Page 60 of Gluttony

“Fuck, Val!” he murmured against her temple. “What the fuck happened?”

“Redtube!” Shannon shrieked. “You’re here! I knew you’d come! That woman, she’s a homewrecker! She tried to hurt me and the baby! You have to kill her! Then you and I can be a family. I’ll be your old lady!”

He didn’t even bother turning to see the woman, he was too focused on watching those words land in the expressions on Val’s face. Anger. Hurt. Annoyance.

“Ma’am,” a male voice said, and Red turned, Val still tucked into him, to face the police officer. “Can you tell us what happened?”

Val nodded, her autumn eyes filled with alarm and frustration.

“That woman came up behind me while I was getting my groceries out of my car. She started talking nonsense, then she got in my face,” Valentina recounted.

As he listened, Red got angrier. What the fuck was Shannon thinking? She obviously followed Val from somewhere because there was no way Shannon just knew where Val lived, not when it had taken him hacking the world’s largest retailer to get the information.

“She alleges you hit her,” the officer, his name tag reading “Harris,” said, his narrowed eyes shifting over Redtube. Yeah, the fucker probably got the wrong idea about what the fuck was happening. Big, tattooed biker must have been stepping out on his pregnant woman, and Val was the supposed “homewrecker” as Shannon claimed. “Can you prove that you didn’t?”

Val shifted, pushing away from him, and his heart clenched. Was she trying to get away from him? What the hell had Shannon said?

Thankfully, she was only pulling away to grab her cell from her pocket.

“I have doorbell camera footage,” Val said, tapping her screen. She held the phone out to the police officer who took it. “It captured everything. It even has sound.”

Harris watched the footage, his expression tight, and then he sighed, shaking his head.

He turned to the men holding Shannon, and declared, “Let’s detain her.”

Shannon, probably realizing things weren’t going her way, began to struggle harder.

“Miss Ivanova, would you like to press charges?” Officer Harris asked, and Val immediately shook her head.

“No. I just want her gone. Though, you might want to talk to her family about getting her some help. It isn’t good that she’s acting so fucking crazy when she’s as pregnant as she is.”

Officer Harris nodded, then turned and followed the other two officers toward the squad cars. It took some doing to get the struggling heavily pregnant Shannon in the back of the SUV safely, but once they shut the door on the screeching woman, the telling silence followed.

When he turned back to Val, she was watching the cops, silent, her face still pale, her eyes hard.

Shit.

This wasn’t going to be good, but there wasn’t anything he could do but tell her the truth about Shannon. His woman was still hurt from the bullshit he’d done before, so this could be the final straw on the camel’s back of their relationship.

“Val—”

She snapped her head around to look at him and raised her hand to stop him.

“Wait until she’s gone. Then we’ll go inside and talk.” She stepped out from under his arm completely, but she didn’t go far. She bent by her car and picked up two shopping bags. “If we’re going to talk about this, I need my fucking peppermint mocha,” she grumbled.

He understood his woman’s need for caffeine and chocolate…and time to let things mentally settle, so he remained silent.

It took another twenty minutes for the police to haul off a still shrieking Shannon, but once the red and blue lights were gone, and the looky-loos had retreated back to their homes, he knew it was time for him to sack up and let his woman have her say.

She shot him a look and turned toward her house. Without a word, he grabbed her grocery bags from her grip and followed her. Inside, he took the food to the kitchen, turned on the Keurig, and located the mugs. The whole time, Val watched him move around her kitchen. In silence.

Coffee brewed, creamer applied, and the steaming mug in Val’s hands, he finally said, “The baby isn’t mine.”

She didn’t flinch, look at him, or reply, she simply took a slow sip of her coffee, closing her eyes as she did. She moaned, which made his dick perk up, but then she sighed. The sigh killed his chub.

“I had sex with her a few months ago…in the gym bathroom. She’s further along than that, and I know that because when she tried to claim the baby was mine, I hacked the hospital medical records and found the information on her pregnancy.” Still she said nothing, just continued sipping her coffee.

Despair and fear flooded him. What did her silence mean? What else had Shannon told her?

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