Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 110694 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110694 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Fuck. Was this what having a daughter was going to be like? Would I always have this panicky feeling clawing up my back, trying to suffocate me?
Stevie wouldn’t be safe from my enemies when they realized I had this weakness. She wasn’t going to go to some fucking school. She had to be guarded. Protected.
The only other option was letting them go and not claiming her.
I wasn’t going to be able to do that. There was no going back now. Whatever I had to do to keep her safe, I’d do it. Now that I knew she existed, and I’d met her, I wasn’t letting her be raised by some other man. She was mine. Her mother was just going to have to get on board. I wanted my daughter, and my daughter needed her mom.
Being the leader of a branch of the Southern Mafia had never made my knees feel weak or my stomach clench, but with a tiny little blonde beauty with a head full of curls in my life now, I was ready to fall the fuck apart.
Eight
Branwen
I followed Linc inside the room, and the two men who stood both looked to be in their fifties. Unlike Linc, they looked their age. One was even balding. The other had thick silver hair and glasses. If I hadn’t known Linc’s age, I would have thought he was early to mid-forties.
“Branwen, this is Garth Stanz and Matthew Hoyt,” Linc informed me as he walked past the men and straight to a bar, which appeared to be stocked with five different whiskeys.
Like the rest of the office, the bar was a dark wood, almost black. A rack with lowball glasses and a few short, odd-shaped, almost pear-like, glasses hung to the right of it while the left was a built-in humidor case. My eyes drifted over the room, and I stopped at the portrait of a black thoroughbred. I wondered if that horse had been his—or maybe still was. Obviously, it was important.
Behind his desk were tall windows with drapes that hung from the crown molding to the hardwood floor. A cylindrical chandelier, with the same bronze as the rest of the hardware, hung in the center of the room. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with just books. Nothing more. I had no idea if Linc was a reader or not. There was a lot I didn’t know about the man I had thought I loved for most of my life.
When Linc took his glass of whiskey to stand behind his desk, he motioned for me to take a seat as the two men sat back in the caramel-colored leather chairs. I glanced around and decided to sit in one of the same-styled chairs to the left of the black leather chesterfield, whereas they were seated to the right.
The room smelled of Linc. His distinctive scent that had stayed with me long after I left that hotel room in Vegas. Recently, I hadn’t been close enough to him again to get a whiff, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t inhaling more than necessary. It was addictive. I could dislike the man and appreciate the way he smelled.
I looked from Linc to his lawyers.
Linc was looking through some papers on his desk then stopped to read one. His jaw was rigid and whatever he was reading didn’t help matters.
“As you already know, the marriage certificate is legal.” Linc’s tone didn’t hide his annoyance about that fact.
Well, I didn’t want to be married to him either. It was why I had come here in the first place.
“I understand you want a divorce because you’re engaged to be married.”
His eyes, flickering to the three-carat ring on my hand, held a trace of disgust. I fought the urge to cover it. That was a silly reaction, but old habits died hard, I supposed. My desire to please this man was well past its expiration date.
“However…” he continued.
My already-straight posture grew rigid at that one word. I didn’t like it. Dread pooled in my stomach.
“We both have something we want here. You want to marry the dentist, and I want my daughter.”
If he were anyone else, I’d have balked at him knowing that Hudson was a dentist, but this was Linc. He had the world at his fingertips. I hadn’t prepared myself for it though. I should have. It was an invasion of privacy. He hadn’t gone back all the way in my past, or he would realize who I was.
The determined expression on his face was causing my throat to close and my heart to pound so loudly that I was sure they could all hear it. What did he mean about wanting Stevie? I had convinced myself he wouldn’t want her. Just like he hadn’t wanted her five years ago. I fought to inhale, and my hands trembled in my lap so hard that I had to clasp them together to stop it.