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I see Beau closing the doors into the TV room, and I take the stairs, each step I’m climbing seeming to drain me more. It’s an effort to simply walk. I make it to the top and drag myself toward our bedroom, scanning the bright abstract paintings lining the corridor.
I slow to a stop when I hear the front doors open in the distance.
“Where the fuck is my wife?” His voice echoes around the mansion, and I whirl around, panicked.
“Oh shit,” I murmur, glancing up at Tank. His lips are straight, his hairy face expressing all the wariness I’m feeling. “He doesn’t sound happy, does he?” I murmur lamely.
“He’s sounded better.”
“This is your fault,” I fire accusingly, creeping to the top of the stairs.
“He pays me to do a job.”
“Someone needs to remind my husband that he signed everything over to me when he died, so it’s actually me paying you.”
“I dare you to tell him that.” Tank chuckles.
I flip a quick evil look over my shoulder before returning my attention forward as I approach the top of the stairs, seeing two men being manhandled toward Danny’s office. His eyes land on me like a pair of wrecking balls, and I find my spine lengthening in an act of feigned strength I know deep down won’t wash.
James moves in close to his side, flicking a cautious look my way. If he’s trying to silently warn me that my husband is in a rotten mood, it’s wasted. I’m practically disintegrating under his fiery stare. I’ve never wished Danny would be too busy with work to give me his time. Except now.
James speaks, Danny nods, eyes unmoving from mine, and then James walks away, following the two men who’ve been practically kicked into Danny’s office.
“Today’s catch?” I ask cockily, lifting my chin.
“Don’t change the subject, Rose.” He climbs the stairs with purpose, claiming my elbow and pushing me toward our room. I don’t put up any resistance. I’m not a complete idiot. “Take a break,” he snaps at Tank as I’m hauled past his mountain of a body and thrust through the door.
“Sit down,” he orders, so I go to the bed obediently and lower to the mattress, hands in my lap. He can’t hide his surprise. Subservience isn’t something he’s used to or expects from me, and it’s obvious he doesn’t know how to handle it. But, truth is, I’m too drained to fight him.
He starts pacing up and down before me, his eyes on his feet, his mind obviously whirring, and my gaze follows him back and forth at least a dozen times. What’s going on? Where’s the attack? The monster? The threats to strangle me if I don’t comply. I’m feeling as lost as he looks.
Danny eventually stops. Inhales. Looks up. I withdraw at the swirl of regret in his icy eyes. “Am I a bad husband?” he asks, throwing me even more for a loop.
“What?”
“You heard me.” He comes to me and drops to his knees, his hands squeezing my thighs and pulling them apart so he can move into me. “Am I a bad husband?”
What is this madness? “Well, you’re legally not a husband at all.”
“Small technicality that’ll be remedied in a few days. Answer my question.”
“Why are you asking me this?” My hand reaches for his overgrown dark waves and pushes them back from his face.
“I’m just trying to figure out why everyone else seems to have noticed you’re throwing up, but I didn’t.”
“I’m fine.”
“Rose,” he says, low and full of warning. “Why are you throwing up all the time?”
“It’s not all the time,” I say over a laugh, like he’s being dramatic. He is. “A few times, that’s all.”
“Why?”
“I’m worried,” I blurt. Sick with worry. Worry for him, for Daniel, for me, for us. I’m simply out of my mind with worry.
“Why?”
“Really, Danny? You’re asking me that?” I try to brush his hands off my thighs and get precisely nowhere, his fingers curling into my flesh. I hiss, throwing him a filthy look. Here he is. The hard-handed monster. “You got shot at a few days ago. You walked out of a burning building yesterday. Today, I’ve been told I can’t see my son.”
“Daniel’s sorted.”
I tilt my head. “How.”
“Some polite persuasion.”
A bark of laughter erupts, and Danny glares at me. “Polite? You?”
“Always.”
“You walked out with a machine gun, Danny.”
“But I didn’t use it.”
Oh God. “So I can see him?” Do I care what Danny did, what he took, what he used, if it means I get to see my boy?
He pushes himself up, resting his weight on my thighs, and leans in, biting my cheek. “He’s coming to stay with us for a while.” He heads to the bathroom, as if he hasn’t just landed a bombshell, leaving me on the edge of the bed, struck dumb. A statue. Coming to stay?
