Yet he was smart enough to hire someone to kidnap and hide me.
That took a little bit of brain power.
Don’t underestimate him.
Or the garlic-breath goon.
My life has become some cheesy comic book.
If Darrel comes in and tells me his entire plan…
You’re stressed and nervous.
Of course, I am. It’s not every day that you get kidnapped by your ex-husband after almost freezing to death.
All I need now is some dramatic rescue attempt to finish all of this off perfectly…it’s going to be a little underwhelming when I call the police department to come instead.
But sometimes a girl needs to rescue herself.
Relying on a man just isn’t an option.
What man would I want to come rescue me?
Havoc!
You’ve got to move past that. He isn’t going to fight for you. Just like he isn’t going to trust you.
That just wasn’t meant to be, no matter how much you want it to be. I need to face reality and start working the escape plan. “Could I please have a drink and something to eat?”
“You heard my wife.” Darrel walks in, snapping orders. “She needs to care for my son and heir.”
My child will never be yours. But I can’t say that out loud yet. “Why am I here?”
“Why?” Darrel giggles. “You’re here because you didn’t appreciate the offer I made to re-institute our marriage and to give my heir back to me. I told you, Greer, that the most important thing you could ever do was give me a son.” He walks up to where I’m tied to a chair. “Then, when you finally get pregnant, you don’t tell me. What kind of loving wife does that? Explain that to me.”
Bite your tongue. Pretend to be sweet and malleable like he wants. “The kind whose husband is sleeping with a teenager and leaves her.”
“YOU CAN’T TAKE MY SON,” he bellows in my face.
I believe I already did. “So what do you plan to do? Keep me here until I agree to marry you?”
“That’s one of your two choices.” He nods to a man in a judge’s robe standing next to him. On the other side is a doctor.
Please don’t mean what I think it means.
“The other is you stay here until my son is born. Then I’ll take what’s mine.”
“My family will never let you keep my son. Rothswyler will take him from you.”
“Your family will spread the word of your sad loss in childbirth from the rooftops as they hand the baby to me. Think about how much our son will be worth when our empires combine.”
“This was all about money?”
“Of course it was. You don’t think I really loved you.” He giggles. “I wanted your money, your name, and a child so that I could control my own trust fund. That power swaps over to the father of the most recent heir. Upon his birth, I control my family. Not my father.”
Darrel has truly lost it. It doesn’t matter what happens. His father isn’t going to give up his power to Darrel. Darrel is his father’s clone…he should know that.
“So what do you choose? Are we going to be blissfully joined again? Or are you going to stay here until you give me what I want?”
