Page 24 of Love At Peace

He’d gotten to her. He’d conned her and duped her into believing anything he said. Some people were just born with the power of persuasion. David had honed in on that skill to be a master of it.

And you fell for it.

I stared at her, hit with an overwhelming sense of pity. I pitied myself in that same regard. I had once been in her shoes. Before I strategized and found the courage to leave David and run out of Chicago, I was his victim.

He used to tell me the nonsense that made me think I had to believe him and that he was always right. He used to fill my head with the lies that would convince me that he knew better and I had to be wrong and incorrect.

I resisted the flood of memories from taking over me again. Just thinking of all the crap he’d spewed to make me stay had me tense. All the times he’d told me that I was being “too emotional” or that I was “overreacting and being irrational.” Then the instances when those didn’t work as well and he’d sedate me and keep me locked at home until I’d be obedient again.

Every day I spent away from him helped me to get over the trauma of being in his presence. I’d never forget it, and I didn’t wish that kind of mental hell and torture on anyone.

Not even my worst enemy.

Looking at Nevaeh right now, I realized that she really wasn’t my worst enemy.

That teenager was merely lost and deluded—easy prey for a mastermind narcissist like David.

“What the hell do you mean it’s not any of my bus—”

Once more, Marty held up a hand to cut off Roarke from shouting at her. He wasn’t yelling at her, per se, but his voice continued to raise throughout the interaction. Gavin backed him up, holding on to his coat sleeve as if he could physically restrain him.

“Now isn’t the time to be discussing who’s with who,” Marty told Roarke, arching one brow as if that facial expression could emphasize that he needed to listen. “We need to speak about Eric James and the condition he was just found in.”

Nevaeh lifted her chin higher, not fading that cocky expression one bit.

For that, alone, I wanted to slap some sense into her. This was my cousin we were talking about. My family member—the only one I had left.

“I don’t have any business with Eric,” Nevaeh insisted.

“But you can say if David was meeting with him here?” Marty asked.

I watched, with the rest of us down here, as she pressed her lips tightly together.

“I’m not saying nothing about anything.”

Roarke growled, stepping to the side to get around Marty. “Nevaeh, Marty’s not someone you can just blow off, dammit! We found someone wounded down here, and if you know anything about that—”

“I don’t!” she shouted, fisting her hands and leaning forward as if that would carry her reply any louder or faster. “I don’t know anything about Eric or anyone else hanging around here. All I know is my boyfriend hasn’t done anything wrong—”

“Wrong.” My lips tingled with how hard I pushed them closed. The retort popped out of my mouth anyway, blurted out into the air like a quiet mutter. “Wrong,” I repeated louder. “You are wrong,” I told her, keeping my voice as steady as possible as I lifted my face until I could glare back at her fully and directly.

Nevaeh smiled a cruel expression of smugness. She could think she was right, she could let herself get carried away with the thought that she was the expert here, but she had no clue how much more time I’d lost in the horror named David.

“I’m wrong?” she asked sassily. “About my boyfriend?”

“He’s not—” I shook my head, unequipped to summarize how David wasn’t a boyfriend in any sense of that word. He didn’t know how to be a boyfriend. He only knew how to control and make a woman feel like a victim in his sphere. “He’s not a boyfriend, Nevaeh. You can’t let—”

“I can’t?” she shot back. “I can’t what, Heather? And on that note, who the hell are you to try to tell me what I can and can’t do?”

“That’s the spirit.”

She narrowed her eyes, cringing like I was talking nonsense.

“Use that on him. Try to tell him that he can’t tell you what you can do.”

“Oh, screw this bullshit. David’s not the bad guy in any of this.” She huffed. “He’s not involved with anything bad.”

“No?” I tried to tamp down the frustration at seeing it happen with another woman. I hated to witness how he was always brainwashing her.