"But we both know the truth, don't we, Anna? Men like that, men with power, with money, with options, they don't forgive. Theyuse. He used you to ease his guilt. To be a warm body for his daughter. A convenient replacement for what he lost."
His eyes searched mine, looking for the doubt. Finding it.
"You were never anything more than a convenience. When's the last time he said he loved you? When's the last time he chose you over his dead wife's memory?"
The words burrowed in like parasites, feeding on every insecurity I'd ever had about my growing feelings for Jack. Every moment of distance. Every time he'd pulled away.
The doubt bloomed thorns in my chest, wrapping around my heart, squeezing. Had Jack's kindness been real? Or was I just another project, another broken thing he thought he could?—
"Daddy loves Anna."
The voice was small but clear. Cutting through Carter's poison like a bell in fog.
Daisy.
I felt her shift behind me, felt her lift her headfrom where it had been pressed against my shoulder blade. She was looking at Carter. I couldn't see her face, but I could feel the tension in her small body. Not the loose, trembling terror from before, but something rigid.
"What did you say?" Carter's voice was soft. Dangerous.
"Daddy loves Anna." Daisy's voice shook but didn't break. "She is nice. She reads stories with funny voices. She makes my daddy smile, not the sad smile like when mommy died."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Then Carter laughed. A low, genuinely amused sound that was somehow more frightening than his rage.
"She speaks," he said softly, almost admiringly, turning his full attention to Daisy now. And the shift, the predatory focus of all that calculating intelligence turning toward a five-year-old child, made my blood run cold. "The little mute girl speaks. Foryou."
He looked back at me, something terrible dawning in his eyes. Understanding. Realization.
"You did replace me," he said, voice filled with a twisted kind of wonder. "You found a new broken thing to fix. A widower and his traumatized child. And you gave them a voice. You gave them a family."
The smile that spread across his face was the most frightening thing I'd ever seen.
"And now I'm going to make you watch me take it apart. Piece by piece. Starting with her."
The sense of protectiveness that surged through me burned away everything else. The doubt, the fear, the shame, all of it evaporated in the white-hot need to protect this child.
"If you want to hurt someone, hurt me."
My voice came out low, steady, stripped of everything but truth. It echoed in the vast space.
"Terrorize me. Humiliate me. Do whatever sick thing you've been planning for twenty months. Cut me, burn me, break every bone in my body. I won't fight. I won't scream. I'll be whatever you need me to be."
I meant every word.
"But you let that little girl walk out of here. She isinnocent. She has done nothing to you."
Behind me, I felt Daisy trying to shake her head, trying to protest. I pressed harder against her, silencing her without words.
"Take me, Carter. Isn't that what you really want? To prove you still have power over me?"
My defiance was the wrong trigger. I saw it immediately. The way his expression shifted from cold calculation to something hot and uncontrolled.
Pure and undiluted rage.
His face contorted. He strode toward us violently.
"You don't get to make the rules anymore, Anna!" His voice bounced off the walls, magnified by the empty warehouse room. "You don't get to be themartyr!"
