“That bastard,” West snarled.
“He wasn’t always like this. He took care of me after our parents died. He’d tuck me in each night, kiss me on the forehead, he called me button.”
“When did he change?” Alec asked.
“After the accident,” she whispered. “The one that left him paralyzed from the waist down. His horse threw him, and he rolled down a cliff. It took hours for someone to find him.”
“Jesus,” West muttered.
“When I did a background check on you and your brother, there was no military experience listed,” Jake said to Flick.
“Oh, that’s probably because we now use my grandmother’s maiden name,” she told him.
They all stared at her in surprise.
“Why is that?” Jake asked. “What is your actual last name?”
“My full name is Felicity Angelica Maria Maas.”
West frowned. Maas. Killed by rebels in Africa. Maas. Suddenly it hit him, and he heard Jake’s low whistle. “Your parents were Angelica and Frederik Maas?”
“Yeah, you’ve heard of them?”
West knew they’d been billionaire
s. Old family money. The press had had a field day with their deaths. But he didn’t remember much about the children being mentioned, but that had been thirteen years ago.
“The press wouldn’t leave us alone and so many people came out of the woodwork wanting something from Spencer. It was a nightmare when all we wanted was time and space to grieve. So when we moved that first time, Spencer paid someone to change our names. To build us new backgrounds. Even once things died down in the media, we kept these names. I guess there was still too much notoriety with the last name Maas for Spencer. People might have paid us more attention than they did and that’s the last thing he wanted.”
Jake ran his hand over his face. “What happened after the accident?”
“Spencer spent time in hospital, but he hated having other people help him. So I took over a lot of his care. The fall changed him. He was so angry. He started drinking. Maybe six months after it happened. He’d sleep in late and then he’d get up and start drinking beer. That was our first big argument. I refused to buy him beer, and he hit me.
“I packed my bags. I was going to leave him, but he was so remorseful and I felt like I owed him. Nothing happened again for another six months. But the drinking continued. I don’t know what set him off the next time. But it was a similar pattern. I would do something to anger him, he’d hit me, then the next day he’d apologize. Tell me he loved me. Buy me shit I didn’t need. I stayed out of guilt in the beginning. Because of all he’d done for me. But, gradually, I realized it wasn’t going to stop. So, the day after he dislocated my shoulder, I packed some stuff and hopped into my car. I was getting away from him. I didn’t care that I had nothing.”
“What happened?” Jake asked.
“He sent someone after me,” she whispered. She shuddered, and West tightened his hold on her.
“Who?” West asked.
“Someone who didn’t care I was on the run because Spencer had hit me. All he cared about was getting me back to him so he could get the money Spencer had promised him, and he didn’t care if I came back with more bruises. I only had to be alive.”
“He hurt you,” West growled.
She rubbed her good hand down her thigh, the memory obviously a terrifying one. “Yeah.”
“You know his name?” Jake asked.
“He calls himself Snake,” she told Jake. “But I have no idea of his real name. I can give you a description. That wasn’t the only time he was sent after me.”
.
“You never told anybody?” Jake asked. “Never went to the cops?”
“I didn’t want to get him into trouble in the beginning. I owed him. And he’s in a wheelchair. He’s been through a lot. He needs help.”
“What the fuck did you owe him?” West barked.