Then, it hit him.
It hadn’t just been over for Axelle the last year, but for Duke too.
Well, shit.
“Just like that?”
He was to the point.
“Know why I hate you, Lewis?” he asked.
The man lifted a brow.
“I hate you because I know what you two had, and I don’t believe for a fucking second that there was never unfinished business between you when you left. This proved it. As far as I’m concerned, Axelle made her choice. We have nothing to say to each other from here on out. In those papers, she relinquishes all parental rights with my daughters. She’s not to see them, call them, or reach out to me or them. She doesn’t want them or me. Clearly.”
Lewis was honest.
“She does love them.”
He stopped him.
“Like she loved me? She moved on fast, Lewis. Here’s my piece of advice for you. Don’t saddle yourself with a director of the FBI. Don’t marry her, and don’t ever think that you’re her whole world.”
Lewis got the hurt.
He really did.
He’d just found out that Axelle slept with his arch-nemesis and now, he was lashing out. Only, he also knew that Axelle, and himself, weren’t the marrying type. The cage made them twitchy. Axelle had tried to forget that.
He hadn’t.
“I’ve done it twice, and it has been a disaster.”
Lewis pointed at his face.
“Want to hit me? I’ll let you swing at me and I won’t stop you.”
He stared into his eyes.
“No.”
Lewis was curious.
“Why not?” he asked. “I would have kicked your ass if it was reversed.”
Duke began laughing.
And laughing.
And laughing.
Well, that was for a couple of reasons, and the first one was that he wasn’t angry with the man. Axelle made her choice, and he of all people knew how she could take a person on that ride.
The other reason was more for his own self-satisfaction.
That’s when he lowered his voice, and stared into the man’s eyes.
“One, I don’t care enough about a woman who would abandon her children because she changed her mind about being a mother, and I say that as the child of a single parent. Oh, and two, you’re going to have to face down my sister, and out of the two of us, she’s going to make your life a living hell for not only sleeping with my wife—her sister-in-law, but betraying that friendship. She’s going to make you bleed in ways you’ve never seen coming, Lewis. Reaper is about to meet his match.”
