I beam Jason a wide smile. “Sure am.”
Because I don’t think Rhys will actually hurt him. Okay, sure, he’s the ‘antihero,’ and yes, I made him an assassin, but technically, he hasn’t killed anyone. Also, this is the real world. Rhys surely understands we have rules. Laws. One can’t go around murdering people willy-nilly.
“If you ever speak directly to her again, I swear on all that’s unholy, I’ll slit your throat and pull your tongue through the hole.”
Or maybe he doesn’t understand—or doesn’t care because he’ll be gone by dawn, and I’ll be alone to deal with the aftermath.
“You’re insane,” Jason half breathes, half laughs. There’s also a noticeable tremble in his voice. Don’t blame him. If Rhys said that to me, I would legit shit myself.
“Insane? No. Loyal, protective, arrogant, and dangerous. Absolutely.”
When Rhys pushes Jason to the nearest wall, I throw out my arm to catch Lisa when she tries to rush to intervene. The slam of Jason’s body against the framed picture of Pygmalion and Galatea by Jean-Léon Gérôme shatters the glass.
“Sorry,” Rhys snaps over his shoulder, but Lisa’s scream drowns out his apology.
“Shut her the fuck up,” Rhys growls. “Now.”
“Lisa,” Jason says, gasping, having had the wind knocked out of him. “Don’t make it worse.”
“Do something!” Lisa demands of me.
With a snort-laugh, I ask, “Why should I? He was a shitty husband who cheated on me with you.” I poke her in her chest, and she takes a protective step back. “For six years. But I could have forgiven that if he had left me alone and gone to live his happy life with his side piece slash girlfriend. But nope, he’s still up in my business being a fucking nuisance. And you want me to save him from the one person who has my back? Girl, you must be out of your mind.” Then I say over my shoulder to Rhys, “Go ahead, baby. Have fun.”
“No!” Lisa wails.
Rhys bangs Jason against the wall again, hard enough that even I flinch. “Men like you are an affront to humanity.”
“No, wait. Stop. I’m sorry!” Jason yells. When Rhys switches up his hold and grabs Jason by the throat, my ex-husband fights like a caged animal to break free, but that five inches in height makes a difference—as does the massive contrast in musclemass. “Charly, Jesus, come on. I’m sorry,” he pants out when he can’t overpower him.
With atsk, Rhys says, “I warned you.”
Jason, a coward at heart, squeezes his eyes shut. “It was an accident.”
Rhys leans away to glance with disgust at Jason’s crotch. “Like the way you just pissed yourself?”
Wait, what?
I step to the side to get a better view, and yep… There it is—a dark stain spreading across Jason’s pants. Giggling, I smirk. “Not such a big man now, are you?” And while his fight and humility shouldn’t fill me with such satisfaction, it does. If anyone deserves to be brought low, it’s this jerkoff.
Rhys takes Jason down with him when he crouches for a piece of the broken glass shattered at their feet. My stomach does a worried flip as I watch him drag my ex back up along the wall and press the edge of the glass to his throat, heedless that he’s cutting his own palm. The jagged glass opens a tiny, shallow wound on Jason’s throat, and although I’ve fantasized about this moment, about Jason getting his comeuppance for being an abominable dickhead, I don’t want Rhys’s last day to be this.
Messy.
Bloody.
Violent.
Also, Jason was a bad husband, true, but that’s not a death-sentence-worth offense. Get the shit scared out of him, sure. But I don’t want his death on my conscience, for what…? For wounding my pride and self-esteem? Even if Jason were dead at myfeet, it wouldn’t magically heal me. I have to do that work myself, one difficult day at a time.
“Please don’t hurt me. I’m going to be a father.”
Rhys digs the glass deeper. “Where was this concern when your child was inside Charlotte?”
The question guts me in too many ways. Let’s go back to when I was a terrified eighteen-year-old who everyone saw as the girl from the wrong side of the tracks who nabbed herself the winning lottery ticket when she got knocked up by Harley Cove’s golden boy. Of course, that wasn’t exactly how it happened. Who cares about the truth when gossip is more fun to believe? By the time I miscarried, we were already married, and I had dropped out of college.
I also realized one vital fact that made Jason despise me—I’m not, nor could I ever be, a fucking Wembley.
Most folks in Harley Cove, including me, grew up feeling inferior to that family because they live in the biggest house in the nicest part of town and have the most zeros in their bank accounts. But the longer I spent on the inside, the more I realized their money can’t buy them decency or integrity.
