Page 62 of Shark’s Pride

“There’s a—” She huffed, seeming to realign her thoughts. “Well, the best way I can describe it is… He has a darkness to him. There’s something almost…”

“Almost what?”

“Sinister,” she offered at last. “And one time, when I was at his office…” But she trailed off, flashing me a glance but nothing more, clearly as afraid of my reaction to her words as what she’d really spoken.

Wise girl.

Because I was furious. The anger burned an instant hole in my chest. I could only imagine what my face looked like. “What did he do?” I seethed through gritted teeth.

She gulped. “Bas—”

“What the hell did he do?” I exploded. “So help me God, Abbigail. If he laid a finger on you…”

She recoiled from my intensity. Very wise girl. “No,” she spurted. “He didn’t touch me.” For a fraction of a second, her racing thoughts were visible across her face. “Well, he did…but—”

“Fucker!”

“But that’s not what I’m talking about—” Her volume was cranked to my level now. “I can handle myself, Bas! You don’t have to worry about me!”

“Not a decision you get to make.”

“Bas—”

“He. Touched. You?”

“Bas! Calm down!”

“Also not a decision you get to make.” I fished out my cell, forcing myself to prioritize the reinforcements I’d call in. “I swear to all things holy, I’ll destroy that motherfucker. He has tangled with me for the last time.”

“Sebastian.” She surged into my lap, seizing me by the biceps. Her grip was brutal. Her voice was desperate. “Stop this. You need to calm down!”

“When was this? When, goddammit?”

“Please listen to me. Listen to the whole story. I said he didn’t do anything to me.”

I clamped my jaw, uncaring if it fell off from the tension. “You said he touched you.”

“And I’ll explain—if you’ll let me. Jesus Christ, Sebastian!”

Her chest was heaving. So was mine. I pulled an arm free from her grip long enough to stab a hand through my hair. Grabbing a bottle of water, I offered another to Abbi as she settled back on the seat beside me. We each chugged half before contemplating words again.

“Please tell me what happened with Blake,” I requested, calmer than before. “So my imagination doesn’t make up twenty scenarios that end with you trapped beneath that bastard.”

She exhaled with composure to match mine, though a spirited light still blazed from the depths of her eyes. “I went to deliver his lunch. It was the day I rearranged my schedule and hit the route early. You’d been avoiding me, so I wanted to catch you off guard. Do you remember that day?”

“Of course I do.” I quirked a small smile. God, how I admired and adored her tenacity.

“So, I took Viktor by surprise as well. People get used to a certain schedule when you do the same thing day after day.” She waited for me to agree and then continued. “Anyway, just as I was going to enter his suite, a woman came rushing out of there instead. At first I thought they’d just been wrapping up a meeting…but she had a huge red mark on her face and she was crying.”

I dropped my hand. Before it hit my thigh, I’d fisted it. “Did you know her?”

Abbi shook her head. “Even if I had, I don’t think she would’ve stopped. I barely had a second to confirm that—”

“That what?” I asked.

Once more, her breaths came in harsher spurts. “The mark—the bruise—it was a fresh handprint. I’m not mistaken about this, Bas.”

“I don’t doubt that, baby.”