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CHAPTER 1
EVIE
“Just go, asshole!” I growled at the car in front of me as I waited at the intersection. Sure, we had only been there a matter of moments, but I was feeling impatient. I wanted to get home to tell my fiancé, Dean, my amazing news.
I could barely sit still in the driver’s seat of my Jeep as I replayed over and over just how excited he would be for me when I told him my news. I had been offered the job I had been dreaming about for years – an internship with the city justice department.
It was what Dean and I had both been hoping for. We met in college, and had been together ever since. Dean was two years older than me and also studying law at the time. After graduation he had gone to work at his father’s family law practice and he seemed happy there. They had offered me a place too, but family law was not what I was interested in.
Ever since I was a teenager I had one goal in life – to work for the justice department, putting criminals in prison. Now it was becoming a reality and all of my hard work through school and college, then passing the Barr – it had all been worth it.
I had done my time interning. This summer I had been working at the firm my dad had worked at for years, just getting some more experience as I did all I could to get a role in the justice department. Now I had one. I would start in three weeks, working for the district attorney. It was all I had ever wanted.
It had all started when I was five. That was the first time I ever came into contact with a true ‘bad guy’ as I called him then. Livy, who was at the time my foster sister, had escaped, after being kidnapped as a child. She had come to live with our family when it was discovered her own had all died in the years she had been gone. After being held by the monster who took her for eight years, she got away, but the kidnapper came after her, and one day when I was out with her and my mom, he approached us and tried to take Livy again. I had been locked in the car, placed there by Livy to keep me safe, but I had witnessed the whole thing and it had a major effect on me. So had the things I learned my five adopted brothers had been through in their childhoods too, before they came to live with my parents. Of course they had tried to protect me from their pasts – as they had always tried to protect me from everything – but as I got older, I discovered the hell that each of them had been through and it just increased my determination to become an attorney and to do all I could to protect others just like them in the future.
Finally the asshole in front of me pulled out of my way and I followed right behind him. I was almost back home and I could barely contain my excitement. Dean was going to be thrilled. Now we could buy a bigger place together and start really planning for the future.
We had been engaged for almost a year but we had held off on the wedding plans and getting a place together until I could really start my career. Instead I had moved into his small rental house with him a couple of years before, but it was really too small for the two of us. I was so excited to start looking for our ‘forever’ home. Maybe we could even set a date for the wedding?
My mom would lose her shit if I told her she could finally start wedding planning. She had been nagging Dean and I to set the date for months. My dad and brothers would lose their shit too, but for an entirely different reason. They all hated Dean and didn’t try too hard to hide that fact when they saw him.
I got why. When Dean and I had only been dating for a few months he cheated on me. He had a one night stand with some girl he met at a bar and I found out when I overheard him bragging to his roommate the next morning on campus. I had been devastated and broke up with him. I went home to mope for the weekend and my family, especially my brothers, were out for blood – Dean’s blood.
The next week Dean apologized repeatedly, telling me he had been so drunk he barely knew what he was doing and pleading with me to forgive him. It took a few weeks, but eventually I gave in and took him back. I loved him and I believed he truly was sorry. He had never done anything like that since, but my dad and my brothers could never forgive what he put me through, and they refused to trust him. It also didn’t help that they had all loved the boyfriend who had come before Dean – Harris.
He had been my first real love and an all-round ‘good guy’ who just clicked with my brothers and my whole family once they got to know him. We met in our senior year of high school, and had started college together. Harris was studying international politics and business, always planning to go into business with his father after graduation. The family business was something to do with gas lines. Harris had these amazing plans to make the whole company more ethical and charitable when he eventually took over. At the time I had just fallen in love with how much he seemed to care about the world and about others. I was madly in love with him. I was sure he would be the man I would marry one day. Then his father was killed overseas and everything changed. Harris’s father was killed during a kidnapping attempt overseas – shot as he fought to escape.
It turned the boy I loved into someone else. Someone who was angry and consumed with rage and hatred. I tried so hard to help him through it, but it wasn’t enough. Three months into our freshman year Harris dropped out and joined the military. He didn’t even tell me his plans. He just left. A month later I got a latter in the mail in which he tried to apologize and explain his reasoning. At the time I had been angry and ignored the letter.
A month later I met Dean. I never forgot Harris though and eventually I plucked up the courage to write back to him, accepting his apology. Over time, and through our letters back and forth we became friends again and I moved on with Dean. We kept in touch every now and then by letters and cards, but Harris had been through hell during his tours overseas and his letters were sporadic. Last time he wrote, just the week before, he was out of the military and living off grid somewhere in the mountains. I worried about him often, and hoped he had managed to find some peace out in the wilderness. I still cared about him a great deal, but we had both moved on. Unfortunately my family hadn’t and still often told me Dean wasn’t half the guy Harris was. It made things tough, since I was extremely close with my brothers, and always had been, but I was in love with Dean and truly believed he was the one for me. I just hoped eventually my family would see him for the good guy he truly was.
I knew I was grinning like a crazy woman as I turned down our street and sped up slightly. I was due at my parents for dinner that night and hadn’t planned to stop at home after leaving work, but I had to tell Dean my news.
I slowed as I pulled up to the drive of our small house and found a car I didn’t recognize parked behind Dean’s sports car. When I called him earlier to see if he wanted to come to my parents for dinner, he had told me he was too tired. He was just going to work out then watch a game.
I pulled up and parked in front of the small lawned front yard instead, then jumped out of the car. I was sure Dean had invited someone from the office over to watch the game, which was disappointing, since I had wanted him alone when I told him my news, but it would still be exciting.
I locked my car, not entirely comfortable with parking my adored Jeep on the street when our neighborhood was far from safe. My brothers were always on at me about living there. They hated it and worried constantly, but it seemed that was all they ever did anyway. I was pretty sure if they didn’t have something to stress about, they’d die.
I let myself into the house, but paused just inside the door. I was about to call for Dean, but the loud music playing throughout the small space stopped me. It was Dean’s preferred style of music – rock – but it was blaring loud, which wasn’t like him. Was he having a party without me?
I stepped into the living room and looked around, then paused again as my heart started to beat twice as fast in my chest. A pair of black, strappy, heeled sandals were discarded beside the sofa, and they definitely weren’t mine. I wouldn’t be caught dead in anything so torturously painful looking. I wasn’t exactly a tom boy. I liked pretty things and floral fabrics. I owned dresses and I occasionally wore heels if the occasion presented itself, but for the most part I opted for comfort. When I wasn’t in the office I liked jeans and sneakers. I guessed growing up with five brothers hadn’t made me a girly girl.
I turned towards the hall where the bedroom and bathroom were and tried to decide if I really wanted to see what was down there. The sight of a shiny silver scrap of fabric that was clearly an item of clothing was enough to turn my reluctance to red hot anger.
“You motherfucker!” I hissed as I marched towards the bedroom with a fire in my veins.
The bedroom door was half open as I approached it, and the groaning sounds that were coming from within – loud enough to be heard over the loud music – were enough to confirm my worst fears.
“Yes! Oh God! Yes Dean!” a female voice screeched like a damned banshee over the music. My heart was pounding so hard I thought I was going to have a heart attack as rage and crippling pain over took me in equal measure. I clung to the rage and pushed back the pain as I kicked the door open the rest of the way as hard as I could.
It landed against the wall with an almighty thud, and the woman, who was currently astride my fiancé, squealed loudly and turned to look, as Dean sat up enough to do the same.
“Evie!” Dean gasped. I didn’t recognize the blonde who was clinging to him in fright, but she was pretty. Slimmer than me, with perfectly curled hair and smudged red lipstick.
“You sonofabitch,” I said as I looked from her to Dean. Tears tried to fill my eyes, but I refused to let them free. No way I was letting either of them see me break. I spun on my heel and walked back out of there.
“Evie, wait!” I heard Dean call after me, but I just kept on walking. There was nothing he could say that I wanted to hear. I just needed to get out of there.
