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I, on the other hand, wasn’t controlling it. I was losing it.
One fucking word at a time.
“No. I’m not filing any charges, officer.”
Brown looked at me as if he couldn’t quite understand what had just come out of her mouth.
“She’s not pressing charges?” he asked incredulously.
I explained her thought process.
“She doesn’t have to press charges, but we can still file them all the same.” He said. “It’d help if we had her cooperation, but we don’t need it.”
I looked back at my girl.
That’s when I got my first good look at her throat.
And what I saw wasn’t good.
It wasn’t good at all.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, belly clenching.
“Are you sure about not filing charges, ma’am?” Brown asked as we both moved closer to her.
Her words chilled me to the bone.
“What about other women that may come into contact with him?” I found myself asking her quietly. “What if next time it’s worse?”
Dillan’s eyes came to mine. “He’s only interested in me for some reason.”
That was true.
“He needs to pay,” I said gently.
Not just for this, but for everything.
She crossed her arms over her chest.
After Tai had checked her out, he’d made sure to give her an ice pack and told her to use it.
When I noticed it’d fallen with her arms in a defensive posture, I caught it up and pressed it back to her neck.
She took it and held it there.
“He’s not going to pay,” she said. “He’s rich, has the lawyers to fight this, and will drag me through the mud. I’m not pressing charges.” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you know what it’ll mean for my business if he does that? Or Delanie’s? I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to find another way. I was drunk off my ass that night, and though he might’ve slipped me something, I was well on my way to being too fucked up to care. He only helped it along.”
“You think you were drugged?”
She looked away. “Yeah.”
Anger and turmoil roiled through me at the speed of light.
What the fuck was it with this guy? Did he think that he could play God or something?
Even worse, I fucking hated that she was right.
Not about the last part, but about the part that Kerrie’s influence could mean harm to Dillan and Delanie’s businesses.
“What about not saying no permanently?” I asked. “We can keep it on the back burner. I can keep looking.”
She pursed her lips.
“I’ll make sure that it’s okay,” I said. “We won’t throw you to the wolves until we know for sure that you can fight back and survive.”
She seemed to deflate in front of me.
“Thank you, Booth,” she said softly.
There was a soft knock on the door, and I looked up to find an older woman there.
She was waving at Dillan but looking quite concerned while she was at it.
“I’m guessing this means,” she said as an officer let her in, “that we’re not going to open today?”
Dillan shook her head and stood up. “Hey, Mirena! Oh, we’re opening. I have an hour to get donuts started. Let’s do this.”
So that was how we sat for the next hour.
Dad, the paramedics, and the rest of the officers went to work.
Mom came and brought a bed for me to put near Dillan’s workspace, but it proved unneeded.
Asa had never been here during the process of making donuts before, and he was so fascinated that he forgot all about his stomachache.
Two and a half hours later, I was gathering Asa up and going to say goodbye.
Just as I made my way over to her, another of Dillan’s employees strolled through the door.
“I’m so sorry!” the older woman said. “I just got your message to come in. I thought with all the hub-baloo that you wouldn’t want me in.”
I’d never quite caught her name, but apparently I didn’t need to seeing as Dillan growled it a few seconds later.
“You can just go ahead home now, Moshe,” Dillan said as she finished decorating her last donut. “I’m done. Mirena can handle the rest.”
Moshe stiffened. “I’m sorry, Dillan. I swear. I didn’t think that you’d open or I would’ve come.”
“How did you know that anything was going on up here?” I found myself asking.
Moshe shrugged. “I have a police scanner. It was all over the radio. I use it to avoid anything that’ll cause me to be late.”
For some reason, her perfectly logical answer didn’t sit well with me. I’d had to rely on my gut a lot of times before, and it was telling me that Moshe was lying out of her ass.
But, as I looked over at Dillan, my girl knew it. So I didn’t bother to say anything.
“Thank you for your honesty,” Dillan said facetiously. “But, as this is your third ‘late,’ I’m officially asking you to leave. Your last check will be direct-deposited into your account.”
