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“Sure. The great Mathias Shelby maintains he is innocent, so it must be so. He gets the benefit of the doubt. Damn my lying eyes.” I scoff. He must be crazy.
He could be grinding glass the way his jaw is flexing. “She jumped me. I was not kissing her back. Stop doing this stupid shit.”
“Sure, Jan. Yeah, and you took your time peeling her off, and when I left, you stayed back. Why?” I see the something in his eyes, a hesitation, a guilt, and it does more to hurt me than anything else because it confirms exactly what I thought—he could have chased me down, caught me, but again he chose her. Decided to make sure she was okay, not his wife.
“You chose her.” I nod to myself for confirmation.
His face gets impossibly harder. “You are piece of work, you know that? I came for you. You made sure to throw roadblocks in my way, and to do what? Run your ass up here, two blocks away from the Shelby County Library.” He laughs bitterly when I look at him like he’s crazy.
“Oh, you trying to act like it’s not convenient that community dick Blay is around the corner? I’ve heard there’s an interlibrary loan program, but this is ridiculous.” The snide, nasty-ass, mean smirk on his face is too much.
I don’t hesitate, slapping the shit out of him. His head snaps back, and a trickle of blood pools in the corner of his mouth. He’s going to learn today thatviolence is not the answeris not one of the tenants my daddy taught me. We are more thefuck around and find outkind of people.
He slams me back against the wall. His face is etched in glacial fury. I close my eyes, waiting for him to hit me; he wants to so badly.
One hand leaves the arms he restrained moments ago and circles my neck. His hold is steady. He doesn’t add any pressure. Instead his body comes close to me. His forehead dips, pressing against mine. My eyes pop open to see a fan of lashes closed tight. He’s breathing deep like he’s trying to mediate.
“I vowed to myself when I was twelve that the next person who put their hands on me trying to hurt me or discipline me in any way, I’d kill and bury their ass alive in my sugar fields. The last person I buried there was that bitch who smacked your ass that night at the Shack. So I’m going tell you this one time. I’m going to give you this one chance. Never fucking hit me again unless it’s out of love or passion, little wife.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. He drops his hands to his sides. Lethal promise in every cell of his body. A slow smile spreads across his face bloody and cruel. Eyes never leaving mine, he takes his thumb he wipes the trickle of blood trickling beneath lip and sucks it clean.
I cover my mouth with trembling hands. After pushing past him, I run up the stairs and throw myself on the bed in the guest bedroom, burying my head in the soft down pillows to muffle my sobs. He’s said he’s going to break me, and I see that he’s determined to do it. He won’t be happy until I’m a shell of a person.
ChapterEighteen
Mathias
I watchNikki run up the stairs, making no move to follow her. I don’t trust myself with my anger, her, and a bed in the same vicinity. Her slapping me was uncalled for. It took years of therapy for me to realize touching another to hurt them was wrong. What happened to me as a kid was wrong as fuck, and though I couldn’t protect myself then, we are a far cry from there. If scaring her little ass keeps the peace, then peace we shall have. I’m not letting anyone put their hands on me.
Realizing the door is fixable, I go to the garage to get a toolbox. I text LL, letting him know where I am and to cancel the last few events leading up to the election.
Me: IF ANYONE ASKS OR COMPLAINS, TELL THEM I AM TAKING SOME TIME OFF TO BE WITH MY WIFE.
LL: SOUNDS GOOD
Using a drill and some wood, I spend the next hour fixing Ezekiel-Jane’s door. Irritated with myself after having to measure twice and cut to make a new side panel, I make sure I do a good job. No one asked for their door to be kicked in, and Angel told me his wife uses this property for added income. Not that she needed it, being married to a cartel boss who’s also a construction and transport billionaire. “She just likes having her own shit,” he said with wry amusement when he let me know someone was at the supposedly empty property.
“It can’t be anyone but your girl. Easy tells me every time it’s rented. She didn’t, so that was her way of helping her cousin and not lying to me,” he informed me dryly. “You know how this family shit goes, man.”
I do; there is nothing I won’t do for my brother Ananias or even Jackson, Jerricho, and Ulysses, but the rest of my family is useless. So there’s a limit for them. Still I can’t be upset with Angel’s wife for looking out for Nikki. Hell, I wanted her family to look out for her.
As long as she was safe, I was okay, I thought, until I came home that second night and couldn’t sleep without her. Then I started blowing up her phone with promises of what I’d do to her when I caught up with her.
After a week I was pretty sure she was done with my ass. I can’t blame her. It took a long time to realize she was right about Nat.
Confusionat why Nat had called me away from the dance floor gave way to stunned disbelief when she said she was in love with me and couldn’t stand seeing Nikki and I together.
“This was never about love, Nat. We were partners, friends,” I tried to remind her gently.
“It could have been more if not for her,” she spat, her eyes alight with venom.
“You said you didn’t have a problem with it,” I said quietly.
“What could I say when you were so determined to have her? I thought once you did, you’d realize how ill-suited you were, and you’d come to your senses. But no, just like a man, you let her lead you by your dick. You only ended up wanting her more. Well, I won’t have it.”
My brows shot up at her words. Then, a split second later, she glanced over my shoulder—I know now she saw Nikki—and said, “I love you, Mathias.”
I responded more out of habit of us always saying we loved each other as friends.
Then she jumped in my arms, kissing me with a passion she never could muster even in the early days.
