Page 68 of Unleash Hades
“Publicly he denies that the boys are his. He says that they were just lost children who needed a home, and that I was barren.” I rolled my eyes at that. I wasn’t barren. I was just on birth control, but no one had to know that. “But if I left him, he’d make the truth known, and he’d take the boys from me. Or he’d hurt me and control their inheritance. So I waited… I am still waiting until they’re in their majority, and…”
I let out a long breath, feeling the sorrow ease out, even as it threatened to overwhelm me again.
“Richard always has a plan. He always has a counter move, and I don’t want my boys to pay the price. He loves nothing and no one. He cares only for himself. So I can’t run. I can’t disappear. Because my boys don’t have a mother, and it was all because of me. I am left standing, and I need to…”
“I understand.”
Chapter 22
Hugo
She had forgotten me.She was talking, and talking, feeling the rush of memories and had drifted far, far away. I had to bring her back.
“I understand,” I repeated, placing my hand in my pocket.
I willed the hatred to fall from me.
Emotions had little purpose, unless they could be used for action.
I stepped toward her, cautiously, like she was an injured animal.
“Do you?” she whispered, her eyes wide as if those words were more than she could have expected.
Why would she not expect them?
I had loved her for years. I still did. I always would. She wasma petite granate. My woman. And I was not an inconsistent man.
“I will fix it,” I told her.
“Don’t! He’ll always know. He’ll get his revenge. He’ll make it worse… he’ll hurt my boys…”
“He won’t.”
“You don’t know him.”
“You don’t know me!”
Her eyes widened, surprised by my words. I was surprised too, at my own conviction.
But it was true. That sparse time we spent in Afghanistan, she knew my cock better than she knew me. In the years that followed, I was a phantom, an unknown thing that swooped in when she needed me most, and nothing more.
She did not know me. She did not know what I was capable of when I was unleashed.
Neither did Dick Davenport.
I stepped to her again, and she didn’t recoil even as her arms lay protectively around her torso. Like a wounded animal, she was defending her vital parts from attack. I would not touch her until I was not a thing that could hurt her, in her mind. I would wait.
I was good at waiting.
“Thank you for giving me a clearer picture.” I kept my voice low. Calm. Just as she needed me to be.
Things churned in my mind. Bit by bit, the pieces of the puzzle clicked together. It did not change what I had to do, but it did make the image more clear. The reasons forwhyDick had to die were so clean and so just.
Rarely was killing such an easy, and clearlygoodthing to do.
“Do what you’ve been doing all along.” I lifted my hand, and without touching her skin, or her clothes, I twirled my finger into the loose curls of her hair. “Give me permission to handle it, and you will wake up on the morning of your children’s birthday with your freedom.”
Her mouth opened and closed. Her eyes waxed between fear and desire.
