Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
“It broke me.” Frankie stares at her lap, blinking rapidly, fighting back tears. “I wanted to die.”
I did that. I put that pain inside her.
Leo tenses as if fighting the impulse to go to her. “If she hadn’t been shown that video, she would’ve loved you and remained devoted to you through every horrendous thing she endured in the hills. Even after your betrayal, she waited.”
“How long?” The tremor in my voice exposes the storm brewing inside me. “How long have you been fucking her?”
“Five months.” He holds my glare with a confronting confidence that doesn’t waver. There’s no apology in his tone, no hesitation. Just the raw, unvarnished truth. “I’ve been in love with her much longer than that.”
Leo’s words hit like shrapnel, scattering shards of heartbreak and jealousy through my wasted soul.
Five months.
The span of time echoes in my head, a haunting refrain of shared moments, bonds formed, and a betrayal that cuts deeper than my seven minutes with Aubrey.
“You think that gives you some claim to her?” Fire and venom seethe through my veins, dredged from the depths of my hell.
“No.” Leo sets his shoulders, his unusual, bicolored eyes never leaving mine. “I don’t own her. She owns me.”
I hate that response.
I despise it.
It’s a challenge, a declaration of reciprocated love delivered with a boldness that wounds me.
My heart fractures in totality.
I’ve lost her, the love of my life, the epicenter of my universe.
She sits amidst the blizzard of tension, her stunning presence a calm anchor in the swirling chaos. Her eyes, windows to the grief and tenderness inside her, move among the three of us with compassion I don’t deserve. But maybe they do.
She loves them. That much is clear. Their shared trauma in my brother’s clutches cemented bonds that I have no hope of rivaling.
Yet, when her gaze gravitates to mine, there’s a flicker of something there, something that speaks to the intimate history, love, and happiness we created in our marriage. It’s not trust—not yet—but it’s not indifference, either. It’s a caring that survives betrayal and tragedy, because that’s the kind of person she is.
She cares, even when she shouldn’t.
It gives me the strength to turn my attention to the dark, quiet force in the room.
Kaya’s son.
His presence is a storm cloud on the horizon, silent, ominous, and looming.
How long have you been fucking my wife?
I don’t need to voice it. He’s perceptive as fuck.
“Two months,” he says softly, but it’s deafening in its clarity.
His eyes, dark and fathomless, lock onto mine with an intensity that makes my scalp crawl. There’s a lethal stillness about him, his posture relaxed yet poised as if a breath away from action. Like a hunter. A predator.
It’s in that deadly stare that I find another answer. The love Kody harbors for Frankie is a shadowed thing, deep and perhaps more dangerous for its silence.
As I sit here, with my head in my hands, grappling with the magnitude of what’s unfolding, I’m caught in the crossfire of losing Frankie to not one but two men.
How does that even work? Does she intend to carry on with both of them? Has she thought through any of this?
She’s not thinking. She’s banging two virile, attractive men half my age.
Jealousy, a dark and gnarling creature, takes root in my stomach, its tendrils wrapping around my balls with a vice-like grip.
As I thrash in a sea of rage and inconsolable heartache, watching the remnants of my life with Frankie slip through my fingers, a sucking, gut-wrenching sadness settles over me.
I’m tempted to surrender to it, to let it have me.
Then I think about the past nine months and how her absence haunted every aspect of my existence—the empty space on her side of the bed, the silence in our home where her voice should’ve been, the hollow part of my chest where my heart used to reside.
I can’t return to that. I won’t.
Giving up, giving in, is simply not in my nature. Not when it comes to her. Not ever.
Winning her back, I know, won’t be a matter of grand gestures or eloquent words. The path to earning her trust will be paved with sacrifice, vulnerability, honesty.
And revenge.
I rise to my feet and ask the room, “Where’s Denver?”
Frankie looks at Melanie.
Ah.
My intelligent wife remembers the attorney’s role here. Even as we deal with our private drama, she hasn’t lost sight of the legal realities of her missing-person case.
Melanie shakes her head.
Fuck.
That can’t be good.
“I don’t trust you, Monty.” Frankie pulls in a breath, her chest rising. “I know you’re grieving and carrying a massive amount of guilt. I’m not blind. But we have some hard truths to discuss, some terrible things to share. We need to set aside our emotions from the previous conversation and focus on the next thing.”
It’s this strength, this indomitable spirit, that once drew me to her and now, more than ever, underscores what I’ve lost. And what I’m determined to regain.