“I…” The air caught in my lungs. “I just need a second.” To process. To think.
Mum’s eyes flashed, sharp with warning. “Violet…”
I shook my head and stepped back.
“Violet, please!”
But I was already moving. The door slammed shut behind me as I fled—and ran straight into Ryder. The impact almost knocked me over, but he caught me before I could stumble, his hands gripping my upper arms to steady me as I stared up at him, gasping.
My arms lifted instinctively, ready to shove him away. Ready to run again.
But instead, my fingers curled into his shirt, clinging.
He shouldn’t have been here. None of this should have been happening. But right now, I didn’t care. Not when everything I thought I knew was breaking apart.
“It’s okay,” he said quietly, grounding, as if he could feel me coming undone. “I’ve got you. Just breathe.”
But I couldn’t. “Don’t you dare tell me you told me so,” I managed, my arms trembling. Somewhere behind me, I could hear the distant sound of crying drifting from the room, but I refused to turn back.
This wasn’t something I could immediately forgive and forget. I needed time to figure it out.
Guilt gnawed at me for not believing her, but it was buried beneath a deeper resentment, thick and suffocating.
“I won’t,” he said, his infuriatingly calm voice cutting through the chaos in my head.
“You don’t get to tell me to forgive her,” I snapped. “Or to hear her out.”
“That doesn’t sound like me. That’s all you.” Hehummed a soft laugh, his thumbs tracing slow circles over my arms. “My advice is to give her back.”
“Ryder!”
“It was a joke.” He rolled his eyes. “She’s your mum, Violet. No matter what she says, or what she’s done. I know you?—”
“You don’t know me at all.” I tried to pull away, but his grip tightened.
“I know you well enough to know you’ll forgive her,” he said quietly. “Because you’re so fucking good. You’re the sunshine in a storm.”
The words hit harder than I expected, and I couldn’t stand here and listen to it.
“I need a minute,” I rasped. “From you. From her. From everything.”
Chapter 42
Ryder
“What do you mean you don’t know who Mr C is?” I snapped, and Hendrix glanced at Roman likeIwas the problem.
“You caused them to drive off an edge, killing one of the men and greatly wounding the other two,” Hendrix replied like a judgmental arsehole. “You could have killed Violet.”
Okay. Maybe I was the problem. But in my defence, I didn’t think they’d evade me or drive so recklessly. So in all honesty, it was their fault.
“Max killed the driver, not me, and Violet’s just fine.” Aside from her existential crisis, shoving me away when I may or may not have been eavesdropping, and her current decision to barricade herself in her room.
“The sole survivor, Christopher Van Der, was able to give us some insight once Maxim showed him his intestines,” Roman said, his voice flat enough to make Hendrix’s brow lift.
Truthfully, I barely noticed his lack of empathy anymore. He wasn’t completely emotionally shallow, just wired differently.
So sometimes he had to mimic others’ emotions becauseyes, crying over your dead grandmother is the typical, expected response. Getting irritated at everyone else for crying over her, however, was not.
