Page 291 of Hot Tycoons Boxset

Agatha smiles at me. “Well, suck it up, then. You’ll have to get used to us.”

I frown.

It doesn’t deter her as she cheerfully continues. “We’re a very close-knit group. We’re more of a family than friends. We’re nosy, interfering, and we like to show up unannounced at each others’ homes.”

“You’re really selling this,” I tell her and she grins.

“Zayn comes with a package deal—his family—which is us, whether he likes to admit it or not.

Having Agatha drop me back at the dance studio, I wave goodbye as I unlock the door.

I have to reorganize the books that still lay out in my office, call up customers, get the studio up and running. As I walk through the newly carpeted hall and look at the new rose gold painted walls, I muse that it is a better look than the tacky one I had before.

It is nearing noon, and I know Zayn will drop by for lunch.

Ever since the incident with the social worker, he started hovering. I don’t mind it, but I often find myself pushing back at him to give me some space.

As I walk towards my office, I glance at the security cameras: the obvious ones and the hidden ones. Their existence gives me some comfort.

Not something I want to analyze right now.

Stepping into the office, I freeze at the man who is standing there, his back to me.

Tall, broad-shouldered, with sandy hair, I would know him anywhere.

Stepping back is instinct and fear grips me by the throat when my foot makes contact with the metallic bowl that lays on its side behind me, sending it careening into the shelf with a loud noise.

The man turns instantly, his gray eyes pinning me to the spot.

“Eve.”

My mouth moves, but no words come out. It is as if my voice stopped working.

When he takes a step towards me, I take two back, terrified.

All these years, the work I put into building myself up, piece by piece, all that effort put into learning how to defend myself, it was all for nothing, I realize dimly, as I hear something loud thumping nearby.

In my head, I made Thomas into a monster, this larg

e, horrifying creature, and here he is, looking so normal. You could pass him in the street, and it wouldn’t occur to you that this man would take a belt to a pregnant woman who was raised in the same house as him, that he would force himself on a heavily pregnant woman, enjoying humiliating her and hurting her.

My hand automatically goes to my stomach, the past and present crashing into each other, and suddenly I am back to that twenty-something year old who had just been kicked out of her parent’s home with no money and no means to survive.

Thomas takes another step towards me, and I can see his mouth moving, but I hear nothing past the ringing in my ears. I back away, stepping into the hallway, nearly tripping over the little Raggedy-Ann doll that Mila left in my office a few months ago.

Seeing that tattered doll grounds me, the bright red yarn that I attempted to glue back on, painstakingly, when Mila had chewed on it at night, reminding me that I have child to protect. That I have a man who loves me. That I have people who care about me.

It reminds me that I have roots now.

And I can’t let this man take any of that from me.

Anger gives me courage.

Adrenaline gives me the ability to hide my growing fear with harshness.

I reach down and pick the doll up, holding it tightly in my hand.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

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