Oh, but I could feel it . . .
His wrath spilling out over me.
It was there in the short, jagged breaths that heaved from his lungs, from the clench of his jaw, and the hatred in his blue eyes.
Hair flawlessly styled.
Suit perfectly tailored.
But where Ian oozed sex and intrigue, he did nothing but make my stomach curl with disgust.
“Reed.” I tried to keep the whimper from my voice. The last thing I wanted was the bastard to think he could intimidate me.
Sway me.
But that didn’t mean every cell in my body wasn’t trembling, the man digging into my arm while he sent me a smile that any passerby would think was filled with affection.
The seething hatred and the shock of fear that was rippling through invisible to the naked eye.
But I knew that Reed was scared. And right there only made him a more dangerous man.
“What are you doing here?” I tried to make it come off hard.
He laughed a brittle sound. “You want to know what I’m doing here, when you just came out of one of the most prestigious law firms in Charleston.”
I tried to yank out of his hold. He only tightened it.
“It seems I’m in need of an attorney, doesn’t it?” I spat, his face so close to mine I was sure he could taste the venom that came with it.
He tugged me closer to him. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into, Grace. Just showing your face here.”
“Are you threatening me?”
He laughed a noxious sound, the man blond and tall and wide. Classically handsome, like any other hometown boy who was trying to make his small-town world his bitch.
I refused to be any part of it.
“I’m trying to knock some sense into you before it’s too late,” he gritted.
Bitterness bled free, and my teeth were grinding, the tears of hurt that had flowed upstairs turning into something else entirely. This steely abhorrence that made me want to spit in his pretentious face. “I think you already know it’s exactly that. Too late.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Where are my children?” I challenged.
The asshole.
Showing up here when he’d given that sob story to the judge about how I’d tried to steal his children from him, how when I had, the only thing he’d felt was a gaping hole in his life.
I’d like to show the prick a gaping hole.
“They’re safe. That’s all that should matter to you. I hope you want to keep them that way.”
Rage churned at the deepest depths of me, and when I jerked my arm this time, I ripped it free from his disgusting hold. “You’re right. That’s the only thing that matters to me. And I won’t stop until you are out of their lives.”
“Don’t tell me you’re that delusional. You don’t actually think that’s going to happen, do you? That I’d let my children go? That I’d let you go?”
Before I could make sense of it, he had me backed against the car, his hand on my chin forcing me to look up at him.
My heart tumbled in fear, and I hated it, hated that he had the control to exert it. That I’d ever put myself and my kids in this position in the first place. “You’re going to regret complicating things. Come home. Where you belong. I love you.”
If the way he treated me was love, I wanted no part of it.
Nausea swirled in my stomach and sent bile climbing my throat. “And you’re a fool if you think I’m going to back down.”
He brushed his fingers down my cheek. As if he adored me and his soul wasn’t deadened with greed. “I wish you wouldn’t say that. I’d hate to hear that something horrible happened to my children’s mother.”
Terror rambled around in my chest and pushed against my ribs. I refused to let him see it.
His voice dropped lower, sharp as a knife. “Where’s my money, Grace, and the folder you took from my safe?”
“Who knows,” I told him, sending him my own threat.
It was the only power I had. Those few pictures I’d found in his safe that day—the evidence I’d found that gave me the courage to run. I’d taken the money at the same time.
It was the day I realized I had to be brave. That I could no longer cower and submit. I had to fight my way out of the castle or my children would be prisoner to it forever.
“Wrong answer.” He tightened his hold.
Fear surged and any firmness that had been in my tone turned to a trembling plea. “Just let us go, Reed. Forget that we ever existed, and I’ll do the same. You won’t hear from me, and neither will the press.”
His body ticked in aggression when I mentioned the press, the man stepping back, releasing me, but his mouth was right there, at my ear. “You think you have the upper hand? You think your flimsy accusation is going to stand? You even step in the direction of a reporter, and things aren’t going to end well for you. The same as if I find out you’ve come back here. I’m finished playing games with you.”