A small hiccup climbed her throat, and tears blurred her eyes. “I’d been certain he was having an affair. I followed him once . . . and I . . . he was actually hooking up with a prostitute. I was shocked, but as time went on, I realized it went deeper than that. My gut screamed that he was crooked. Involved in things that he shouldn’t be. Our house full of whispers. All of his meetings carried out behind closed doors. Everything was a secret. He’d begun to threaten me. Trying to control my every move. Mold me into who he wanted me to be, and that was someone who kept her mouth shut and turned a blind eye.”
She sucked in a shaky breath, twisting her fingers so tightly that they were turning white. “But that’s not me, Mr. Jacobs. It’s not me, and there was no way I was going to raise my two small children in that kind of environment. The problem was that I had no proof. I’d never seen anything solid. Reed made sure of that. But still, I knew. I knew.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” I told her, unable to keep my mouth shut when I knew I should. “That I don’t feel that in you?”
“I need you to. I need you to believe I’d never willingly put my children in this situation.” She touched her chest like she wanted to offer me part of it. “The first time I left him, Thomas was four and Mallory was only a few months old. I left in the middle of the night while he was gone on a business trip.”
My hand was moving across the sheet, taking down every detail, teeth grinding the whole time.
Trying to convince myself it was just another case.
Just another case.
Her voice was shaking as she continued, words barely scraping free of her throat. “I’d gone to California, thinking if I got far enough away, he wouldn’t be able to find me, or maybe I was just hoping that he’d forget. Take it as an easy out. It only took him two days to track us down. It was the first time he . . .”
Her words trailed off, and I felt the last piece of sanity slip.
“Grace,” I whispered.
She squeezed her eyes closed, gave a sharp shake of her head, and opened those gorgeous blue eyes to me. So deep and good, and I knew right then and there that I was drowning.
“Let’s just say he forced me to go back with him. He told me I’d never see my children again if I didn’t. I relented, not because I was weak, but because I had no idea what else to do. No way to fight a family as powerful as his. I was a twenty-three-year-old girl who had a cosmetology license, which was a miracle he’d even permitted me to get, with two children, and his family owned half of South Carolina. And he wasn’t exactly painting me in a pretty light. But I knew one day, one day I would find a way.”
“God, Grace.”
Her lips pinched, and she exhaled. “After that, I fought him every inch of the way. Refused to let him touch me, and he’d force me, anyway. I just kept praying he’d get tired enough of it that he’d let us go. Or, that I’d find proof. Something to hold over his head.”
Disbelief shook her head. “And I still don’t know that I did, I went on a hunch, but what I found has been enough to scare him. Enough that he’s kept his distance. But I know that his pride is taking hits, and he’s about to crack.”
My hand stilled over the notepad, voice too eager. “What did you find?”
“He was always neurotically secretive about his office.” She bit out a scornful laugh. “We weren’t allowed inside. I had a gut feeling that if I could just get in there, I would find something . . . something to use against him. He’d left to Washington, and I was able to sneak in. I went through everything, thinking I had nothing, until I found a safe hidden behind a big picture.”
Disbelief flashed through her expression. “I’d thought there was no chance I’d get into it, but he’d actually used the kids’ birthdates. I found . . . I found a picture. A picture that I knew meant something, even though I wasn’t sure of what. So, I took it, Mr. Jacobs. I took it.”
She fumbled in her bag and pulled out an enlarged picture.
She slid it across the desk to me.
I picked it up, guts twisted up in a thousand knots when I saw what she’d found.
It was shadowy and grainy as fuck, but I was ninety-nine percent sure it was Reed Dearborne down on the docks in the middle of the night, standing with his back to the camera, surrounded by a few men who I couldn’t make out.