Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
“Everything’s okay now,” he murmurs into my hair.
He holds me for what seems like an eternity until he slowly disentangles himself from me.
He clears his throat. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah, of course.”
I close and lock the door behind us. He looks around my living space. “This is really nice,” he says.
“Yeah, I love it.” I rub my arms against a sudden chill. “Although sometimes, I stay in the main house. In the guest room next to Belinda’s. Some days I like to be close to her.”
“Oh?”
“She’s become like a ch— I mean, little sister to me.”
I almost said child.
She’s the only child I’ll ever have.
“I’m sure you’ve been a good influence on her,” he says. “She hasn’t had it easy—” He shakes his head. “I’m so sorry. You haven’t had it easy either.” He rakes his fingers through his hair. “I swear to God, if your father weren’t already dead, I’d kill him myself.”
My cheeks warm.
“Same goes for McAllister,” he says. “For what he did to Belinda. For what his stupid son tried to do to Savannah. He deserved to be tortured to death, to suffer. That would have been a more just end than a clean gunshot.”
I look at Hawk’s handsome face.
I see the anger pulse through him. It’s not loud or messy. It’s the quiet kind, the kind that simmers just beneath the skin. His jaw tightens, a single muscle ticking. His ocean eyes—God, those eyes—darken to something stormy and sharp, like they’re trying to drown the rage before it drowns him.
He doesn’t speak. Not yet. Just breathes, slow and deliberate. But I feel it—his fury. It hums in the air between us, vibrating in my bones like a warning.
Still, I don’t look away. I can’t.
His anger is beautiful.
I never thought anger could be beautiful, but Hawk Bellamy makes it so.
Finally he speaks. “Let me take a look at the note you received.”
I pick it up from where I left it sitting on the small table in my kitchenette. A whiff of Pink Cadillac ice cream—strawberries and chocolate—drifts up from the sink where it still sits, melting in its container.
The paper seems to singe my skin as I hand the note to Hawk, our fingers slightly grazing, making a tingle flow through me.
“Can I see the envelope too?”
“I threw it out.”
“I need to see it, Daniela. It’s important.”
I’m not sure what he means, but I pull it out of my wastebasket and hand it to him. He takes a blue bandana out of his jeans pocket and ties it around his nose and mouth. Then he steps outside.
“You stay here,” he says. “Shut the door. I’ll knock when I’m done.”
“Uh…okay.” I do as he asks and shut the door, my heart racing. What’s he going on and on about?
A few moments later, he knocks on the door. The bandana is no longer on his face.
“What was all that about?” I ask.
“I had to determine that there was no powdered substance inside the envelope that you may have missed.”
I drop my jaw. “What? You mean like drugs?”
“Yeah, maybe drugs.” He purses his lips. “More likely anthrax.”
“That cow disease?”
“That cow disease is actually a potentially fatal bacterial infection, not just something livestock get. If someone wanted to hurt you quietly, anonymously, it would be a good way to do it.”
I blink at him, my mouth going dry. “Okay, well…that’s comforting.”
He doesn’t smile. Though he’s calmed down a bit from his anger. But only a bit.
“The envelope is clean. No powder or other substance.”
I heave a sigh of relief. “Great. So it’s just a creepy valentine with a threat written in ink.”
He tilts his head. “Do you recognize the handwriting by any chance?”
“No. But the message? ‘You locked the door, but you forgot—I have the key.’ That’s not something you write to an old friend.”
His brows draw together. “Have you ever gotten anything like this before?”
“Never. I mean, I’d get gifts from my father’s”—air quotes—“friends from time to time. But nothing threatening. My father wouldn’t have put up with that.” I shudder. “The only person who ever harmed me physically—at least, in a way that didn’t involve sex—was him. No one else was allowed to lay a hand on me or even say anything indicative of violence.”
Hawk scoffs. “So even he had his limitations, you’re saying?”
I close my eyes. “I know how it sounds.” I open my eyes to find his gorgeous blue ones focused solely on me. “Don’t get me wrong. He was a bad man. An evil man.”
I don’t know what else to say. That he let them rape me and scare me but he would have never let them threaten me?
But that’s the truth of it.
To understand my father, you have to understand the way monsters draw lines. Not moral ones—it’s about territory. Ownership. Control. He didn’t protect me because he loved me. He protected his investment. His legacy. His name.