"What are you doing? Why not just show him to be the fuck he is and let the cops take care of him?" he asked, exasperation filling each word.
"Because I won't risk not getting my revenge like that. He took something from me today, from us. I won't let him get away with that."
Ryder stared down at me sadly. "You sound like your father. You know that?"
He wasn't wrong. I did sound like my father now. I'd heard my father threaten to exact his revenge on people nearly every day of my life, and I'd sworn I would never become that person. Now that Oliver had taken something so precious from me, I couldn't help myself. I needed revenge for that.
"Is it so bad to want revenge on someone who hurt you?" I asked, desperate to hear him say he didn't hate the person I'd become as I lay in that hospital bed.
"No, but revenge is a tricky thing. It starts out feeling good, but in the end, you get consumed by it."
Turning away from him, I looked out the window and tried to explain what I felt. "All my life, I've been at the mercy of my father and what he wanted. And when he decided it was time, he gave me away to a husband who doesn't care about me. Somehow, they both thought I'd be okay with that."
"I'm not saying you ever deserved that, Serena. I just don't want to see you become like them."
I looked back at him and saw the concern in his eyes. "Maybe I've been wrong all this time. Maybe if I'd been more like my father this would have never happened."
Ryder shook his head as his frown deepened. "Don't. Don't take the blame for what that bastard did."
I wasn't. The days of me taking the blame for what the monsters in my life did to me were over.
Chapter Two
Ryder
Serena's eyes filled with tears. "I need you to understand what I'm feeling now. This wasn't just a fight that got out of hand, Ryder. He pushed me down those stairs after I told him I was pregnant. He wanted me and our baby dead. I don't want to be a victim this time. Can you still love me if I'm not going to be just a victim for once?"
I smoothed her soft brown hair back off her face and looked into those sad, dark eyes so full of emotion. "I never loved you because you were a victim of what your father did or what Oliver did, Serena. I love you because of who you are. Because you're gentle and kind in a world full of people like them."
Squeezing my hand, she said, "I'm still that person, if only with you, but he took our baby from me and I can't forgive that and I can't let it go."
"I just don't want to lose you to this."
She wiped away the tears from her cheeks and took a deep breath. "You're not going to, Ryder, but I'm tired of living my life in fear."
I stepped away from the bed, hating what I was hearing. The beautiful soul I'd fallen in love with was hardening over before my eyes. Her father and Oliver had succeeded in forcing her to be like them.
Callous and vengeful.
But what would happen to us when she became that person?
"Why did you walk away?" she asked as I stood at the window looking out toward the nearby mountains still dotted with the reds and golds of the fall season.
How much I wanted to take her in my arms and run away into those hills until we reached a place no one would find us. We could leave our pasts behind and start again. Now as I looked toward the horizon, I worried when we finally did get the chance to do that, we wouldn't be the two people who'd first dreamed about running away together as we lay in each other's arms in that bed in the guest room all that time ago.
"Why aren't you angry like I am, Ryder? He killed our baby. I thought you'd be furious."
Inside, rage bubbled up, touching every part of me. I spun around to face her, letting her see for the first time how what he'd done made me feel.
"I hate him, Serena. I hate him like I've never hated anyone before in my life. It wasn't bad enough that he had you there in his bed, but then he took our baby away."
"You want to kill him, don't you?"
I wanted to kill Oliver with my bare hands and knew exactly how I'd do it. No pushing him under the water in a hot tub or a gunshot to the back of his head. No, I wanted to do to him what I'd done in The Pit because what he took from me made me feel like I used to when I fought.
Like an animal fighting for its very survival.
After what he'd done to Serena and the baby she carried, only one of us could remain in this world. Either he disappeared or I did, but I wouldn't be able to continue living with him walking around like he'd gotten away with his crime.
Quietly, I admitted to her for the first time what we never talked about before. "I've killed other men for your father. He'll be no different."
I watched for horror to fill her eyes as she finally understood what kind of man I truly was, but it never came. Instead, she simply shook her head.