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Looking at the gorgeous young woman in the passenger seat, Zoe said, “Is it weird for you? Your dad and me being so…affectionate?”
“Nope. I love seeing you both so happy.” She rubbed her belly. “Let’s get this done so we can get your stuff and eat.”
“One track mind.”
Starting the vehicle, Zoe took a minute to familiarize herself with all the features and drove to Nate’s house.
A house that was starting to feel more like home.
* * *
Across the street, Jessica Lang watched them from a strip mall parking lot. She’d parked the old truck she was driving in the deep shadow of a large tree because it offered a good view inside the dealership.
She watched with growing fury as Nate talked, laughed, and fawned over the deaf woman Jessica had beencertainshe scared off.
Nate was buying a new vehicle and it was clear he was consulting the brunette about it. When they were done, he handed her the keys, kissed her through the window, and let her drive away with Mandy riding shotgun.
That’s when Jessica realized things between her ex-husband and his girlfriend were a lot more serious than she thought. In the time she was in and out of Nate’s life, he never let her drive any vehicle he owned.
She watched them drive toward the ranch and didn’t follow. The old truck would be too obvious on the quiet road. Instead, she decided to wait to see if they headed back to town.
That Nate chose a boyish, deaflibrarianover her seemed like a joke she didn’t find funny at all. She was supposed to believethat womanhad something to offer that Jessica didn’t?
No fucking way.
She’d learned at a well-developed fourteen that she could get almost anything she wanted by using sex. Men had always been putty in her hands, a means to an end. Some women, too.
People were generally stupid, easy to manipulate, and nothing made them more malleable than giving them something they thought they couldn’t have.
Thinking back to the day Nate presented her with divorce papers made her hands clench on the steering wheel. She’d tried to give him a blowjob and he pushed her away in disgust.
Furious at the rejection and made angrier by the fact that she was losing a place to lay low for a while, she destroyed his office in the house that had once been hers.
Nate was the first maneverable to resist her.
Mandy laughed with the other woman, held her hand, used sign language without any embarrassment. She liked the stupid librarian. She wanted her to replace Jessica.
Traitor.
Jessica was Mandy’s mother, Nate’s wife. She refused to go back to her maiden name after the divorce so he never forgot her. She was the one who deserved everything they were trying to give Zoe Green.
It wasn’t fair.
For just a moment, clarity drifted through her and there was a whisper in her mind.“You came to take Mandy. You want to use your daughter to save your own skin. You’re not a mother. You’re a monster.”
She remembered the look on her pimp’s face as he handed her a stack of cash the week before.
He’d held her face hard enough to hurt and said, “You better not come back without the kid, Jess. Don’t try to run. You owe them a lot of money. Make it right or they’ll make you dead. Got it?”
The SUV passed her on the way back to town, the three occupants clearly happy inside. Her mind went cold again.
Yeah. She got it.
Taking Mandy with her was the only thing standing between Jessica and execution. It was the only way the syndicate would let her live after what she did. A desperate situation required sacrifice.
No prissylibrarianwas going to take what belonged toher.
Jessica always survived and this time would be no different. She started the old truck and followed them.
