Chapter 702
Sienna’s eyes tightened, her movements terrifyingly fast.
Taking advantage of Jarred’s stunned silence, she scooped up the vintage tin, rushed back to the window, and hurled it into the night without a shred of hesitation.
The tin slammed against the rain awning of the second floor with a hollow thud.
It flipped in the air, scattering its payload of envelopes, which fluttered down and vanished entirely into the forest.
Jarred gripped the window frame, his knuckles turning stark white.
He slowly turned to look at Sienna. She stood by the window, panting, her chest heaving aggressively.
A thin layer of sweat coated her forehead. The frantic flush on her cheeks hadn’t completely faded, but the sheer panic in her eyes was gradually cooling into calculation.
Right on cue, the sky ripped open.
A torrential downpour slammed into the estate. The rain fell in aggressive, blinding sheets, relentlessly hammering the trees and drowning the muddy ground below.
Watching the storm completely consume the night, Sienna let out a massive sigh of relief, a twisted sense of victory blooming in her chest.
The storm couldn’t have been more perfectly timed.
A night of this deluge would turn paper to pulp. The tin would be buried in mud.
And even if the journal wasn’t entirely destroyed, good luck finding a black book in a pitch-black forest in a mudslide.
It saved her the trouble of burning it.
Still, regret gnawed at her. If she had known this would happen, she would have tossed it all into a bonfire years ago.
Sienna closed her eyes for a split second. When she opened them again, every trace of panic had been completely erased from her face.
Thank god.
Jarred hadn’t had time to inspect the letters in the tin, and he had only barely laid eyes on the journal.
Judging by his reaction, she had interrupted him right before he could read a single damning word.
She had dodged a bullet.
Steadying her breathing, she finally met Jarred’s gaze.
The man remained planted by the window. The icy chill of the storm bled through the cracked frame, making his towering silhouette look incredibly dangerous.
He was staring at her with a fathomless, dark intensity, swimming with turbulent emotions she couldn’t decipher.
It was a fiercely possessive look, heavier and darker than anything he had shown her back when they were together. It carried an undertone of suppressed, volatile frustration that pinned her right to the spot.
The atmosphere in the attic thickened to a suffocating degree.
After a heavy silence, the inexplicable rage festering inside Jarred finally boiled over.
His voice was raw, laced with heavy agitation, as he growled her name, “Sienna p>
He couldn’t even pinpoint where this violent irritation was coming from.
When he first found the journal, he had been relatively calm.
Seeing his own name scrawled endlessly across the page had even given him a quiet thrill.
But seeing her act like a maniac to destroy it, rather than let him see a single word.
It ignited an uncontrollable, suffocating rage in his chest.
The more she tried to hide, the more desperately he needed to know.
Meeting his stormy glare, Sienna’s eyes instantly frosted over, yielding absolutely no ground.
“Jarred, I expect you to respect my privacy. That is my absolute boundary.
If you can’t manage basic human decency, I will find someone else to protect me p>
Her words struck the exact nerve he was most sensitive about.
His gaze turned predatory, his Adam’s apple bobbing hard. “I wasn’t invading your privacy. You said I could look around p>
“I said you could look at the house,” Sienna cut him off, her tone devoid of any warmth. “didn’t say you could ransack my things p>
Jarred’s lips parted.
Whatever defense he was about to mount was instantly butchered by the absolute contempt in her stare.
Sienna shot him an impatient, icy glare, radiating nothing but annoyance and distance before turning on her heel to walk bout
Jarred’s foot shifted, instinctively taking a half-step forward.
He wanted to chase after her and explain.
But as if predicting his exact move.
Sienna suddenly stopped dead in her tracks.