was just trying to stir things up.”

The placating voices floated around him. Piper didn’t dare say a word. She knew that the more she said now, the more trouble she’d be in.

Graham sat back down but didn’t touch his food.

He picked up the bottle of whiskey, poured glass after glass, and drained each one. The amber liquid sloshed in the glass like his chaotic thoughts.

He took out his phone, his thumb hovering over the screen before finally opening his message thread with Ava.

The last message was from a week ago.

After she had been rescued from the boathouse, he had sent: [Rest well.]

She had never replied.

Graham suddenly felt a prickle of doubt. Maybe Claire’s words weren’t true. If Nora had really been paralyzed because of him, Ava, with her temper, would have already come after him. She would have mobilized the full force of the Hart family to make him pay.

But why did this empty chat box, the silence from her end, fill him with such panic?

His fingers tapped out a few words.

[Where are you?]

He stared at the sentence, then deleted it.

[I heard something happened to Nora. Is it true?]

He looked at it for another two seconds, then deleted that, too. The first question sounded arrogant; the second, guilty. He suddenly had no idea how to talk to her anymore.

As he irritably moved to lock the screen, Piper brought a small piece of tiramisu to him.

“Graham, don’t think about it… Have some dessert?”

“Get it away from me.” His voice was flat.

Graham drained the last of the whiskey from his glass and shot to his feet. He took a black card from his wallet and tossed it onto the table.

“I have to go.” He didn’t even look at Piper, leaving only a cold order. “You stay. Put it on my tab.”