Page 86 of Possession

Then she fell to her knees and cried.

I held her and promised I’d return. She told me she was scared. She was afraid I wouldn’t come back. And that she loved me.

She, of all people, didn’t need to tell me that. My mother’s love for everyone in her life runs as deep as the ocean and shines brighter than the sun.

The harder you love, the harder you break. My mom can’t break any more than she already has.

There will be nothing left of her if she does.

Which makes my focus more important than anything. It also makes the line I crossed today with mywifevery, very dangerous.

It doesn’t matter how much I want her. Anything more with Landyn is a hard no.

She’ll hate me for touching her when all this is over. It won’t matter how hard I try to convince her that when I had her against the wall today—when the moment was private and only ours—it meant something to me.

I get on the highway to head south from Oceanside when my phone rings over the Bluetooth. I look at the screen and frown when I answer. “Spencer. I thought I gave you the night off.”

“You did.” His tone is rushed and not at all professional like usual. “I’m on my way back to the house. June called. Something happened—there’s been an … incident.”

I grip the steering wheel, change lanes to pass the car in front of me, and hit the gas. “Incident?”

“Mr. Decker came by the house tonight.”

“Ed?” I clip. “He knows better than to come to the house uninvited after the way he left last time. What the hell did he want?”

“No.” His tone goes tight. I’ve never heard him sound like this before. “Not Ed. It was Nic.”

“Fuck.”

“Sir, are you close?”

“Not close enough. Dammit!” I bellow, hitting the steering wheel. “What the fuck did he do? Tell me.”

And just like he’s been trained to do in the Marino house, he does exactly what I order.

He tells me in acute detail what went down.

What I allowed to happen, because I left her.

I wasn’t fucking there.

20

INFERNO

Brax

Figuring out why the guards let Nic in instead of following my orders to keep him out should be my first concern. I know they were watching the security feed and did nothing to stop Nic from what he gets off on—rape. Just like most of the men in this fucking family.

There’s no other way around it. I heard Damian was almost as bad as his cousin back in the day.

Almost.

It’s why I couldn’t leave her to him.

But this means I’m working among men I can’t trust. I need to get them the fuck off this property and away from me.

That should be my first priority.

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