"You don't get to wear another man's name in my?—"
"Don't touch me."
My voice doesn't sound like mine. "Don't youeverfucking touch me again."
He steps closer. Into my space. Looking down at me the way he does.
"Or what, Harper? What are you going to do?"
His hand reaches for my arm. My wrist. The way he always grabs when he wants to steer me somewhere.
Not today.
I throw the smoothie in his face.
The green liquid explodes across his eyes, his mouth, his white T-shirt. He stumbles back, sputtering, clawing at his face.
"You fucking?—"
He lunges at me and grabs my shoulders, shoving me backward. My spine hits the kitchen counter, and pain shoots up my back, and my hands fly to my belly. And the stillness inside me ignites.
On the counter behind me, displayed on its own little marble stand, is hisForbes 30 Under 30crystal award. A big slab of engraved crystal with his name etched into the front in gold.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve rolled my eyes at this award when I’ve made my morning coffee.
I grab it.
He's still wiping smoothie from his eyes when I swing.
The award connects with the side of his head. His own name hits his own skull.
The sound is sickening. A crack that reverberates through my arm and into my chest. His eyes roll. His grip on my shoulders goes slack. His knees buckle.
He drops straight down with a thud.
He hits the kitchen floor and doesn't move.
The award falls from my hand, and the crystal fractures against the tile, splitting clean through his engraved name.Hudson Blakeis cracked in half on the floor beside his bleeding head.
Poetic. If I weren't about to have a heart attack, I might actually appreciate it.
Green smoothie is everywhere: the counter, the floor, his face, my shirt. The kitchen is silent except for my breathing. I stare down at him. At what I’ve done.
Hudson Blake. CEO. Blackmailer.Forbes 30 Under 30.The man who trapped me in a marriage and called my baby his. He's on his kitchen floor, eyes closed, a wound on his temple bleeding, a trickle of red running down his cheek and pooling on the white tile beside the shattered remains of his own legacy.
He's breathing. His chest is rising and falling.
My hands start shaking. Then my arms. Then my whole body, vibrating so hard my teeth chatter. I take a step back. Then another. My heel crunches on a shard of crystal.
Oh God.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
I look at my hands. At him. At the blood on the floor. At the necklace across the room, the little goldAglinting under the kitchen light.
He shoved me. He grabbed me. He put his hands on me while I'm carrying Ace's baby, and I cracked him over the head with his own goddamn award. That's what happened. That's the truth.
But I'm standing in a billionaire's kitchen, in a city where his name is on buildings, with his blood on the floor and a marriage certificate that says I'm his wife.
