I wanted this shitty day to end.
Her father insulted me, made a cut so deep that the blade was stuck between my ribs. He insulted my mother, a woman I held a constant vigil to inside my heart. If anyone else had made a comment like that, I would have stabbed their eyeballs out.
But Crow Barsetti walked free.
Only because of Vanessa.
It took all my strength to swallow the disrespect without retaliating. It took all the love in my heart to turn my back and walk away. I wasn’t the kind of man who ever backed down from a fight. I’d rather die trying than surrender. But I remained in control of my impulses by keeping Vanessa in all my thoughts.
I did my best.
But when I walked out of that house, I knew nothing was going to change. Her parents would drive us apart eventually. As much as I wanted to keep Vanessa, I knew I would regret keeping her from her family. Eventually, it would make her depressed, and the happiness we once shared would be long gone.
Now it was only a matter of time before I lost her.
The thought hurt so much that I forced myself to stop thinking about it. Otherwise, I would keep drinking…and never stop.
My phone vibrated on the bar. Come get me.
I stared at Vanessa’s name, trying to gauge the tone of her words. We had a long drive home, so I knew we’d spend it talking about this nightmare. On my way, baby.
I pulled up to the front of the house, returning to Barsetti soil—enemy territory. I could stay in the truck and wait for her to join me, but my behavior would be construed as cowardly rather than respectful.
My shoes crunched against the gravel roundabout, and I walked up to the front door. I could just call her and tell her I was outside, but that also seemed spineless. I wanted to make the right impression on her father, and while it would annoy him, showing him I wasn’t afraid of him was the best way to do that. He would never respect me if I tucked my tail between my legs and avoided him. I had to look him in the eye and match his aggression with my own. I had to stand straighter, taller.
I refused to get on my knees and kiss his feet—no matter how much I loved Vanessa.
I rang the doorbell.
After a moment, footsteps sounded then the door opened. Vanessa stood there, her makeup missing because she’d spent her afternoon crying. She’d cleaned herself up, but since it looked like she wasn’t wearing makeup at all, I knew her tears washed everything away.
She stared at me, looking at me in silence. She didn’t need to say a word to connect with me, to tell me how much she missed me and how miserable she was.
I could feel her—all of her.
I’d never had this kind of connection with anyone else. Thoughts and feelings didn’t need to be spelled out. Like her heart was directly in my palm, I could feel it beat in different ways. I could read her terror, her fears.
Her eyes moved to my chest, like she wanted to come to me and wrap her arms around my waist. She wanted to be buried in my arms, to forget this horrible day had ever happened.
Footsteps sounded behind her, and both of her parents emerged in the entryway. Crow stood in front, purposely keeping his wife behind him.
Like I’d ever touch her. The assumption was insulting.
Pearl looked at me with unblinking eyes, staring at my face with concentration. Without reading her thoughts, I knew what she was doing. She was looking for the similarities between my father and me, to see if we possessed the same expression, the same cruelty. She’d never seen my face before, only my back in a painting.
I looked nothing like my father. Overweight with doughy features, he wasn’t what anyone would consider to be handsome. But he had crystal-blue eyes like mine—which I’d inherited. Everything else, I got from my mother. Her beauty complemented with my father’s masculinity, and that was how I looked.
So Pearl wouldn’t see my father as she looked at me—the man who raped her.
If I’d looked too much like him, then this really had no chance. Vanessa’s mother wouldn’t be able to be in the same room with me without thinking about her time as a slave. I couldn’t blame her for that.
Crow stared at me with the same coldness as before, his jaw clenched tightly. Just being around me was enough to make his knuckles turn white as his hands formed fists. He couldn’t stand me, just like earlier. His hatred rang in the air like a loud bell. I could hear it, as well as everyone else.
We all stood together, tensions stretching and escalating.