Page 135 of Love Notes & Lifelines
“Do it. Throw anything you can at her. I don’t care if she’s a blood relation to my girls, she’s never going to hurt them again.”
It’s another twenty minutes before I can leave the beach, but the second I’m set free, I sprint toward the house with Emmy in one arm and Ruby in the other.
Elijah is sitting on the porch with Samira. Breathing is painful, and I know before he opens his mouth that Stella’s gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
STELLA
Shakingout my arms does no good. There’s a tremor of doubt and insecurity rolling through my body that I can’t control. My blurry eyes distort my vision as I stumble toward the house, causing me to trip more than once.
“Stella, Stella, Stella.”
I stop short when I reach the side of the house. That voice. It doesn’t belong here, and it sends my already shaky insides straight to my throat.
“How do you keep getting yourself into these pickles?” Silas asks.
Fear infiltrates every pore at the sound of his voice. Images flash like lightning strikes in my mind. The summer he suggested liposuction. The dinner where he ordered me a salad with no dressing in front of everyone to prove a point. The double date where he told his friends I needed training. The holiday party where he ambushed me. Me, nearly naked on top of Beck.
My neck itches, but my nails can’t scratch it no matter how hard I dig. Fear and embarrassment scrape against my throat, and my breaths come in harsh pants.
“Stella,” he says again, and I flinch. More memories cloud my vision. I don’t even know what’s real anymore. Sounds distort, cresting and falling like a wave.
Am I losing my mind?
“All you have to do is get him to merge with Delacroix Holdings and this will be over for all of us. She has me by the balls too, but you can end this. Just fucking end it.” He shakes me by my arms.
When did he grab me?
“If you don’t want her getting custody of those girls, walk away from them now and tell him to agree to the merger.” His words sound tinny and far away, but I blink, and his ruddy face is inches from mine.
“Are you listening to me you stupid little?—”
Someone yanks me away from Silas, but my ankle gives out in the grass, and I stumble into the side of the house.
“Are you okay?” Leo asks, but never takes his eyes off Silas. When I don’t answer, he asks again more firmly. “Stella, are you okay?”
“Yes,” I say meekly. Why can Silas still turn me into the version of myself I hate the most?
“Get out of here.” Leo’s voice is scarily calm. He towers over Silas.
“She did this to herself,” Silas spits out. “She’s always causing drama. If she’d only kept her legs closed, Danica wouldn’t have gone after her—” The rest of his word vomit is cut off when Leo moves like a shadow, spins Silas around with his arm pinned behind his back and slams him into the house next to me. Silas’s ego is stronger than his sense of self-preservation.
“Do you know what I hate more than anything in this world?” Leo’s words send a chill down my spine. This is not the surf-loving yogi I’ve grown to love. This is a soldier taking down an enemy.
“Take it easy,” Silas blusters.
“Men. Like. You,” Leo growls. “Men who think they have a right to put their hands on a woman just because they can. Men who have no social or moral compass and take what doesn’t belong to them. I hate men like you, so you have two choices. Leave now before the sheriff finds you, or stay and keep running your fucking mouth and let the sheriff find what’s left of you.”
Leo shoves his weight into him hard and Silas falls to the ground with a psychotic laugh. “She has no idea what’s coming for her. She’ll get what she deserves. You hear that, Stella?” He wipes at his nose. He must have been on the verge of tears when Leo had him pinned. “And I don’t even have to get my hands dirty for it to happen. But my bed is open if you want to make other arrangements.”
The echoes of our rehearsal dinner whirl in my belly, but I steel my resolve and keep them down.
A rage I’ve never known gives my voice a razor’s edge. I am so done with being treated like shit. “You can threaten me all you want, you pathetic piece of shit, but your words no longer infect me—your poison can’t reach me anymore. And you’ll never put your hands on me again. Never.” My words are pitched high but strong. “And you willneverspeak about those girls again, do you understand me? Just because you believe you have all the videos of you at my apartment doesn’t mean it’s true.”
Never has a lie fallen from my lips so easily before.
“You fucking whore.” He lunges for me, but Leo intercepts him with a two-handed shove that knocks him to his ass.
