“So, she’s back in town already?” Kreed asked.
“Yeah,” Corvus answered. “Heard you locked her credit card.”
“Yeah. She spent too fucking much.” He came out with a pack of cookies. “I have work to catch up on since I didn’t work yesterday. I’ll be in my office if either of you need me,” he said, staring right at me.
I cocked my head to the side and narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out what the fuck was happening. I’d started this game, but somewhere along the way, Kreed had slowly taken over. I was losing control of the situation.
Wasn’t really sure if I hated it or not.
I watched him stride out of the kitchen, and it wasn’t until Corvus hummed that I ripped my eyes away from the now empty entrance. “What?” I griped.
Corvus snickered. “I think you just lost control of this entire situation, bro.”
I rolled my eyes and pushed off the counter. “Oh, fuck you?—”
The front door opened. I froze, one foot off the floor. My fingers twitched at my sides.
“Kreed!” Bonnie screeched, slamming the door shut behind her.
I clenched my jaw and lowered my other foot to the ground.
“Hudson…” Corvus warned, his voice low and quiet.
Bonnie stepped into the kitchen and narrowed her eyes at me, not even paying Corvus a bit of mind. My muscles tightened, tension riding me hard.
“You did this, didn’t you?” she snapped, tossing her expensive purse onto the countertop. It slid across the granite and almost fell off the edge. “This is all your fucking fault!”
Here we fucking went because everything was always my fucking fault.
Chapter Twelve
Kreed
* * *
The sound of my wife screeching bled into my ears before I even got to pull my chair from beneath my desk. Gritting my teeth, I set down the pack of cookies I’d grabbed, no longer hungry. I needed to intercept her before she lashed out at Hudson. Hopefully, she’d just come straight to my office since she was pissed at me and not him.
But if there was one thing I knew about Bonnie, she blamed her son for everything that went wrong in her life, even if he had absolutely nothing to do with it. She was a narcissist and just an all-around shitty human being. And she loathed the man she’d given birth to for reasons I couldn’t understand.
Forcing my jaw to loosen, I let my mask of indifference fall into place before I turned and hurried out of my office. But I knew I was already too damn late the moment I heard her heavy purse smack onto the kitchen counter. Fuck.
“You did this, didn’t you?” she snapped at Hudson, venom coating her words. “This is all your fucking fault!”
I hurried into the kitchen. Nothing but contempt and pure hatred showed on her features as she stared at her son. At a human being she’d fucking birthed. How anyone could hate Hudson was beyond me, but she did it so effortlessly. And Hudson, who—as much as I hated to admit it—was one hundred percent his mother’s child, stared back at her with the same contempt. Otherwise, his eyes were empty and cold. Flat.
It still sent chills down my spine the way Hudson could just turn off his emotions when it came to her. He’d been doing it from the moment I met him—definitely longer than that, though I never bore witness to it before then. He never should have been put in positions where he felt he had to protect himself like that, from her, but Bonnie had never been a safe space for him as a mother should be. She’d never loved and nurtured him. All she’d done was make his life an absolute fucking hell.
And that was stopping now.
“Your problem is with me.” I calmly spoke from behind her before Hudson could say something that would undoubtedly worsen the situation. He just couldn’t help himself, but when it came to her, his mouth was one hundred times worse. “Hudson has nothing to do with it.”
She spun to face me, her cheeks flushed with anger and her eyes manic. “He has everything to do with it. He just can’t ever let me be fucking happy. You think I don’t know he talked you into it? That he wanted me cut off? When the fuck does he ever come home for school breaks, Kreed?” she ranted, growing angrier by the second. “He never does! You expect me to believe he’s not the reason when he was already in here, no doubt discussing it with you, when I came home the other day?!”
“Yes, I do,” I answered, still remaining calm. Shouting back at her would solve nothing. “I opened that bill before Hudson ever came home. And you were already here before he walked through the door.”
Where the hell did she come up with these wild-ass fucking stories?
“Oh, like hell,” she hissed.
