Page 36 of Clever Deceit

“You did, and we both know it.”

“Doesn't matter,” he said with a shrug. “Not like you can prove any of it. And even if you could, no one would believe you.”

He meant the cops wouldn't believe me. And he was probably right about that. He had them all in his pocket, and even if I went to them with proof, they'd never do anything about it.

Except that someone had, at some point.

“And yet someone had enough proof to get a restraining order against you.”

The air around us went suddenly, dangerously still, and his eyes narrowed.

“That's none of your business,” he growled.

“You don't think so? You don't think someone else experiencing what I experienced and actually doing something about it is something that concerns me? Really, Tony?”

“Stop digging around, Lily,” he snapped.

“Or what?” I snapped back.

Silver stood up next to me and barked, bringing me even more bravery, and I tipped my chin up and stared at Tony, daring him to say anything else.

Before he could, I heard voices from behind us. Two guys, from the sounds of things, were approaching. I turned enough to glimpse them and saw that they were young men from the neighborhood, their dog striding along behind them. They were talking, but their eyes were on Tony and Silver, and I could tell they were suspicious.

When I turned around to look at Tony again, wondering how he thought he was going to explain this one away, he had his hands in his pockets and was strolling away, whistling like he hadn't just been threatening me if I didn't mind my own business.

I watched him go, fury burning through my blood at the way he was acting.

I was going to get him. I was going to stop this.

Even if it was the last thing I did.

CHAPTER 17

LILY

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I CLASPED THE CUP OF coffee in my hands as the four women sat around me—Madison, Jane, Julia, and Iris. I couldn’t believe we were all here. Hell, I couldn’t believe that I’d managed to convince all of them to come and entertain the thought of talking to me about what had happened between them and Tony. I’d put a post on some local social media, trying to reach out to any women who might have dealt with Tony – and, to my surprise, a handful of them had responded, and agreed to come meet us to talk about this.

“How did you meet him?” Julia asked nobody in particular, glancing down at her coffee cup as though she wanted to dive head-first into it.

“I don’t even really remember,” Jane replied, shaking her head. “He was just...there in my life one day, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to get rid of him.”

“That’s exactly it,” Iris agreed. “He just made himself indispensable to me. He made it so I was totally reliant on him, so there was nothing I could do without him knowing about it.”

She shivered at the memory, and I reached over to give her shoulder a squeeze. I understood it. We all did. We all knew what it had been like to be with a man like that, how terrifying it had felt to realize how much danger we were in, how quickly we had given up control to him.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Julia remarked. Her voice was tiny, and I wished there was more that I could do to comfort her. I knew exactly how she felt, how it had been for me in the first few months since I ran away from my home to get away from him. It was how I had felt, really, up until I’d met Warren—until I’d met someone who seemed able to look past everything that had happened to me, and see the person underneath. The person I had been before Tony had gotten his claws into me.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Jane assured her. “We can’t let him keep getting away with this. Think about how many more women he’s going to hurt if we don’t all come together and get in his way. It’s the most important thing we can do for each other.”

I nodded in agreement. I was still struggling to know just what to say to these women. I wished I had something more useful than silence, but I figured it was important for them to get their stories and emotions out. It was the only way they were going to be able to move on, and besides, I wanted to hear them.

Sitting there, in Madison’s living room, with the watery morning light pouring through the window, they talked. Jane, Julia, and Iris told us what had happened to them. Though there were differences between the stories, small details that didn’t exactly match, it was clear enough that there was a pattern here. He had a cycle, of finding women who he wanted, and then breaking them down systematically until they were totally under his control.

I inhaled a deep, shaky breath in the silence that followed them telling us their stories. Other people had been through it, too? I might have known that intellectually, but I had never actually—I had never, in a million years, considered that other people really felt the shame and guilt that I did. But I could hear it in their voices, even when they weren’t coming right out and saying it. I could feel it.

And it made me even more determined to do what I could to bring this guy down.