“Leave her alone,” I snap.
He jerks upright and spins around.
He's younger than I expected—maybe twenty-seven, twenty-eight. Lean, medium height, with close-cropped hair and a wild beard. He's wearing a grey hoodie, jeans, and work boots, and his hands are balled into fists at his sides, every muscle in his body coiled.
“This is a private matter,” he snarls.
He's not huge. He's not physically imposing in any remarkable way. But he’s dangerous as fuck, nonetheless, because of his absolute conviction that he’s right and Hope has wronged him. He believes he's owed. And that belief makes him capable of anything.
“You don’t have any private matters in this house. Get the fuck out.”
He sizes me up, his eyes wild enough that I think he’s gonna lie to himself and think he can take me. “Who the fuck are you?"
"I live here." I move in closer, hoping I can get him to square off with me, dance him around and get between him and Hope under the bed.
I can’t tell if he’s armed yet.
And I want him to feel like he has space to leave. The easiest outcome is the one where he walks out of my house voluntarily. Hopefully, into the waiting arms of the law—or my brothers. I’m not sure which would be worse for him. I don’t care, either. He just needs to get away from Hope.
“This is my house,” I repeat when he doesn’t shift away from the bed. “And you're trespassing."
"I'm retrieving my fucking wife."
“You don’t have a wife here."
His face contorts, like a man who has rehearsed his grievance so many times it's become his entire identity. "You don't know what she's told you, man. She lies. She lies about everything. She took my kid and ran, and I’ve been—" His voice breaks. Almost believable. "I've been looking for them for weeks.”
“Keep looking, then. You’ve got the wrong woman here. Keep looking anywhere else, and we don’t have a problem.”
His gaze turns mean. Steely. He thinks he knows more about this moment than I do.
And I’ll give the weasel some credit—he knows more than I thought he did. He knew exactly where she was. He knows how long she’s been here.
But what hedoesn’tknow makes all the difference.
“You've been helping her, and that's—" He takesa step forward, his fist clenching and unclenching. "That's kidnapping. That's accessory to kidnapping. Fucking bitch didn’t think I knew that she’s pregnant. She wants to hide my kid from me."
My vision goes red at the edges. Kid, singular. Like his genetic material is all that matters to him.
Last fucking chance. "You need to leave."
"Fuck you." He's close now—close enough that I can smell the coffee and stale sweat on him, the sour tang of too many hours in a truck. "She's my?—"
“You weren’t married,” I snap. "And I know you don’t have a custody order. Because there isn’t a single piece of paper in the world that says Bellamy is yours. And there isn’t any evidence at all that there’s another child.”
His mouth opens and closes. I've hit a nerve—several of them—and his face cycles through fury, confusion, and something that looks like genuine bewilderment.
He really does believe he owns them. That's the sickest part. In his mind, a piece of paper is irrelevant because his claim is absolute. God-given, maybe. Natural law. The right of a man to his woman and his offspring.
"I raised her when I didn’t have to,” he snarls. "For three years, I raised that little girl. I kept a roof over her head. I fed her?—"
"You kept her mother prisoner."
“Is that what she told you? She wanted to be there. She came to me. Pregnant and homeless. I took her in and I gave her everything, and this is?—"
"You put cameras in your house to watch her. You took her phone. You didn't let her leave the property." My words are hard now, unyielding.
That’s right, motherfucker. I know more than you think.
