“He’s going to kill me, Cash.” Pain leached into the words.
Those words smacked me across the face and brutality burned through my being.
I ground my teeth as I tried to keep my cool. To tamp down the violence that bashed and battered at the barriers where I tried to keep it trapped. Attempting to think rationally while all sense and logic melted away.
Leaving me nothing but a pulp of savagery.
“What do you mean, he’s going to kill you?” I bit off, each word a splinter of broken glass.
Tell me you’re being facetious.
Tell me you’re exaggerating.
“I…I found all this evidence.” It was a torrent of regret that rushed from her mouth. “He’s not who I thought he was. I was such a fool. So blind.”
My hands curled into fists as I warred between the need to go blazing out the door to hunt the fucker down and demanding to know if she loved him.
A selfish prick needing to know if she was broken over him.
But I was rooted. Held by the bold, brutalized strength that simmered from her being.
“I knew he had a good job and made a lot of money, but I soon realized it was a lot more than it should be. At the beginning, he convinced me he was really good at investments and playing the stock market. But as the years passed, mysuspicions grew. It got to the point where I couldn’t let it go. When it just started eating at me. So I confronted him. Told him I knew something was going on.”
Her throat bobbed as she frantically swallowed, the woman pacing one step to the right then back to the left before she was pleading with me again.
“He tried to gaslight me, tell me I was being crazy and making things up that weren’t there. I guess at first, it worked because I didn’t want it to be true. But it kept eating at me. I didn’t want to be this complacent person, Cash. Didn’t want to just swallow bullshit for the sake of making my life easier.”
Daisy inhaled a shattered breath, and she anxiously scrubbed her palm over her forehead. “I started digging into his accounts and connections, and I discovered huge sums of money. Like, obscene amounts of money, Cash. There was no question he was crooked.”
Rage churned, every word she delivered a blow to my psyche. A dagger to the decision I’d made to turn my back on her.
“Then one of his business associates disappeared.” Horror held her in a fist. “There was no evidence that he was involved in that, but I knew. I knew, and I knew I couldn’t hold onto the things that I actually had proof of.”
I couldn’t speak before her confession continued to rush, “I took all the evidence I had to the police on the same day I filed for divorce. He was arrested for money laundering as well as a bunch of other crimes.”
“Fuck, Daisy?—”
She turned him in?
But she didn’t stop. She just kept relinquishing the details. “I didn’t want anything of his. I just wanted to be free. While he was awaiting trial, I got through the divorce as quickly as possible.”
Divorced.
She was divorced and running from her ex who was behind bars.
My head spun through the details, trying to figure out exactly how I was going to get to the bastard.
How I would wipe away the fear that was so blatant on her face.
I recognized it now. The way she’d struggled to hide it. To keep from showing the terror she felt to her kids.
But the guy was behind bars.
And she was here now.
Safe.
I could figure out the rest later.
