“Are you threatening me?”
He laughed a noxious sound, the man blond and tall and wide. Classically handsome, like any other hometown boy who was trying to make his small-town world his bitch.
I refused to be any part of it.
“I’m trying to knock some sense into you before it’s too late,” he gritted.
Bitterness bled free, and my teeth were grinding, the tears of hurt that had flowed upstairs turning into something else entirely. This steely abhorrence that made me want to spit in his pretentious face. “I think you already know it’s exactly that. Too late.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Where are my children?” I challenged.
The asshole.
Showing up here when he’d given that sob story to the judge about how I’d tried to steal his children from him, how when I had, the only thing he’d felt was a gaping hole in his life.
I’d like to show the prick a gaping hole.
“They’re safe. That’s all that should matter to you. I hope you want to keep them that way.”
Rage churned at the deepest depths of me, and when I jerked my arm this time, I ripped it free from his disgusting hold. “You’re right. That’s the only thing that matters to me. And I won’t stop until you are out of their lives.”
“Don’t tell me you’re that delusional. You don’t actually think that’s going to happen, do you? That I’d let my children go? That I’d let you go?”
Before I could make sense of it, he had me backed against the car, his hand on my chin forcing me to look up at him.
My heart tumbled in fear, and I hated it, hated that he had the control to exert it. That I’d ever put myself and my kids in this position in the first place. “You’re going to regret complicating things. Come home. Where you belong. I love you.”
If the way he treated me was love, I wanted no part of it.
Nausea swirled in my stomach and sent bile climbing my throat. “And you’re a fool if you think I’m going to back down.”
He brushed his fingers down my cheek. As if he adored me and his soul wasn’t deadened with greed. “I wish you wouldn’t say that. I’d hate to hear that something horrible happened to my children’s mother.”
Terror rambled around in my chest and pushed against my ribs. I refused to let him see it.
His voice dropped lower, sharp as a knife. “Where’s my money, Grace, and the folder you took from my safe?”
“Who knows,” I told him, sending him my own threat.
It was the only power I had. Those few pictures I’d found in his safe that day—the evidence I’d found that gave me the courage to run. I’d taken the money at the same time.
It was the day I realized I had to be brave. That I could no longer cower and submit. I had to fight my way out of the castle or my children would be prisoner to it forever.
“Wrong answer.” He tightened his hold.
Fear surged and any firmness that had been in my tone turned to a trembling plea. “Just let us go, Reed. Forget that we ever existed, and I’ll do the same. You won’t hear from me, and neither will the press.”
His body ticked in aggression when I mentioned the press, the man stepping back, releasing me, but his mouth was right there, at my ear. “You think you have the upper hand? You think your flimsy accusation is going to stand? You even step in the direction of a reporter, and things aren’t going to end well for you. The same as if I find out you’ve come back here. I’m finished playing games with you.”
“Our lives aren’t a game.”
“No, you’re right. Your lives are mine.” He took another step back and meticulously straightened the cuffs on his jacket. “You have two weeks to come to your senses, Grace. Two weeks to end this stupidity.”
He started to walk away before he turned around, pointing at me. “Two weeks.” Then he jumped into the dark gray Jaguar sitting at the curb on the opposite side of the street.
Frozen, I watched as he started his car and jumped out onto the small side road. Not a single car had passed in all that time, not a single soul to witness our altercation.
Even if they had, it wouldn’t have looked like anything more than a lover’s spat, anyway.
No one would know my world was crumbling under me.
Time was running out.
I slumped into the driver’s seat of my car, clinging to the steering wheel for dear life, as if it were a buoy, a life raft.
I refused to buckle. To surrender.
I was going to race time.
And I was going to beat it.
Hands shaking, I finally got the key into the ignition and started my car. I drove back through Charleston and to the quiet neighborhood where I had been raised. I pulled into the narrow drive and stared at the little house that always seemed to radiate emptiness when my children were away.
I forced myself to kill the engine and stepped out, the adrenaline that had been lining my bones draining, making me weak.
I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. I went right for the comfortable living room, which was decorated exactly the same as it had been when I was a child. The only difference were the pictures of my children that had been added to the walls.
Their toys scattered about.
It only made the lack of their presence seem all that more profound.
The second she caught the expression on my face, Gramma frowned and set aside the quilting project she was working on. She patted her lap as if I were four and just her holding me could chase all the demons away.
I moved across the room and curled up on the couch, hugging that stupid bag to my chest and resting my head on the top of her thigh.
She gentled her fingers through my hair. “I take it your meeting didn’t go well.”
There was no stopping it. The dam that burst.
Mostly, it was a result of the showdown with Reed. Hopelessness trying to find its way inside. To seed and plant and take root until nothing was left but weeds that had snuffed out beauty and life.
But I’d gone and let a piece of my heart get broken, too.
I’d opened myself up and made myself vulnerable.
I might as well have stretched my arms out to the sides and welcomed the pain.
A sob erupted from my chest, and I curled deeper into my grandmother’s hold. “No, Gramma. It didn’t go well. I was told again that only a fool would take my case.”
Ian being the one who’d said it only made it all the worse.
“Well, good thing there are a whole lot of fools out there,” she almost chuckled, my grandmother gifting comfort in a way that only she could.
I smiled through my tears. “They run rampant, don’t they?”
“Sure do. Whole world is nothing but a bunch of blundering idiots who don’t know their heads from their asses. I’m sure we can find one attorney with their head shoved up there somewhere.”
Silence filled the room. Our spirits’ quick acknowledgement that this wasn’t a joking matter. Sometimes, the only thing a person could do was laugh their way through it.
My voice tripped into sorrow. “I think it was me who was the fool.”
She softly brushed her fingers through the hair at the top of my head. “Shh . . . don’t say that. You think with your heart, not with only two brain cells. Big difference.”
“But I thought Reed was a good man.”
Even though I was facing out, I could feel her give a sharp shake of her head. “You married Reed because that’s what his parents pressured you into doing. You went along with it because you thought it was the right thing to do.”
“And what did you think?” I breathed.
“I thought you were settling.”
“I tried to love Reed with all of me. I did. I thought . . . in time . . . together we’d create a home. I thought it’d be a good choice,” I admitted. “You and Grandpa took care of me my whole life. The last thing I wanted to do was burden you with the issues I’d created for myself.”
Reed and I had been married in a flash, and I’d been pregnant a month later. It wasn’t until I had a ring on my finger that I’d seen the true side of the man he was. Of course, I hadn’t given myself any amount of time to really get to know him before I’d gotten myself into that situation.