“Is dead! Because of you two,” she accuses. Her loud voice grabs the attention of a couple passersby, but they keep moving. She then looks down at my hand linked with Declan’s. “And how fast you move on, Nina.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve. This coming from the woman who not only fucked my husband but was stupid enough to get pregnant. So, don’t you dare stand there like you’re a goddamn ice princess,” I lash out while Declan allows me to handle her on my own.
Tears rise and then fall down her cheeks when she explodes, “You killed my husband! I have nothing because you took it away from me!”
“I didn’t take shit from you. I freed you from that asshole. He fucking raped me and tortured me! And look at you,” I belittle. “Standing there like you’re the victim when you should be thanking me for ridding the world of that piece of shit.”
Beyond what he did to me, my blood boils when I think of what Richard did to Declan’s mother and the part he played in my father’s life.
“How dare you tarnish his name with your lies. He’d never—”
“You can’t be that ignorant. Surely you know by now the man he was, yet you’re so weak that you’re still defending him.”
“What am I supposed to do? My life is over! My name doesn’t mean anything anymore. And because of you, I’m left with nothing. Everything I ever had has been seized. I’ve been ostracized by everyone and I’m buried in debt.”
“And yet you blame me,” I say. “I guess you got what you deserved for marrying that asshole and screwing around with a married man. It seems all you have is the hope that your bastard son doesn’t grow up to hate you, since he now carries all the wealth.” My smile grows. “Must suck to know all that money is within reach, and yet Bennett forbade you from touching it because he hated you.”
“You bitch!”
“You’re done here,” Declan barks, stepping between us. “That man you married was a cold-blooded killer. Accept it or not, I don’t really give a fuck, but don’t place blame where it doesn’t belong.”
Not allowing another second to pass, he leads me to his car, leaving her crying, alone, on the sidewalk. Declan closes my door, and I look at her through the window, hating her for the mere fact that she loved and supported such an evil man. A man who left me stripped naked for days while he degraded and humiliated me, beat me, and sodomized me. A man who took so much from both my life and Declan’s.
Declan speeds off, and I refuse to let the memories of what Richard did to me come to life.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I snap.
I can’t talk because all I can do right now is focus on forcing those memories back into the deep cave of my soul. Pinching my eyes closed, battling against myself, I hear the ringing in my head, and it feels like an axe to my skull.
I clamp my hands over my ears, and I don’t even notice Declan pulling the car over. He reaches out to me and touches my arm, and when I open my eyes, I see Richard’s smug face instead of Declan’s. My body coils back, lurching away from him, and I scream, “Don’t fucking touch me!”
“Elizabeth, it’s okay,” he insists, unbuckling my seatbelt and banding his arms around me as I fight against the high-pitched ringing in my head.
I release a wretched scream, my voice bleeding, “Make it stop!”
“Open your eyes and look at me,” he demands on a hardened voice. He grabs hold of my head and forces me to focus on him. “Breathe. I need you to breathe with me.”
Everything around me and within me is a demented chaos of sounds, voices, visions. A hurricane spinning with inconceivable force, but his eyes remain still and steady. He’s the one unwavering element in this maelstrom, and it takes all the effort in me to focus on him—on his words.
“That’s it, darling. Just breathe,” he encourages when I feel my lungs inflate.
My eyes never waver, and soon everything dulls into a low hum that I’m eventually able to silence. He’s managed to chase away the demons I couldn’t fight off on my own.
And it’s here, in the ink of night, on a deserted side street, that I must face the fact that I undoubtedly need Declan.
AFTER MY RUN-IN with Jacqueline, all I want to do is sleep. The stress of my panic attack should’ve knocked me out, but I’ve been tossing and turning ever since my head hit the pillow.
When my cell phone lights up, I grab it from the nightstand. The screen reads: UNKNOWN, and I know it’s Matt calling. I decline the call and turn the phone off. My mind races in a million different directions, stirring up even more memories. Unwilling to lie here in bed any longer, I grab the manifest and my notepad and go to the office to direct all my attention to this list.
I’ve made it halfway through the names, scrambling the letters around and around and around, not knowing what I’m looking for, but hoping I find something. I get through three more names.
Parker Moore
Dorrance Riley
Quentin Malles