She nods. “Da gets angry. He hates to be questioned and he really dislikes it when I stand up against Daire as it makes mam angry. He’s hurt me a few times over the years. I’m just glad to be out of there.”
I fucking bet she is. I’ll be having a meeting with Ronan Delaney and I’ll be letting him know what’ll happen if he ever comes near my wife again.
“What do you want, Quinn?”
She looks up at me in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“From everything I’ve learned, you’ve not really had a say in what’s happened in your life. So what do you want?”
She stands up and starts to pace. I leave her be, letting her gather her thoughts. “I want to be free, I want to be happy, and I want to become me.”
“Then that’s what’ll happen,” I promise her. “You’re safe here. Safe to figure out who you are.”
“I need you to trust me, Lorenzo. There’s no future if you can’t at least try,” she says softly.
I look at this woman standing in my garden and I finally understand something that I should have understood months ago.
Quinn Delaney wasn't hiding secrets, she was surviving.
Fuck, I don’t know how to trust. “I’ll try,” I promise her.
The smile she gives me is breathtaking and I just hope that I don’t break that promise.
Quinn and Valentina went to the library after dinner, something about reading a new book and buddy reading. I have no fucking idea what that was, but the pure enjoyment on my wife’s face when she was telling me, I didn’t care what it was. I pressed a kiss to her forehead and told her to enjoy it and that I’d be back later.
I’ve kept my anger in check since Quinn told me about the abuse she went through at the hands of her mother and father. After I promised her I’d try to trust her, she sat beside me and told me everything. Including her mother telling her that if she'd been less difficult to love, it wouldn't have always been so easy to choose Daire.
Now I’m at the Delaney house. Marco’s waiting outside for me, ready in case I need him. But I won’t. I’ll leave here with both Ronan and Bridget breathing. Tonight is a warning for them.
Of course, I find the fucker in his office and his bitch of a wife is seated across from him. They both look up at me as I close the door behind me.
"Lorenzo," Ronan says as he gets to his feet, his gaze searching my face. "This is unexpected."
"Yes," I say. “It is. I didn’t think it warranted a call.” I wasn’t going to let the bastard know I was coming. It would give him time to hide.
Bridget looks at me. Then at Ronan. She has her husband's instincts enough to know that this unexpected visit is not a social call.
"What can I do for you?" Ronan says.
"You put your hands on my wife on her wedding day," I say.
Silence falls over the room, but I watch them both. I watch as Bridget goes very still, whereas Ronan's jaw tightens.
"Quinn is my daughter," he says, carefully. "What happens in this house?—"
"She's not in your house anymore," I say. "She's in mine. She's my wife. She's under my name and my protection and you put her into a mirror on her wedding morning."
"She was being difficult," he says. "She was?—"
"She was getting married," I say. "She was standing in a room in her wedding dress, and you grabbed her arm and you pushed her into a mirror, and she had a head injury through the entire ceremony, not to mention your finger marks as bruises on her arm."
"That's an exaggeration?—"
"It isn't."
"Lorenzo." His tone shifts to a pleading tone. "You have to understand, raising Quinn has been?—"
"I don't need you to explain Quinn to me."
