Beth had forgotten how to laugh for her kid.
By the day she packed her and David’s bags and left Hector, she’d spent months building up her self-esteem, gathering the remains of what had once been a person and trying to become someone again. A mother.
Even that he’d taken away from her.
Now they faced each other, and she wasn’t sure who appeared more stunned. They’d spotted each other in the same instant. His mouth parted. She expected something would come out of it, but for a moment nothing did.
He took in her appearance—the dress Landon had provided at the last minute. Elegant and midnight blue, it made her skin seem smooth as porcelain and her eyes more electric.
Her heart beat one, two, three times.
Hector’s doctorly face—the one he used to persuade his patients to do whatever he told them to because he, in fact, was a god—failed him. His mouth clamped shut and color rushed up to his face, as though the sight of her—alive and looking well—infuriated him. He took a step.
“You’re marrying Gage.” The sneer lashed at her like a whip crack, and she hated that she instinctively flinched, panicked into immobility.
“You’re marrying Gage and you expect me to let you see our son? Why did you call him? You’re forbidden to talk to him. You’re forbidden to see him, or have you forgotten?”
Confrontation. God, she hated this.
Not here, not here.
Beth glanced around the patio, and when she saw nothing but shadows, her chest constricted with foreboding.
No one was within hearing range, unless she screamed.
But with reporters here?
She didn’t want to. She hadn’t screamed the time she’d found a hairy tarantula in her kitchen, and she wouldn’t scream now.
Oh, God, taking in the sight of his boyish, pretty face, she couldn’t believe she could be disgusted by any living being so much. Not even cockroaches.
In the space of six years, this man had managed to turn a healthy human being into a puddle of fear, a nobody, a robot, and even now as she stared at him, she felt that fear, that anger, that despair that he had her son with him and she didn’t.
He had everything.
But she had Landon.
Struggling to tame her emotions at that thought, she eased back a step, but that only made him move forward. Hector seethed with palpable anger, while fury and hurt churned inside her belly. He took my little boy from me. Her voice sharpened. “David is as much my son as he is yours.” How dare Anna tell him she’d called? How dare he take David away from her? How dare they?
“And you’re not seeing him again, I’ll make sure of that!”
Blasted by the frigidness of his words, she could do nothing as he caught her elbow before she could run and yanked her forward, his serpent’s hiss thrust into her ear.
“If you ever, ever, tell Gage anything about me or my practice…”
With a breath-clogging twist, Beth wrenched free and cried mutinously, “What? What are you going to do?”
“You don’t want to know, Beth, but I assure you, you’ll wish you hadn’t opened your mouth to speak.”
A gust of wind lashed at her, kicking up strands of her hair. She pushed them back and glanced around one more time, frantically now, unable to help wishing Landon could see her. Hell, she almost wished his dogs were here, flanking her. She’d never thought she’d be so happy to see two beasts like that near her person before, but the relief she felt thinking of the bodily harm they could inflict on Hector made her suddenly love that pair.
“If you put a hand on David,” she warned with renewed courage, her nails biting into her hands as she clenched her fists.
“I don’t need to put a hand on him to hurt him and you know it. I’ll just tell him the truth about his mother and see how he likes it.”
“Lies, all lies!” Nearly bursting with rage, Beth edged backward, wanting to flee.
“I’m not alone now, Hector,” she said, sucking in a calming breath. His eyes flared slightly and Beth remembered Hector saying how much he’d relish destroying the Gages. Well, she wouldn’t let him! “Landon is much more powerful than you are,” she informed him proudly. “And he won’t rest until David’s back where he belongs.”
She didn’t know if Hector believed her, but in her panic-ridden thoughts, she prayed he did and put a cork on his threats already. This didn’t have to get so bloody. For David’s sake, in fact, she wished she could come to a satisfying arrangement in the most quiet way possible—but she knew her new husband deserved better. He deserved his revenge.
And she was so starved for Hector’s blood, she wanted him to get it.