Page 96 of The Marriage Mistake

He held an empty glass bottle, its jagged neck lifted up toward my throat.

Oh my God.

The bikers crashed to a stop. Cash lifted his palms. “Put the bottle down and let her go.”

Ivan tightened his hold on me. “Make me,” he snarled.

Cash met my eyes. His were green and steady, and he radiated confidence, like he wanted me to stay calm. But I couldn’t stay calm. There was a deranged old man holding a broken bottle to my neck.

That was the moment Jack and his brothers ran up to us. Jack took in the scene, and his face went cold. He was monumentally, incandescently angry.

But he would take care of this.

Some of the panic raking down my spine lessened as he took a single step forward. Jack was here, and everything would be okay.

“Back off, manwhore,” Ivan snarled.

Jack stopped. “The police will be here in a second. Your contact at the Reapers already ratted you out. We know you paid him to vandalize our equipment. Do you really want to add assault and murder to your charges?” His voice was calm and unyielding. I was suddenly sure that everything would be okay, but Ivan’s grip on me didn’t loosen.

And I’d guessed right. Ivan was behind the vandalism.

The portly cop chose that moment to crash through the bakery’s back door. He put one hand on the butt of his gun and said, “Let her go, Ivan.”

I stood very, very still.

Behind me, Ivan’s stinking breath slid across my ear. I could tell he was speaking to Jack when he said, “You deserved everything you got, Mars.” The arm across my neck tightened, and he dipped his lips closer to my ear to sneer, “Hope you’re not in love with this guy,” he said. “He’ll just break your heart and tell everyone it never meant anything. Just ask my Sofia how much she suffered when he tossed her aside.”

Jack flinched. So something had happened between him and Ivan’s daughter—and Ivan had decided he was going to destroy what Jack cared about in return. Vandalizing a bunch of security equipment seemed so petty. Maybe now that he had me at his mercy, he was hoping to destroy me as well.

I gulped. “Sofia is your daughter?” I asked, keeping my voice calm.

The old man was trembling. He smelled like sour sweat. He brandished the broken bottle as one of the bikers tried to edge closer, then brought it up so it was near my neck again. What the hell. What the actual hell. This was not how I wanted my morning to go.

“Sofia is my pride and joy, and she won’t even step foot in this town. She just bought a house on the West Coast. She’s not coming back. And it’s that man’s fault.” He pointed the broken bottle at Jack. “I wanted to destroy everything he cared about. Ruin his business. Make his clients drop him. Make sure he lost something he really cared about. And I know he doesn’t care about people.”

Ivan was lonely, and he couldn’t handle the fact that his daughter had flown the coop. Suddenly, I felt so sorry for him. He spent his days surrounded by old junk, hating everyone.

There was movement near the bakery door. “Pookie bear?” Ivan’s head shot toward the voice. It was the old woman who’d been sitting at the table next to ours. She frowned at Ivan, shaking her head. “What are you doing?”

“Betsy, baby, go inside,” Ivan said. His hand was trembling as he held the broken bottle. I could see his knuckles turning white from gripping it so hard.

But Betsy didn’t go inside. She straightened, frowning, and marched out of the bakery. She lifted a finger and pointed it at Ivan over my shoulder. “You put that bottle down and let the poor girl go. That’s my great-niece by marriage!”

“And she’s married to a piece of human scum!”

Wait, what? That would mean Betsy was…Etta’s sister? Sister-in-law? Something else? I blinked and shook my head. Small-town family trees were beyond me right now.

Betsy’s eyes shot fire. She was terrifying. Definitely Etta’s sister. “Ivan Popov. I will never speak to you again so long as I live if you don’t let her go right now!”

Ivan faltered. His hand loosened, and I knew it was my only shot. I wrenched it away and sprinted toward the line of men waiting to pounce. I crashed into Jack, and his arms came around me. He squeezed me so tight I could hardly breathe; my head pressed against his chest so hard I could hear the rapid thrumming of his heart. He’d been terrified.

And now I was in his arms, and I was safe. The relief was unbelievable.

The lanky cop sprang from the crowd, and his partner wasn’t far behind. They tackled a screaming Ivan to the ground and wrestled the bottle out of his hands. Handcuffs flashed, and a second later, they were snapped around the antiques dealer’s wrists.

“Fucking cops,” Cash muttered. “Now we won’t get anywhere near him. Let’s get out of here.” He gave me a little salute, then he and his lieutenants walked away.

Ivan finally stopped thrashing as the cops hauled him to his feet.