Page 63 of Inside the Maelstrom: Part Two
“I’m sorry about what I said. When we first met. You’re not a bad guy at all, Hendrick Kenley.”
He pulled me against his side. “And you aren’t the prissy little gold-digger I thought you’d be, Aviva Kenley.”
I snorted. “Yet somehow I still ended up married to you?”
He kissed my temple. “Sure, but I know you’d rather set me on fire than take my money.”
“Bit dramatic,” I muttered, but we both knew it was true. “Just up ahead is a T-intersection. That's it.”
Hendrick shoved me over, craning his head. There was a gaping hole in the branches now; those were probably still lodged in my car in the wrecker’s yard across town. Honestly, it was more luck than anything that I hadn’t died a painful death, impaled on the limb of a magnolia tree. I’d wanted to die, but painfully was not for me.
“Oh yeah, I see it now. Totally fucking obnoxious. We should chop it down,” Hendrick muttered, and I looked over to see if he was mocking me, but he seemed serious.
The smile that spread across my face was almost against my will. A moment ago, smiling had felt like the last thing I wanted to do. That was definitely the Hendrick effect. He would drag your emotions out of you, whether they be good or bad, and hold them to your face like a mirror.
We idled across the intersection from the tree, which was less beautiful now that it had lost its flowers, and was beginning to lose its leaves over winter. It was hard to know now—while I was nicely evened out by meds—why I’d found the tree so infuriating.
Mr. Peterson came out into his yard, and I ducked down in my seat. “Shit, did he see me?”
Hendrick looked over at me, basically crouched in the footwell. “Not unless he has bionic eyes.”
Otto put the car into gear, and we pulled up to the intersection, driving through it slowly. I kept my face averted, but Mr. Peterson was hard at work in the garden, not even looking up.
I had to apologize to them one day, I knew that. They’d been good to me—they could have easily pushed for me to be sent to jail, or pay damages that my parents couldn’t afford. But they’d always been nice people. They were more empathetic than I deserved.
By the time we made it back to the hotel, only the residual pain in my chest reminded me that my parents had just tried to blow apart my newfound happiness. Well, my chest and Otto’s loaded looks. He was watching me closely, waiting for me to have a complete mental breakdown, probably.
When I walked into the hotel room, Evan was shirtless and watching Jeopardy, and Sampson was working on his phone, his fingers flying across the screen so fast that I knew he had to be typing an email.
Evan looked up when we walked in, a soft smile on his usually stern face. Sampson looked happy to see me too, setting his phone down on the coffee table. “How’d it go?”
Aw, fuck.
The tears bubbled back up and over my eyelids, then poured down my cheeks as the smiles turned to horror. Evan was on his feet, bundling me up in his arms as his hands searched me for injuries or something. I should have told him that the stab wounds were on the inside, but the tears had turned to sobs again.
“What happened?” Sampson snapped, but I didn’t pull my face away from Evan’s chest to answer.
“Her dad is a bit of a cunt. No offense, Viva.”
I heard the thump of someone whacking Hendrick, and I had a feeling it was Evan, given the way his chest muscles flexed.
“They wanted to keep Aviva there with them and get the marriage annulled. They think we’ve coerced her into this whole thing,” Otto said reasonably, but there was still fire in his words. Outrage.
Evan’s hand stroked up and down my back. “Can’t blame them. I’d probably feel that way too. Hell, Ididfeel that way when you first brought her to New York.”
I reared back, and Hendrick hissed between his teeth.
Evan held me closer, refusing to let me go. “Seriously? Look at it from their perspective. Their daughter tries to kill herself, then she sneaks out of her facility in the early morning and leaves the damn country. Next thing they hear, cops are saying she's been trafficked, and then she’s calling to say she married one of you guys. It's crazy, from an outsider's point of view.”
“You think I should go back and stay with them?” I couldn’t keep the betrayal from my voice, and he kissed my forehead.
“Fuck no. Just cut them some slack. They’re being assholes, but they have your best interests at heart. As opposed to the other stellar parenting examples suffered by the others. Not you, Otto. Your parents are fucking saints to have put up with you three.”
Hands rubbed my back, and I sighed. My parents mightn’t understand, and when Evan put it like that, I got it. But they’d have to lock me in a fucking closet to keep me in my childhood home.
As the guys crowded around me, buffering me from the world, I knew they were my home now. The thought of ever leaving was a physical ache in my chest.
At some point, I’d fallen asleep and someone had put me to bed. Sampson was curled around my body like a weighted blanket. My tears had finally run out, but I still felt that overwhelming anxiety churning away deep in my gut. I couldn’t work out if it was the situation, or my meds, or my period making me so emotional.
