Seeing the pain etched in his expression, seeping off him, it was pure torture to stand in front of him without touching him. Without comforting him. The anger that I’d been so sure I wanted to hold on to slipped through my fingers.
“Almost two decades. I turned into someone dark, ugly, twisted. But that was my version of healing. I got myself a family. A fucked-up one to be sure, but I had one I truly belonged in. For that same amount of time, you had nothing. No one but a man who beat you.” His voice cracked then, with fury or some other emotion, I wasn’t sure.
But fury factored in there somewhere because his hands were fisted at his sides.
“You had no one but your daughter,” he bit out, eyes piercing me with their intensity. “You had one cherished thing. One thing that truly mattered. You lived for. You fought for. And because you fought, because you lived, I have you.”
Tears blurred my vision.
“I have you because of that girl,” he ground out. “Because of what a fuckin’ amazing mother you are. I have you because of that fire you have inside you that would do anything to protect her. And I threatened that by doing something that comes natural to me.”
He took a gun out of his cut and laid it very purposefully on the console table behind the couch, next to some crystals.
My heart thundered.
“I had planned on using this,” he nodded to the gun. “And this,” he took the knife from his belt. It gleamed against the light. He placed it next to the gun.
My eyes left the weapons and went to him. He’d been watching me the entire time.
“I was going to end his life with those,” he murmured. “It was going to be slow. Messy. It was going to be fucking spectacular.”
I bristled at his tone, but something in me responded positively too. I liked it. The passion in his voice, talking about torturing and killing Preston.
“I was blind. Blind with my love for you. With the guilt over what I let happen to you. Rage. Fuckin’ fear. Terror that for the second time in my life, I’d lose everything. And that’s why I was prepared to kill him. Despite what it would do to Violet and, in turn, to you.” He took a breath. A visible, deep breath. “I’m filled with shame over that, Kate.”
The words were coming from a visceral place. They were being torn from him. That’s why he’d been gone for so long, because he’d been looking for those words. The strength to face me.
“Not gonna say it’s not hard,” he continued. “One of the hardest things in my life, not killin’ him. Letting him walk out…” He didn’t finish the sentence, visibly shuddering.
Shuddering at the thought of Preston walking away from this.
“But that’s my shit,” he patted his chest. “Years of it. And it isn’t right. And I’m not gonna let it cost me my second chance.”
My shoulders sagged.
He wasn’t going to kill Preston. He wasn’t going to break my daughter’s heart. There was some relief there. A lot. One problem, a sizeable one, had been solved.
“He’s not leavin’ until he gives you a divorce,” Swiss informed me in a much firmer, much more recognizable tone. The ‘I’m an alpha male, and I’m going to take care of everything’ tone.
I blinked.
“And a healthy fuckin’ settlement,” Swiss’s lips tilted up just a tad. “There’s no number that can pay you back for what you’ve been through, but I’ll make sure we drain him dry. Make sure you get what you deserve… Which is everything.”
This was probably my moment to ask how exactly Swiss and the club were going to manage getting me a divorce. How they were going to make it so Preston would go back to Carver Springs without pressing charges for what I was guessing was felony assault and kidnapping.
Then again, I wasn’t going to press charges for felony attempted murder, so the threat of that would likely keep him quiet.
This was all really fricking complicated. Surely there would be lawyers, statements, meetings. Yes, this was definitely the time for me to ask questions.
But I didn’t.
Whatever I said or asked wasn’t going to make a difference. Swiss wanted to take care of me. Wanted to atone for what he considered his sin of letting me go. This was his way of doing it. Of helping him sleep at night. And I was coming to understand that the club and the men in it didn’t stop once they were on one of these crusades.
So instead of asking questions, I said something else entirely.
“My stepfather raped me when I was thirteen.”
He stopped breathing.