“My God,” Donald whispered but I kept yelling.

“Then you keep contacting me when I asked you over and over and f**king over again not to call me and you drag me into your shit with the DEA and the FBI and the police and now you send someone to shoot at my boyfriend in front of my house! ”

Damian kept his eyes glued on me too and when I quit shrieking, he said softly, “Tess –”

“Fuck you! ” I spat. “Fuck you, Damian. What did I do? What did I do but fall in love with you? What did I do to deserve you treating me like a piece of garbage and then… then…

finally when I have something good in my life, something beautiful… finally when I feel f**king safe you move to destroy that too?”

“Honey, I didn’t do –” Damian started but I cut him off.

Screaming at the top of my lungs, the sound so shrill it pierced the space like a dart, I shouted, “Don’t you dare call me honey! ”

Damian held my eyes. Brock held me close. I glared at Damian, heat boiling through my veins, through my brain, so f**king hot, it was burning me alive.

Then Damian pulled his eyes from mine, turned his head to the side, his face grew concerned and he started to move that way saying, “Dad.”

“Don’t,” Donald ordered and I tore my eyes from Damian to see Donald standing at the wall of the foyer, hand pressed against it, that hand clearly holding him up. His face was pale, his eyes on his son wounded and I hadn’t seen him for awhile but he’d always seemed younger than his years, his humor and love of life making him that way. But in that moment he looked beyond his seventy-two years and well into his nineties.

At the sight of him, a wave of pain rolled through me, my hands went to Brock’s arms, my fingers curling around, one at my chest, one at my belly and Brock’s arms got tighter.

“That’s why,” Donald whispered to his son.

“Dad,” Damian whispered back.

“That’s why we lost Tess.”

I felt tears fill my eyes.

Donald didn’t look away from Damian when he whispered a tortured, “You raped her?”

“It wasn’t –” Damian started, my body straightened, the tears vanished and I interrupted him.

“It was,” I snapped and Damian looked at me.

“Tess,” he shook his head and started to lift a hand, “things just got out of hand.”

Oh.

My.

God.

Brock made a noise low in his throat, his arms going super tight around me but I didn’t read these warning signs because I lost it again.

“Out of hand? ” I shrieked.

“Tess –” Damian started again, his eyes darting back and forth between me and Brock and, honest to God, it looked like he was weighing the decision to approach.

“Don’t you get near me, you motherfucking ass**le,” I clipped. “And, newsflash, Damian, a woman is fighting you tooth and nail screaming, ‘No!’ at the top of her lungs, crying uncontrollably and begging you to stop and you still f**k her that… is… rape even if she is your goddamned wife.”

Brock’s super tight arms convulsed twice through this speech but I only had concentration enough for Damian who winced.

Then he said softly, “You left the next day, Tess. You never gave me a chance to explain.”

I felt my eyebrows hit my hairline.

“Explain?” I asked. “Explain?” I repeated my question. “Are you f**king high? ”

“Tess, I was –”

“Clawing your way up a drug cartel,” I finished for him then leaned forward, taking Brock’s arms with me thus taking Brock with me. “I know,” I hissed and leaned back.

“Stressful, hunh?” I asked. “So stressful you suddenly lose your ability to be a decent human being and when your patience snaps because your wife is asking you simple questions like,

‘Honey, what’s stressing you out?’ you take your hands to her. And when she says no to sex, you lose your mind and rape her. It must have been tough for you dealing with all that stress as you climbed to the highest heights of the criminal underworld, Damian. I feel bad for you that you didn’t have a different woman in your life who’d eat your shit. Sorry I was such a crap wife.”

“You weren’t a crap wife,” he whispered.

“I know,” I bit out. “I was being sarcastic, you moron.”

“I made some bad decisions and let my emotions get the better of me, Tess, I’ll admit that,” Damian said.

“Big of you,” I retorted. “Though bad decisions and emotions getting the better of you don’t entirely destroy lives, Damian, something you’ve been doing to people you care about and people you don’t even f**king know for over a decade now.”

“I –” he started, his jaw clenched and he looked away, tearing both his hands through his hair and I noticed belatedly he looked good. Like his father, age barely touched him. And like the ass**le he was, impending incarceration didn’t faze him. Fit frame at least three inches shorter than Brock and probably more than thirty pounds lighter. Light brown hair. Dark brown eyes. A sharp crease in his well-tailored dark blue trousers. A light blue shirt that I knew had been made specifically for him because he always spent a whack on his clothes.

Polished, dark brown, Italian leather shoes.

Even now, he had it. Even now, even as detached as I was, I sensed his magnetism. Decent looks, great clothes he wore well, undercurrent of charisma never switching off.

Toxic charisma.

Poison.

He dropped his hands and leveled his eyes on mine.

Then he stated, “If you gave me a moment to explain at lunch before you took off, I got in touch with you because I was trying to make it up to you.”

Make it up to me?

Maybe he was high.

He kept talking.

“I asked you to lunch to explain…” his eyes moved to Brock then back to me and he carried on, “about the money. To go over the bank documents with you. I wanted you to have…” again he looked to Brock then back to me, “if something happened to me, I wanted you covered.”

“You wanted me covered?” I asked, my voice filled with derision mixed with shock.

“Yes,” he clipped.

“Why?” I queried.

“Because you were my wife, because I still love you, because I f**ked up and because I wanted to make it up to you.”

“You thought…” I whispered but stopped, momentarily unable to go on then I went on.