Page 24 of When Love Found Us
Her eyes are wide, raw. She’s at her breaking point.
“I can’t,” she chokes out. “He’ll pay you so much that you’ll give me up. It’s better if I just leave. When he finds me, he’s going to kill me.”
Okay, it’s a ‘he’ that we’re running from. Probably someone who’s been keeping her captive and has been abusing her. That explains a lot about her behavior.
“I understand that what I’m about to say is just noise to you, but you can trust me.” I shift closer, just enough that she knows I’m here, that she’s not alone in whatever this is. “Believe me when I say that no amount of money is good enough to give somebody away. I will protect you. But I need to know who I’m up against.”
She squeezes her eyes shut, like if she blocks out the world, she can make this moment disappear.
I wait.
Because now, it’s not about intimidation.
It’s about trust.
And if I push her any further, I’ll lose my chance at getting it.
ChapterEleven
Atlas
When I saidI wouldn’t ask Sanford or any of his friends for help while I handled the parlor, I wasn’t expecting Blythe Olsen to show up on my doorstep. Actually, her name is Henrietta Marie Worthington.
Now . . . well, I simply don’t have a choice.
Of course, I need to make the call—more like send the texts—because the guy she’s running from sounds like a complete asshole and a sociopath who’s been taking advantage of her. He’s definitely not someone I want to deal with blindly.
If I’m going to keep an eye on Blythe—or whoever she really is—I need to know exactly who I’m up against.
Once the message is sent, I wait. In the meantime, I watch her.
She’s curled up on the couch, smaller than before, like all the fight drained out of her the second she admitted the truth. The bravado, the feigned indifference—it’s gone. What’s left is someone who looks like she just lost the one thing keeping her safe, like she’s waiting for me to tell her she’s out of options.
The thing is that there’s no fucking way I’ll let her husband touch her again. He actually is going to pay for lifting a hand to the woman he was supposed to love and protect.
“You can’t stay in the hotel,” I say because there’s no way I can keep an eye on her if she’s tucked away on the other side of town. The place has no security, and no one is watching who comes and goes. And with the sudden influx of people passing through, I need her close.
Her head snaps up. “So, you’re kicking me out of town?”
The defiance is there, but her voice lacks bite. She’s not fighting me—she’s bracing for the worst.
“You said that if I told you who I was, you wouldn’t . . .” Her voice trails off, the sentence unfinished, like she can’t quite bring herself to say it. She believes I’m going to just toss her to the wolves and let them shred her to pieces.
I wouldn’t do anything like that. Never.
“No,” I correct, shaking my head. “I’m saying you’ll be moving upstairs.”
She blinks. “What’s upstairs?”
“Another apartment, just like this one.” I tilt my head, studying her, because there’s still something she hasn’t told me, and if we’re doing this, she has to tell me everything.
Everything. No more lies, nothing held back. I have to know what’s the deal with the nausea, the exhaustion, the way she barely touched the crackers I gave her. Like she’s afraid of something. Was this man poisoning her, and we need to take her to a hospital?
“Mind telling me what’s going on with you?” I ask.
She frowns, confusion crossing her face for a brief moment. “I thought I already did.”
I nod because, technically, she did. But she left something out.
