“I didn’t know all that.” I hated how small my voice was.
“Yeah, well, that’s because you never bothered giving half a shit about anything that wasn’t your club, your parties, your clothes, and your one-night stands. Christine went after me. She knew I had access to Ross’ calendar and schedule. I messed with it, giving her better hours and shifts when he wasn’t looking.” He picked up his knife from the ocean of broken glass in the middle of the living room, wiping it on the side of his jeans.
I moved uncomfortably on the couch. The duct tape was digging into my wrists, and I wanted to stretch my legs.
“Look, Frank, I’m sorry if—”
“I’m not done!” he roared, getting in my face. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes dancing with madness. “I lost everything. My girlfriend found out—of course she did. I got fired publicly, after all, and no one would hire me. Every time we left the house, a reporter or a photographer loitered nearby, because everyone likes a train-wreck story of a guy with a pregnant teenage girlfriend who harassed a burlesque girl and got his ass kicked by the manager of a club for it. My girlfriend didn’t leave, but she wouldn’t fucking let that shit go. Christine, the bitch, left the burlesque show and moved back to Cincinnati to marry some old fuck. He’s about to be in for a surprise when he realizes the baby she’s cooking for him belongs to me. And me? I got hooked on fentanyl. Because, you know, why the hell not?” He cackled tonelessly.
Oh boy.
“If you’d have told me—”
“You’d have done nothing,” he barked, and I knew it was the truth. “You hate men. Everyone knows that. Everyone!”
I wanted to throw up. All this time, I was partly responsible for his girlfriend’s condition. I remembered seeing her at buybuy Baby. How distressed she looked.
He began kicking things around as he spoke, determined to inflict as much destruction on me and mine. “Things got really bad at home. After a while, I just up and left. Like my daddy did before I was born. I couldn’t deal with it. And now there’s this cycle, you see. That you created. My son is going to come into this world with nothing while your kid is going to come into this world with everything. And why? Because you have a pretty face? A tight ass? Because your sister married some rich guy and now you two are prancing around like millionaires all day?”
I knew where this was going, and I didn’t like it. Not one bit.
“You were the one who went after me. But … but who was that man who came to Madame Mayhem to threaten me?”
“My stepdad.” Frank shrugged. “Did me a solid. Good guy, huh?”
“And the man at Boston Common?”
“Boston Common?” He frowned. “Ain’t nobody went for you there.”
My head was spinning. There were a few people after me. Frank was on a roll, though, and wasn’t exactly in the mood to answer any more of my questions.
“Well, I’m here to tell you if my baby is not going to have a future—and I certainly can’t give him a future…” his blade found my heart, moving down my skin toward my belly as he crouched down before me, “…then yours is not going to have one either.”
“Frank, please—”
The knife halted on my belly.
He smiled as he poked the blade into it, breaking the skin.
And that was when one of the living room walls came crashing down.
I arrived at the Penrose parents’ suburban house to find Belle’s father’s truck parked out front. Though it wasn’t necessarily in my plans to try and win Mr. Penrose over by explaining that my mother had sent people to threaten his daughter and that I may or may not had planned to marry someone else at one point, I was going to have to deal with him. After I informed Belle we were getting married this week and stopping this nonsense, of course.
I walked over to the door, determined, and raised my knuckles to rap the door.
Just then, a crash sounded from the inside. It sounded like glass shattering. I moved toward one of the windows, peeking inside.
Belle was sitting on the couch, mostly naked and duct taped while a Frank-looking-guy （I’d never seen the man, but again, deductive reasoning） stood above a pile of glass, a knife at his feet. I pressed my hands to the glass and roared, but they couldn’t hear me. I could tell by the thickness of the glass, and by the blurry way I saw them, that it was too thick.
I rushed over to the door and tried to pick the lock, but fuck, it wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t a flimsy door either. It was one of those steel security doors Cillian had installed in his mansion the day Astor was born. I couldn’t kick that shit down if I had The Rock’s quads.