Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 88841 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 444(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88841 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 444(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
She glances down at her hands before she speaks her next words. “One weekend, he was out of town for a conference, and a couple of friends asked me to go out with them. I didn’t know he was tracking my phone. Although I should’ve suspected it since, at that point, he was so controlling that I couldn’t do anything without his approval.”
She looks up at me, and it’s like she’s not even here anymore. Her usually bright blue eyes are so dark that it’s as if she were lost in the deepest part of the ocean, and I would give anything to save her and bring her back to shore.
“He showed up at the club and dragged me out,” she murmurs, sounding far away, like she’s back in that moment, recalling what happened. “Accused me of cheating on him, called me every name in the book. When we got home, he beat the crap out of me, saying I was unappreciative of everything he’d given us, pushed me down the stairs, and then he left me for dead.”
“I’m going to kill him.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, but I can’t find it in me to regret them.
I’m not a violent guy, but a man putting his hands on a woman is my breaking point.
I’m busy thinking about how I can go about finding this guy and all the ways I can end his life when Kira places her hand on mine.
“I appreciate that, but I won’t be the reason you go to jail … and you would because Brian is an attorney—and a damn good one. So good that after he left me for dead, I called the ambulance before passing out, was taken to the hospital, and pressed charges after being told by a police officer and an attorney that Brian wouldn’t get away with it, and he managed to get away with it.”
“What the fuck do you mean, he got away with it?”
“I had two black eyes, a split lip that required stitches, a broken wrist, two cracked ribs, and a concussion.”
“Come here, please,” I plead, needing her to be closer. Across the room, on separate couches, is too far away. I need to hold her, comfort her. More for me than her because fuck if she isn’t the strongest woman I’ve ever met. But I don’t want to go to her because I want it to be her choice. I want it to always be her choice.
She crosses the room and sits next to me, and I take her hand in mine, craving the connection. She could’ve died that night, but she survived. She’s a survivor.
“The prosecutor’s office said he would get years in jail with assault and battery and attempted murder,” she continues, staring down at our linked fingers.
I already know there’s a but coming because if he had gotten convicted for all that, she wouldn’t have been living out of her car.
“While we were awaiting trial, he was out on bail. He would harass me from afar, calling and making threats. But he never once crossed the line. I just kept telling myself that, soon, he would be put away, and Violet and I would move forward with our lives, lesson learned.”
At the mention of her daughter’s name, I still. “Did he ever …”
She shakes her head. “He never laid a hand on her. Until that night, he never laid a hand on me. Had he done so, I would’ve left sooner. I was already preparing to leave him as it was. It was hard because he had gone from Prince Charming to the villain so quickly that I didn’t even see it coming. One minute, he was charming me and proposing, offering me and my daughter a great life, and the next, he was cutting me off from the world and locking us up in a gilded cage.”
“Where is he now?” I ask, needing to know how this ends so I can start figuring out how to take care of it.
“He took a plea bargain,” she says with a sigh. “Aggravated domestic assault—Class A misdemeanor. Sounds good in theory, like he would get some major time behind bars. Nope, he got a four-thousand-dollar fine and thirty days.”
Jesus, fuck, and people wonder what the hell is wrong with our country.
“I’d heard him tell me a million times how a guy he’d defended got six months and was out in thirty days. Once, a guy got sixty days, and then he walked in and then walked right back out due to overcrowding. I couldn’t risk it,” she says, meeting my eyes. “I left the courthouse and went straight to my mom’s to get Violet. Because he had cut me off and wouldn’t let me work, I had little money. A couple thousand saved that I’d been slowly stealing from him.”