that. I get it. I wouldn’t hate them for it—she’s their daughter. I’d hate you for it.”
His brows snapped together. “Me?”
“Yes. Because you know what Heather’s trying to do; you know what her game is. If you play into her hands, you’ll have done it knowing I could lose two of the people who matter most to me. You’ll have put your need for vengeance over what I feel and want. And for what? It’s not as if you care for me. We’ll be divorcing in under a year—that’s your plan. What does it really matter to you if your fake wife has to deal with some family bullshit?”
A muscle in his cheek flexed. “It matters.”
I inwardly snorted. “I won’t lose Melinda and Wyatt just because you don’t like people crossing you. They’re important to me. I didn’t talk for four whole months after Deacon beat my mother, because I didn’t want to tell anyone what he’d done; I wanted to protect him. No matter how good Melinda and Wyatt were to me, I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust that they wouldn’t send me away. So I didn’t speak to them, didn’t let them touch me. I barely ate. Barely slept. Had nightmares all the fucking time.”
Pausing, I crossed to him. “They were so patient with me. So good to me. Never raised their voices, never raised a hand to me, never got annoyed with me for not talking. They just let me be. Even when I started talking, they didn’t pepper me with questions. They were … they were what I needed. And they made sure I had Simon in my life and that I properly understood his disorder. If putting up with their daughter’s bullshit is the way to repay them for all that, so be it. And I didn’t grit my teeth through years of Heather’s crap just for you to go and ruin everything now.”
He exhaled heavily, a little of the menace in his eyes receding.
“Dane, tell me you’ll leave it.”
“If I do, she’ll step up her game. Ignoring it isn’t going to make her stop.”
“Neither will threatening her. She’d lap up the drama and cry fake tears to her parents.”
He twisted his mouth. “Then we deal with it another way.”
“I’m not telling tales to Melinda and Wyatt.”
“Not asking you to.”
“Then what?”
His eyes narrowed. “Where does she work?”
“She doesn’t.”
His brow knitted. “She wears designer clothes and drives a Mercedes.”
“Using the child support payments she gets from Junior’s dad.”
“She’s single?”
“No. She’s dating some guy named Thad Drummond. He’s probably married—her boyfriends are always spoken for. She ruins their relationships, milks them for what she can get, and then she moves on.”
“So if I were to hire someone to take some photos of her and Thad and then send said photos to his wife, Heather wouldn’t be too happy about it, would she? It would be a message: If she stays out of our business, we’ll stay out of hers, but if not …”
Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. “You’re sure she’ll know we’re behind it?”
“I’ll ensure she suspects it somehow. We’ll confirm it when she confronts us, which she will do for sure—she won’t be able to help herself.”
I gave a slow nod. “All right.”
“All right,” he repeated. “But …” He closed the short distance between us. “I want to know what she did to you.”
I felt my insides seize. “It was a long time ago—” I cut off as he put his face closer to mine, his expression hard, his breath lightly fanning my mouth.
“That woman is going to be handled, Vienna. I’d much rather do it my way, which will involve putting the fear of God in her. If you want me to deal with her another way, this is the price.”
I should have remembered he rarely did anything for nothing.
“Tell me what she did.”
I ground my teeth. “Lots of little things.”
“Such as?”
I shrugged. “She’d break my toys. Rip my clothes. Try forcing me to eat dog food. Pinch and twist my skin. Spit in my dinner when her parents weren’t looking.”
“What else? I’m sensing it escalated.”
“She’d bite me hard enough to mark. Slap my face and yank my hair. Pull knives on me. Sneak into my room while I was sleeping and cut my hair or pee on my bed so that I’d get the blame. That sort of thing.”
“You never told anyone?”
“At first, I wasn’t talking at all. Then when I was, well, she said I’d be sent away if I told