Page 80 of Knot All That Glitters: Part 2

Six years of being abused and raped by my father.

“What happened then?” I ask, both needing and dreading the answer. “Did she… Did you help her escape?”

God, please let her say yes. Please let her tell me my mother is alive and well. Even if it means she left me, I need her to be okay. To be thriving after the nightmare that had been her life.

But I know that won’t be the answer I get when she gives me a pitying look. “She died.”

I knew it was coming, and it still hit me in the chest hard enough to steal my breath. “How?” I wheeze out as Jude wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into his side, while Creed takes my hand and rubs circles into my palm with his thumb. Hale and Tic stand behind me, Hale’s palm on the back of my neck, a soothing weight, and Tic stroke his fingers through my hair.

Belinda takes in all of this before she meets my gaze again. “I don’t think you want the details of what was done to her, but suffice it to say, your father is a monster.”

“He killed her.” It’s a whisper, barely more than a puff of air from my chest, and yet the statement lands with the weight on an anvil.

“Yes,” she confirms, then seems to consider her next words. “He resented her. Resented his need for her, especially after they bonded. He ached when he was away from her, became obsessed. He couldn’t…” she shakes her head. “He couldn’t stand it, the way she consumed his thoughts. So he cut her out of him, out of his life.”

Cut. I don’t want to think about what that means.

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Hale growls, his voice harsh, even as his fingers are gentle on my skin. “You obviously knew what he did. Why didn’t you turn him in?”

Belinda sighs and shakes her head. “I wish I did. More than anything, I wish I had taken what I knew and gone to the police. But…” she hesitates and meets my gaze. “At the time, my husband was a partner in the club, not me. When he told me what the Senator had done, I begged him to tell the authorities, but he pointed out that everyone involved would be culpable, including myself.”

Nausea roils in my stomach.

“You let a murderer go free to avoid a little jail time?” Tic’s voice is icy cold.

To her credit, Belinda meets his gaze steadily. “It wouldn’t have been ‘a little’ jail time, Atticus. We helped hold her hostage. Stood by while he abused her. Did nothing to stop him from killing her. It would have been a life sentence. Even if I cut a deal for turning in everyone else responsible, I was looking at ten to fifteen years.” Crimes against omegas usually have a harsher punishment since we’re not natural fighters, and all it takes is one alpha bark to force us to obey. In order to dissuade alphas from doing exactly what my father did, the law prosecutes to the highest extent it can.

“I regret it now. But at the time, I was barely twenty-two and married to an alpha twice my age.” She bites her bottom lip and then lets out another breath, shoulders drooping. “Of course I realized my mistake when he brought another omega to the club a few months later, asking for us to keep her like we had Elise.”

“Did you?” Jude asks, sounding…devastated. A few months. A few months after my mother died, almost ten years ago.Janie.He would have brought Janie to them. The Calloway pack’s fated mate. I’m fairly certain they’ll rip Belinda apart if she says that they did. I’m equally certain I’ll let them.

This woman is just as culpable in our collective pain as my father is. She just doesn’t realize it. She has no clue that the teenage omega my father brought to them was this pack’s fated mate. She doesn’t realize the bomb she just dropped.

She shakes her head slowly, no doubt feeling the charge int he air, scenting the aggression rolling off the alphas around me. “No. Hugo, my deceased husband, refused. He knew what the Senator had done and didn’t trust that there wouldn’t be a repeat. He didn’t want another murder in the club. I don’t know where he took her, but it wasn’t Shock and Awe.”

She meets my gaze. “I never realized what was happening to your mother. She never told me she was there against her will. Never once asked me for help. She talked about you constantly, made plans for your future together. She seemed content during the times between your father’s visits, happy almost.”

“It never occurred to you he barked her into that frame of mind?” Creed asked. “You’re an alpha. You know how easy it is to have that kind of control.”

She snorts and shakes her head. “I’m barely an alpha. My husband was more dominant than me. He barked at me plenty of times to get me to comply.” That surprises me. I never really considered an alpha barking at another alpha, but it happens,doesn’t it? Hale could bark at any of his pack mates and force their obedience. He just doesn’t because he’s not an asshole.

“I helped her where I could,” Belinda tells me. “Made sure she had medical care when she needed it, entertainment if she was bored. I tried. It just wasn’t enough.”

I nod slowly. It would be easy to put all the blame on this woman, to shout and scream that she should have done more, been braver or stronger or smarter. If she had been any of those things, my mother and Janie would still be alive. My father would be in jail.

The Calloway pack would be happily bonded, with a slew of kids running around. And I would never have experienced being so completely under someone else’s control.

Who would we be if this single person had done the right thing years ago? Who would I be?

But what’s done is done.

She’s here now, and I can only hope that means she’s going to help.

“We want to take my father down,” I say in a voice as neutral as I can manage. “We want to decimate him. We need any evidence of his wrongdoing over the years. Any conversation or action that will put him in jail. That will ruin him.”

Belinda leans back on the couch, long legs crossed at the knees and eyes the five of us. “I’ll help.”

“Thank you,” I say in a relieved breath. “Thank you so much.”

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