Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 74122 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74122 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
No, he couldn’t know how precious bringing a life into the world could be. He never had the chance to see his daughter being born, to hold her during that first breath. To watch her take her first steps. Hear her first words. To create that bond with a life that was a piece of yourself. Her chest ached for his loss. For never knowing the love that you felt as a parent.
Because he was never allowed to be one. He’d been denied that opportunity. Most likely because of who he was and where he came from, how he chose to live his life.
He had been treated as a mistake that needed to be erased.
And that was downright cruel.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “After Lily was born, our marriage suffered, but I didn’t know why. I mean we were young and being new parents was stressful. But something else was going on and because I was so caught up with taking care of my daughter, I missed it. Maybe it was my fault, for being blind, for not paying attention. I don’t know...”
“Emma.”
Her name on his lips and the way he said it drew her attention. His green eyes looked dark, troubled, his jaw tight.
“He cheat on you?”
“It was worse than that.” Because it was oh-so worse. Never in her wildest dreams could she imagine what the man—who she loved, who she married, who she had a child with—was plotting.
In fact, even now, she had a hard time wrapping her head around it. She couldn’t imagine what kind of human being did what he did. A selfish bastard, that was who.
“He have a kid with someone else?”
She made a noise before she could stop it. She pressed her fingers to her lips to prevent anything else from escaping. Closing her eyes, she pictured her baby girl. Her daughter in her crib. Wobbling across the floor taking her first steps. Smashing the cake from her first birthday into her mouth but missing and getting it all over her chubby chin and cheeks as she laughed with glee. Then the cake from her second birthday and the third. Even the fourth.
And Emma had no idea what was going on all that time. None.
In the end, all she knew was that she failed her daughter. She had been too blissfully unaware.
“Emma,” Dawg urged, his voice low and tight, no more than a rough whisper, spurring her to continue.
“No, that’s the funny part.” Which really wasn’t funny at all. “He didn’t have any other children. They couldn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
Emma lifted her gaze to meet Dawg’s head-on. “The woman he was... seeing for years behind my back couldn’t have children. Though they tried. And tried. So they...”
Emma squeezed her eyes shut, stinging tears threatening to spill once more, her throat closing up. She didn’t know if she could continue. It was like ripping the wound open all over again to expose something that was painful, raw, unbearable.
“Betrayed me,” she finally finished, her voice catching.
“How?”
Saying the words made it feel like a knife being shoved into her heart all over again. “They... stole my daughter.”
“What the fuck!” Dawg bellowed, jumping up from his seat, his face a mask of pure unadulterated rage, his hands clenched tightly into fists. “What the fuck you talkin’ about?”
Emma dropped her face into her hands and shook her head. She couldn’t talk about it anymore. She couldn’t put it into words. Those words cut her like a million shards of shattered glass.
Dawg rushed over to her, dropped to his knees, grabbed her face in his big hands and forced her to look at him.
His furious expression, the hardness in his eyes, his flaring nostrils made a shiver of fear skitter down her spine.
He gave her a slight shake. “Emma! What the fuck you talkin’ about?”
She breathed, “They took her.”
“Who?”
“My husband and his... his girlfriend.”
“When?”
“A year and a half ago.”
“Why didn’t you stop ‘em?”
If it had only been that easy. “I couldn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“He snuck out in the middle of the night and disappeared.”
Though, her husband was kind enough to leave a note explaining why and that she shouldn’t be worried, that her daughter would be safe with him. And, by the way, not to bother looking for them since she’d never find them. Bastard.
“Where?”
“I don’t know!”
“What do you mean you don’t know!” he shouted.
“Exactly what I said,” she shouted back in frustration. “I have no idea where they are.”
“What the fuck! That’s impossible. Hire someone to find ‘em.”
“I did! I fucking did, Dawson! I spent all of my money on investigators. On attorneys. I did...” She ground the heels of her palms into her eyes and took a shaky breath.
“Have to be somewhere...”
“No. They left the country. They disappeared somewhere other than the States. The trail went cold in South America and I ran out of money. I lost my house. I lost my car. I lost everything because I spent every cent trying to find them. Trying to bring my daughter home.”