How West Was Won (Haven, Texas 7)

“For taking care of me. There was no one else. If he decided he didn’t want me, I would have gone into foster care, I guess. Poor little rich girl, right?”

“You owed him fucking nothing,” West growled at her. “He’s your brother. He’s supposed to look after you. What happened to him sucks, sunshine. But it doesn’t excuse him for what he did to you.”

She looked up at him. “I know. That’s why I finally tried to leave. But he’s got money and power. I didn’t stand a chance against him.” She looked up at Jake. “I tried to go to the police once, but he had most of them in his pocket so my complaint got dismissed.”

Jake tensed. “Gonna need the name of those cops.”

She just stared at him. Then she nodded slowly.

“How the hell did you end up in Haven?” Alec asked. “This seems like the last place he’d want to come to.”

“I don’t think he quite gets Haven,” she told Alec. “He thinks the men here are all in charge. That the woman are subservient to them, and he likes that idea. He thinks that you keep your women weak and oppressed. Not that you give them a safe place to be themselves.”

“He made a mistake then, didn’t he?” West said.

“He’ll never admit that. Spencer doesn’t admit to making mistakes. He doesn’t even get remorseful anymore after he hits me.”

“Why didn’t you come to me, after you had learned what this town is like?” Jake asked. He nodded over at Alec. “Or go to him?”

“I was the reason we moved from the last town.”

West thought that was a strange change of topic. He glanced up at Alec. His brother’s eyes were narrowed as he studied Flick.

“We sold the ranch where he had the accident and moved to another town. He bought another place that had plenty of land, so we didn’t have neighbors close by. I met a guy. Brian. I fell for him. He was kind and caring and he listened to me. I thought he loved me.”

West tensed at those words. He tried to stop the reaction. But, luckily, she didn’t seem to notice. Alec turned his gaze to him. He should have known his eagle-eyed brother would see.

“I told him about my brother,” she said quietly.

Oh, fuck. Now he had some idea about where this was going. It wasn’t a change in topic.

“Brian said he would help me get away. We were going to run away together. That he would liquidate his assets so we had enough money. That he’d look after me.”

She was staring down at the bed covers, but he knew she was stuck in the past.

“We made plans to escape but when I turned up at the rendezvous point the night we were supposed to leave, Brian wasn’t there. But Spencer was. With Snake.”

West could almost feel her fear as she said Snake’s name. He glanced at his brother and saw the way he held his jaw tightly. This Snake guy had to be found. “Spencer told me it was over. They knew all about our plans. And hadn’t I learned by then I couldn’t leave him? What an ungrateful bitch of a sister I was for trying to run off, for trying to take a good man with me.”

“What happened to this Brian?” Jake asked.

“He paid Brian off. I learned the next day that Brian went to Aruba. With one of the waitresses from the diner with him.”

“Fucking asshole,” West muttered.

“Who? Spencer or Brian?”

“Both.”

“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “You’d think I’d learn, wouldn’t you? There’s no getting away from him.”

“Has he hurt you any other time since you came here to live?” Jake asked.

“Um, yeah. Nothing bad. He, uh, grabbed my arm a couple of times, bruising me. I don’t think he’s wanted to hurt me too much before he figured this place out. Except . . .”

“Except what?” West asked her.

“My foot,” she whispered.