Page 56 of Hell of a Mess
If she’d decided she didn’t want to stay at the house, I wasn’t sure how I would handle that.
“Ho—Alpheus.”
The terror in her eyes, staring back at me, made me feel unsteady, as if I was close to snapping. I wanted the fucker who had caused this dead.
“You’re never going back there,” I told her.
She let out a shaky breath. “He won’t let me leave.”
I grabbed her chin and leaned in close to her. “You already did. He can’t get you here.”
A few seconds ticked by before she replied, “Okay.”
I’d brought her out here to get answers. But the easiest of questions had sent her off to a place I didn’t want her to ever go again. Fuck that. We’d get our answers another way. I could not handle seeing her suffer.
“Jack and Diane are checking us out. We need to go say hello,” I told her, taking her hand and easing her out of the truck.
“The horses’ names are Jack and Diane?” she asked, a small smile tugging at her lips.
I nodded. “Yep. And Heartland is around here somewhere. Might be in the stables. She’s a feisty little thing though.”
She stepped onto the ground, and I didn’t let her hand go until I was sure she was steady. When she turned to see the horses, the beam on her face made my chest tight.
I moved around her to close the door, then nodded my head toward the stables. “Let’s go.”
Not taking her eyes off the horses, she began walking in their direction. “They’re beautiful,” she said with awe.
“What about your horse?” I asked her, thinking that was safe since she’d had that memory before and it had been fine.
She paused and frowned. “I don’t have a horse,” she replied, glancing at me.
Shit. Was she suffering memory loss now?
“Griffin, the white horse.” Which was registered to the other motherfucker I wanted to kill.
Her expression fell, and she turned to look back at the horses. “Oh. He-he’s not mine. When I remembered him, I thought he was, but he belongs to Arun. He bought him for…he bought him for someone else.”
Who had he bought the horse for? Why had she remembered it? Why did it make her sad?
FUCK! I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to trigger her again.
“Did you want it?” I asked, wincing, not sure I should be pressing this.
She didn’t respond right away, but she was still walking. That meant she was alert. Still with me.
Finally, she nodded. “Yes. He was born in our stables. I fell in love with him. And when I asked if I could have him”—a bitter laugh fell from her lips—“Arun bought him, then gave him to his friend.” She shook her head. “I should have never asked. Alpheus hadn’t planned on selling him until he found out I wanted him.”
Motherfucking bastards.
I didn’t ask anything more. Instead, I stood back and watched her as she went up to the fence and talked to both Jack and Diane, petting them and praising them. She was at ease with the horses. There was no trepidation. The more I thought about her wanting that horse, the more my loathing grew. Neither of those men deserved the oxygen wasted on them.
“You were with her all damn day,” Linc pointed out.
I shrugged. “That’s what I got. We know it was Arun who beat her. He bought the place to get rid of the security camera footage of it. We add him to our kill list.”
Linc shook his head. “No, we fucking don’t. And if we do, that is Mal’s decision. She is HIS daughter.”
I was aware of that. Just like I was aware he was currently outside on the patio, visiting with her. I’d wanted to stay with her for it, but with Mal glaring at me, I figured it might be smoother this way. I hadn’t realized Linc was going to take the opportunity to bitch at me though. I should have left the house.
