It takes two of the security guards around campus to peel me off of him.
“She only wanted you for your money,” Zane grins, spitting out blood as they hold me back. “The whore was fucking around on you. Why do you think she only wanted to see you half the time? She knew I was watching. Posed fucking nude every chance she got.”
I see bright fucking red and launch myself at him again, every part of me raging. “You’re dead,” I snarl at him, fighting the guards who are holding me. “You’re FUCKING dead.”
Zane sneers. “The first love is always special, huh, Rome?”
I don’t know how I got hold of the knife. I must’ve had it tucked away somewhere. But I get free, and all it takes is one fucking split second for me to do what I should have done the moment he touched her.
Later,my father’s men and lawyers come to shield me from the police and take me back to my parents’ house. Hayden is waiting, a bottle of bourbon with two glasses ready for a father and son chat.
“I was protecting you,” he says as I walk in.
I’m not in the mood for it. My nose is busted, and my jaw is swollen from fighting with Zane. It turns out he did get a couple of slugs in. I just don’t fucking remember them. The last thing I want to do is talk. But I need to know. “Is it true? Did she take the money?”
“She did.”
I don’t hesitate. I’m in his face like a shot, grabbing him by the throat. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you?”
“I told you, I was protecting you!”
“From what?” I hiss.
He glances at the table next to him. There are papers on it. Snarling, I drop him like the sack of shit he is to look at them. It’s a medical report—Bella’s, to be exact. I read it through a few times, the words swimming off the page as I try to process what the fuck I’m reading.
“Don’t you see?” Hayden sighs. “She got rid of it. She doesn’t care about you.”
The pain deep inside seems to have lodged in my throat. “She told me.” I shake my head.
“Did she tell you she can’t have children? That she went somewhere off the books because her parents wouldn’t pay for her to kill an innocent life?’
I stare at him, snarling, lips curling as I chuck the papers on the table. “You did this. This is your fucking fault.”
He sighs again, tossing a green leather-bound notebook at me. “It’s all there, in her diary. I had nothing to do with it. All I will say is that Marcel won’t let you marry her once he sees those medical papers. She’s damaged goods. She made her choice. Now you make yours.”
I blink at my father, all kinds of fucked up thoughts and emotions bombarding me. I want to smash his face in. I want to find her and drag her back to me and make her explain what the fuck was going through her mind when she had that abortion.
But I don’t. I can’t. She said she would never leave me again, and she did. She couldn’t even tell me the truth from the start. She’s a fucking liar.
Breathing hard, I force myself to sit down, head in my hands. Then I run my hand through my hair, trying to shake it off, staring at her journal, knowing I can’t fucking read it. How can I? The pain consuming me is killing me right now. It’s tearing up my insides, eating away at my fucking heart.
If I even had one to start with.
Hayden is right.
She made her choice.