Page 150 of Sinful Bride

Fucking pathetic.

Arlo mutters something to me in Russian. I look at Daphne, meeting her fearful gaze with my own steadfast confidence.

Trust me, moya plamya.

She closes her eyes.

I breathe.

And then Stewart Hamish drops behind her, a bullet hole sprouting in the middle of his forehead.

Ophelia screams. Sofiya swoops in on her and snatches her up, dragging the woman out the back way to deal with outside.

I scoop Daphne into my arms without a second thought. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

She’s shaking from head to toe. “I’m fine. I’m fine. No one… no one did anything.”

Her voice cracks. Tears well in her eyes. No one did anything, so she says. But they sure as hell tried to.

I cradle her face in my hand and make her look up at me. “Why? Seriously, Daphne, why? Do you know how fucking terrified I’ve been? And why the hell didn’t you use your panic button?”

Her bottom lip trembles. I touch my thumb to it. I don’t want to scare her, but goddamn, I’m scared myself.

I’ve never known true fear until I realized how close I was to losing her. Forever.

She reaches up and touches my hand with hers, which shows me the deep red marks on her wrist, perfect imprints of the bracelet that used to be there.

Whoever ripped it off her is already dead. Still, I want to bring him back and kill him all over again just for marking my wife like this. For daring.

I take her hand and kiss the skin. “We’ll fix it. We’ll fix everything.”

Then I drag her into my embrace and I don’t let go for a long, long time.

Eventually, I hear Arlo clear his throat. There are more loose ends to be taken care of, so with a sigh, I relinquish my grip on Daphne, though I keep her hand in mine. Together, we follow Arlo outside.

Under an old oak tree on the bedraggled expanse of the back lawn, Ophelia struggles against Sofi’s iron-fisted hold on her arms. She’s on her knees, dress dirtied, her face a smeared mess of makeup and tears.

She’s lucky we didn’t paint her with her husband’s blood.

And as I start to advance on her to perform the inevitable, she’s even luckier her daughter holds up a hand.

“This is my fight. Not yours,” she says. “Let me handle it.”

With a quiet sigh, I relent.

Sofiya throws the woman down at Daphne’s feet. “She tried to make a run for it once we got her out here. I told her she doesn’t get to abandon her daughters. Again.”

My wife crouches in front of her former mother, her brows knit with anger and sadness. “I gave you chance, after chance, after chance, to make things right. And what did you do instead? You let him hurt me. You, Mother, let your husband hurt your child.”

Ophelia bursts into tears.

“Why? Because I ‘embarrassed’ you? Because I didn’t clap and dance like a toy monkey for your amusement? You’re sick, Ophelia. You need professional help.”

“I did this for you!” The woman screeches and sobs and claws at the dry dirt. “I did everything for you! Your father, he—he—he was a monster! You don’t know what I put up with for you! You and your ungrateful little sister!”

Daphne straightens. She turns to me, her eyes asking me for permission to do what needs to be done. And even though I don’t know what she has in mind, I trust her.

So I nod.

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