Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
But she’d sunk to a new low, and I was here to confront her ass and see what, exactly, she’d been thinking when she’d paid a man to kidnap our daughter.
I knew I didn’t have the full story, and honestly? I just wanted, for once in my goddamn life, to understand what in the hell had gone through Beatrice’s head when she was doing what she did.
Barging into her stupid corner office where she acted like she was so fuckin’ happy, I didn’t mince words.
“What. In. The. Fuck.”
Beatrice turned to me, looking so goddamn serene that I wanted to throat punch her.
I refrained. Barely.
“Well, Coke. For once it’s you coming to me. To what do I owe this pleasure?” she asked, looking smug.
Like she knew she’d caused something to happen.
“Did you know that you had a large, lump sum come out of your bank account that paid one of the men that was caught kidnapping my new neighbor?” I asked carefully.
I mean, obviously she knew good and goddamn well that she’d had a part in that particular scenario. I just wanted to see the confirmation on her face.
Which came not two seconds later.
“I’m sorry, but it’s not illegal to pick your own daughter up.” She paused. “From what I’ve read, anyway. I hired a car service to get her. I needed her here so we could discuss a few matters.”
Lying bitch.
She knew exactly what she’d done.
“Well, there was a problem with that. Your car service didn’t even go to the college to pick Frankie up—and we’ll discuss why you think it’s okay to do that in a minute. Unfortunately, your ‘car service’ came to my place, and they kidnapped my neighbor, who happened to be coming to my house. And you knew good and well that Frankie wasn’t at my place,” I snapped.
“Oh, dear,” Beatrice said. “Was your new little toy hurt?”
My new little toy.
Now it was all making a sick sort of sense.
“So, you knew I’m seeing someone.” I guessed where her mind was.
I wasn’t actually seeing Cora, but Beatrice didn’t need to know that. Likely, all she’d heard was that her husband had moved on and had reacted to it the only way she knew how—irrationally.
“I don’t know what you’re insinuating,” she lied. “I was just expressing concern for your new neighbor.”
Lying sack of shit.
“Well, regardless of whether you meant for it to be our daughter or not, you can’t just go around kidnapping people and bringing them to you. And, unfortunately for you, you’re about to learn that lesson the hard way,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
I turned, gesturing for Tyler to come in.
Tyler came in and held out a set of cuffs.
“Do you want to do this the easy way, or the hard way?” Tyler asked, looking at Beatrice, whose face had gone utterly shell-shocked.
She honestly didn’t think that this was going to happen?
She hadn’t even tried to hide her tracks. She’d literally paid someone to go kidnap someone else, even if it was our daughter—which I was ninety percent sure that it wasn’t her daughter she’d intended for them to get. Whether she’d actually given specific instructions for Cora to get picked up or not was beside the point. Cora had been the one to be kidnapped, and whether Beatrice had wanted that to happen or not, she was going to be punished for it.
The days where Beatrice ran roughshod over my life were over.
She’d crossed the line, and I was going to make sure she knew it.
“I don’t think so.” Beatrice crossed her arms and glared at the two of us.
“You may not think so,” Tyler continued around the desk and stopped next to Beatrice. “But it’s happening. Sorry for you.”
Then he gestured for her to get up. “Either we do this where you’re walking under your own free will, or I cuff you and force you to walk out of here. Which one do you think will go down better in your place of business?”
That was when Ben arrived, looking worried.
“What’s going on?” Ben asked the moment he walked farther into the room and took a look at what was going down.
“Your daughter is being arrested for facilitating the kidnapping of Cora Maldanado yesterday,” Tyler said. “And I’m taking her into the station. You can call her lawyer for her if you want.”
Beatrice stood then, clearly unhappy.
“I’m right here!” she hissed, displeased that she was being spoken about as if she wasn’t present. “And I’m not going anywhere with you. I did nothing wrong. I sent for my daughter. How is it my fault that this one’s” —she gestured to me with a flick of her hand— “new hussy got caught up in the crossfire?”
It was at that point that what little respect I had for the mother of my child wasted away into nothing.