She hadn’t been drinking. He’d poured her wine, she’d sipped it gingerly, never pouring herself more, yet her glass was always completely empty when he came back into a room, even if he was gone for less than five minutes.
The coffees too. She wasn’t constantly carrying around a coffee cup. Herbal tea. She drank more of that. In the mornings she nibbled on dry toast, looking more pale than usual. Her nipples. Her fucking breasts. Swollen. Tender.
What in the fuck was wrong with him?
He’d made it his business to notice every single fucking thing about his wife since the moment he met her, savoring the way she smiled, knowing she was nervous when she tucked her hair behind her ear or turned on when she bit her lip and pressed her nails into her palms.
Pregnant.
With his child.
In the hands of one of the deadliest organizations in the world. In the hands of that animal, Dimitri. Jay would’ve torn his office apart with his bare hands had the elevator doors not dinged open.
“What are you doing?” Zoe demanded, eyes on Jay. They were full of blame and anger, but most of all fear.
“Everything in my power,” Jay replied, surprised he was able to speak right now. His voice sounded strange and faraway, though Zoe was in stark focus.
She was wearing a bright red suit. Jay didn’t like that. It reminded him of the fact his wife could be bleeding right now. His pregnant fucking wife.
Zoe shook her head rapidly, her curls moving as she did so. “No, you aren’t. Because if you were doing everything in your power then my girl would be sitting here, breathing, unharmed,” she spat. “She is not. Therefore you are not doing everything you can.”
Jay wondered vaguely how Zoe even knew what was going on, though that was a stupid fucking thing to wonder with Wren in the picture. Even without Wren, Zoe would’ve found out. Yasmin too. These women were smart, connected and they loved their friend. They might not know what exactly what was going on, but they knew she was in danger, therefore they kept a close eye on her, calling her often, texting her more, coming around to the house at least twice a week.
“I knew. I knew,” Zoe continued, her voice thick with blame. Blame that he deserved. “I knew that you would hurt her. And you did. First you hurt her heart. You changed her world. You dragged her in to your dark, dangerous and depraved one. I didn’t like it, but she was happy, and I found peace in the fact that you’re one bad motherfucker. The baddest, which meant you would move heaven, hell and everything in between to make sure that nothing happened to her. And if something did, I felt that you would make it right. Because there is no right in you except her.” Her eyes were a black inferno.
“Except your love for her,” she added, voice lower now but no less menacing. “That’s the only right thing in a very wrong man. And that’s very fucking dangerous for anyone who has even thought about harming her. So get some blood on your fucking hands. Make it happen.”
She stared at him for a long time, daring Jay to argue, daring him to do anything, say anything. And when he didn’t, she turned and walked off.
Then came the third.
On the heels of an angry, bloodthirsty woman, came another kind of woman all together. One who carried warmth, light, peace and was trailed by a stiff jawed man who had likely attempted to forbid the woman from coming here.
Polly hugged him before she spoke, not even hesitating at the energy Jay knew was surrounding him, the kind of energy that made all of his men hesitate before entering the room. The kind of energy that Heath—Polly’s husband—was skilled at recognizing and the reason for the tight and dangerous look on the man’s face.
“We’re here to help,” she told him when she finally let him go. She looked at her husband who did not at all seem like a man wanting to help Jay whatsoever.
The Greenstone Security men operated within the gray but were mostly good men with morals. The heroes. The only reason they were consorting with the villain was for love.
Polly did not see the distinction between the gray and the black, between the heroes and the wicked. She somehow saw the human within. That was her magic. That and getting her husband here, offering his help.
Her husband had had to live through what was killing Jay. He’d had to survive seeing his woman broken by the same kind of men that had Stella.
Polly had somehow survived. Somehow had emerged resembling the person she was before, managed to hold on to herself and her husband. The probability of that happening had been one in a billion. It would not likely be the case if something happened to Stella. Not because Stella wasn’t extraordinary, but because of Jay. He was not a man like Heath, he didn’t have anything inside him to help his wife heal. All he had was the ability to kill everyone who hurt her, show her their fucking corpses.