“Because he didn’t. Not even close. Though that was what he wanted me to believe. Instead, he was after me because of what he’d gain once he became my husband.” The darkness was oddly comforting. Made it easier for her to talk. “I don’t know how much you may have heard about me over the years…”
“I tried not to hear anything.”
She swallowed. “Thank you for that. Really. Lovely.” Talk about a brutal response. As if her heart had needed to be crushed any more than it already was.
His covers rustled. “Delaney, wait, that’s not what I meant!”
“I left the US. Before my mother died, she wanted to reconnect with her father. They’d been estranged for my entire life. I’d never met the man, not until I left with her. I met him for the first time right before my twenty-third birthday.” The first meeting had been brief. Awkward. Cold. “My mother got a villa in Italy. I studied design, worked on my master’s, and the days passed.” Slowly. “We spent more time with my grandfather. It became less awkward.” But, still somehow, just as cold. “Then my mother got sick. She was in and out of the hospital, and before I knew it, she’d passed.” And Delaney had just been left with the grandfather who felt like such a stranger.
“I’m sorry. Your mother was always kind to me.”
Sorrow pulled at her. “She tended to be kind to everyone. Which was why I never understood how she and her father had stopped speaking for so long. Then I met him. Got to know him and a lot became clear to me.” Her chest ached. “He was a difficult man. Demanding. Controlling. And stupid rich.”
“Excuse me?”
“Apparently, my grandfather didn’t approve of my father. He’d told my mother that if she married him, he’d cut her off completely. Obviously, she married my father, and they had plenty of wonderful years together before—” Delaney stopped. She inhaled, then made herself finish, “Before my father was killed in a robbery at his garage.” Her father had been alone there, after hours, when the robber broke in and shot him. A bullet in the head and one in the heart. The safe in the garage had been emptied. The killer never caught.
The grief had nearly destroyed Delaney’s mother. And Delaney had felt like a walking ghost for weeks. Pain still pulsed through her when she thought of her father. He’d always had such a warm smile. Been willing to help everyone.
There had been no sign of forced entry at the garage, and the cops had thought that her dad might have let the attacker inside. Maybe her dad had believed the person knocking on the closed door needed help. He’d opened the door to help and been killed for his kindness.
Nash had gone with her to her father’s funeral. Nash had been steady and strong when everything else had been falling apart around her.
“Delaney?” Nash’s gentle prompt.
She realized the grief from the past had pulled her under. A few deep, long breaths, and she nodded. “Sorry.” Rushed. “I, um, I was talking about my grandfather, wasn’t I?”
“You don’t need to apologize to me. Not ever.”
His words eased some of the tension in her shoulders. Delaney picked up her story, trying to keep her voice flat as she said, “My mother died.” A long and painful battle with the bitch that was cancer. “Two years later, my grandfather died, and when he passed, that was when I discovered that I was in his will. His sole heir. He’d made that will on the day I was born. My grandfather kept his promise to cut out my mother, but he left everything to me.” And by everything…
I don’t know what to do with this new life. I don’t know how to act. Who to be. “I wasn’t ready for that world, or the predators that would come calling. My grandfather had land, property—everywhere. He owned so much property that, hell, he practically owned towns. And he died, and it all went to me, and I…” She sucked in a deep breath. Slowly exhaled. “Based on what Kurt told me when I was locked up in his closet, my grandfather’s holdings are not all what you’d call legal.”
Nash grunted.
“Maybe that was another reason why my mother fled Italy and didn’t go back for so long.” Delaney didn’t know for sure because her mother had never revealed much about the past to her. “I know Kurt wanted what I had. He wanted everything that my grandfather left me. And I know when I die, as my husband, he would get it.”
“What was he gonna do? Fake an accident for you?”
“He promised to drown me on the honeymoon. Such a tragic end for me. Kurt swore that he’d play the grieving widower perfectly.”
“Fucking sonofabitch.”
Yes. Indeed. He?—
She heard a creak just beyond the closed motel room door. Automatically, she stiffened. Her gaze flew to the door.
Just footsteps. Just someone going past to another room. Stop being so afraid. You’re safe. You are?—
A hand pressed over her mouth. “Do not make a sound,” Nash ordered.
He’d moved in complete silence. And so quickly.
“Get out of the bed, Delaney.”
She inched out of the bed.
But she could hear the faint snick of the door’s lock. Nash grabbed her, he hauled her against his body, and they rushed toward the wall behind that door.
