I shift in my seat. I forget Ryder is extra perceptive when it comes to me. We’ve been tight for a long time, and he knows me better than most.
“Women don’t care if you have a wild side or if you do stupid shit, like fucking your new stepmom in a closet, when they’re doing a temporary thing for fun. But for something more permanent, they want a guy who’s more stable. The article damages Number Three, but it doesn’t exactly help you either. Dad’s gonna be pissed.”
“Fuck Dad. He’s already pissed. Why do you think we all have to marry like this?”
“Number Three’s going to retaliate.”
“Not a problem, so long as she moves against me.”
I hear someone walk by on the other side of my office door. Nonny went out with her friends after breakfast, saying she wouldn’t be back until dinner time. What’s Belle doing up? She should be resting.
I go outside. My wife is in a robe, cinched tightly around her waist. She sinks onto a couch, her phone clutched in her hand. She looks up at me.
“Gotta go,” I tell Ryder, and hang up.
Her dark green eyes are unfathomable as she raises her phone. “Is this all true?”
Damn it. I shove my hands into my pant pockets. “Yes.”
“Everything?”
I nod.
“My god.” She licks her lips. “How… Why would she release this? It makes her look awful.” She stares at the screen. “She was so smug when she told me about the closet incident… She claimed it was a sign you still wanted her.”
Embarrassment heats my cheeks, and I look away. “No. Actually, that was one of the lowest moments in my life.”
After the ceremony was finished, I finally confronted her in private. When she told me how much she regretted marrying Julian—because, of course, her heart really belonged to me—I told her to prove it. She kissed me, her mouth open and skilled, and I let her. That seemed to encourage her, and she pushed me into the closet where her wedding items were stored and where I then fucked her brutally. She was on birth control, so I didn’t worry about getting her pregnant. All I cared about was payback.
“Elliot, believe me. You’re the only one for me,” she whispered into my ear, her panting breath nauseating against my skin.
I pulled away with open distaste. “Keep telling yourself that while you dance with Julian with my cum in your cunt.”
Her face twisted into an ugly mask as I tucked my cock back into my pants and walked out. The shallow satisfaction lasted only a few moments until I started worrying about a possible STD. Stupid, stupid, stupid. For all I knew, she’d ridden every schlong in the state.
Thankfully, my health check came back clean. But I would always associate the closet incident with an idiotic loss of control on my part. Never again.
“One of her lowest, too, I’m sure,” Belle says softly, pulling me back to the present. I feel her gaze like silk over my face. “She didn’t have to make the incident public… You did this, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To make it clear she has zero chance at success. She needs to know that we’re not getting back together…and that I won’t let her threaten you. She’ll be too busy dealing with her husband to bother us for a while.”
Belle nods. “The part about her husband physically abusing her, and her wanting your help to divorce him… Is Stanton going to believe it?”
“He will once he checks the authenticity of the photo with her showing me her bruised arm. Every picture in the article is real. Also, he’s going to discover very soon—thanks to an anonymous tip—that his wife has been using the PIs on his retainer to surveil you.”
“What?”
“That’s how I knew about your meeting with Dennis. She’s been sending me photos. Anonymously.” I snort. “Like that would stop me from finding out who was behind them.”
“So…all the issues we’ve had, they weren’t all because of Mr. Grayson?”
I shake my head. “No. I don’t know how—or if—he fits in with her plan. Maybe they worked together and maybe they didn’t. But I’m making sure none of our enemies can damage what we have. I’m cutting them down one by one.”
“I wish you’d told me.” She extends a hand, her palm open and facing up. “I would’ve helped you find some other way.”