The Favor

He exhaled heavily, a little of the menace in his eyes receding.

“Dane, tell me you’ll leave it.”

“If I do, she’ll step up her game. Ignoring it isn’t going to make her stop.”

“Neither will threatening her. She’d lap up the drama and cry fake tears to her parents.”

He twisted his mouth. “Then we deal with it another way.”

“I’m not telling tales to Melinda and Wyatt.”

“Not asking you to.”

“Then what?”

His eyes narrowed. “Where does she work?”

“She doesn’t.”

His brow knitted. “She wears designer clothes and drives a Mercedes.”

“Using the child support payments she gets from Junior’s dad.”

“She’s single?”

“No. She’s dating some guy named Thad Drummond. He’s probably married—her boyfriends are always spoken for. She ruins their relationships, milks them for what she can get, and then she moves on.”

“So if I were to hire someone to take some photos of her and Thad and then send said photos to his wife, Heather wouldn’t be too happy about it, would she? It would be a message: If she stays out of our business, we’ll stay out of hers, but if not …”

Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. “You’re sure she’ll know we’re behind it?”

“I’ll ensure she suspects it somehow. We’ll confirm it when she confronts us, which she will do for sure—she won’t be able to help herself.”

I gave a slow nod. “All right.”

“All right,” he repeated. “But …” He closed the short distance between us. “I want to know what she did to you.”

I felt my insides seize. “It was a long time ago—” I cut off as he put his face closer to mine, his expression hard, his breath lightly fanning my mouth.

“That woman is going to be handled, Vienna. I’d much rather do it my way, which will involve putting the fear of God in her. If you want me to deal with her another way, this is the price.”

I should have remembered he rarely did anything for nothing.

“Tell me what she did.”

I ground my teeth. “Lots of little things.”

“Such as?”

I shrugged. “She’d break my toys. Rip my clothes. Try forcing me to eat dog food. Pinch and twist my skin. Spit in my dinner when her parents weren’t looking.”

“What else? I’m sensing it escalated.”

“She’d bite me hard enough to mark. Slap my face and yank my hair. Pull knives on me. Sneak into my room while I was sleeping and cut my hair or pee on my bed so that I’d get the blame. That sort of thing.”

“You never told anyone?”

“At first, I wasn’t talking at all. Then when I was, well, she said I’d be sent away if I told anyone what was happening.” Sent to a children’s home where I’d be beaten, starved, and disallowed to have clothes.

“What made it all stop?”

I hesitated, flexing my fingers. “She and two of her friends …”

“What?” he pushed.

“They locked me in the trunk of Wyatt’s car. With her pet rat.” The latter might not have mattered so much if it hadn’t brought back memories of my life with my mother.

I swallowed hard, remembering how I’d begged them to let me out. They’d only laughed. “Melinda and Wyatt were at a party. Heather and her friends waited for the babysitter to fall asleep and then smuggled me out of the backdoor. They carried me to the driveway at the front of the house, shoved me in the trunk, and then left me there. I screamed and kicked, but no one heard me. Not until Melinda and Wyatt stumbled out of a cab at two in the morning, drunk.”

Dane spat a vicious curse. “Then what?”

“They sat me down and demanded to know what had happened. I told them … and everything else that had gone on just tumbled out of me. They were devastated. Shocked. Furious. They asked me if I wanted to leave, but I said no. They came down on Heather hard, and she never touched me again. They were never the same with her after that. They’d sometimes look at her like they didn’t know her.” I sighed. “So now you know.”

He kept watching me with those piercing eyes, holding himself unnaturally still. “Right now, the thing I want most is to make a few phone calls that will shatter her life until she has nothing,” he said, his voice low and loaded with anger. “But I made you a deal, and I’ll stick to it.” He went nose to nose with me. “Don’t threaten to walk out on me again, Vienna. Ever.” Before I could say another word, he stalked out of the room.

I let out a shaky breath, feeling as though I’d dodged a bullet. For a minute there, I hadn’t thought I’d be able to talk him down. But he’d relented when I made him a deal—I’d have to remember that. I might need to utilize such a tactic if we ever again found ourselves clashing over something. Which we would, because he was a pain in my ass.