No.
I gulped.
“No.” That time I said it aloud, refusing it. My hands fisted in his tattered shirt. “No. You’re lying. You’re lying. Tell me you’re lying to me, Ryder. Please.”
He took me by both sides of the face and forced me to look at him. “It’s not a lie, Dakota. It’s who I am. It’s who I’ve been trying to protect you from for all these years. But something happened when you came here.” His voice was raw. “And I knew I couldn’t keep running from you any longer. That I had to stop this. Change it because there was no life worth living if I wasn’t living it for you. So, I called Ezra. I set them up, Dakota. When I go to load the car next week, the DEA is going to be there.”
Fear pounded, so loud, battering my brain and churning my stomach. Disgust and disbelief wound with it.
No.
“I think Dare knows something is up. One of his men was in the backyard. I chased after him to pin him down, but he got to me first. Sent a warning that I needed to remember my place.”
No.
There was no stopping the spiral of thoughts. The questions. Everything I thought I’d known.
My eyes squeezed closed as my mind whirred through the things he’d told me. The things he’d done.
And it all started to fall on me.
Adding up to a sum I couldn’t endure.
“How did you buy this house?” I stammered.
Guilt struck through his expression. “It was my mother’s house, Dakota. I had to—”
I choked, cutting him off. “My restaurant? The money you lent me? The money you said came from a life insurance policy of your mother’s that you hadn’t known about?”
Shame blasted from his conscience. So palpable that I could feel it coating my fingertips that were wound in his shirt.
No.
“Dakota.” My name was a plea.
A confession. “Please tell me you didn’t give me drug money to start my restaurant, Ryder. Please tell me everything I built isn’t tainted. Please.”
His jaw clenched, and disgrace rushed from his pores.
The betrayal smacked me across the face.
The truth of what he’d done.
Of what he’d made me an unknowing accomplice in.
He tightened his hold. “Dakota.”
I’d thought I could handle it. Anything he was holding. But how could he ask me to hold this?
Sickness churned in my guts. “Let go of me.”
“Dakota, please.”
“Let go!” I screamed it, and he dropped his hands.
I stumbled back, hugging my middle. Nausea spun, and the burn of bile lifted in my throat.
Tears coated my face. “How could you? How could you?”
My back hit the door, and the fear and disbelief broke, sending a shockwave of horror through my being.
It crashed through my spirit and annihilated my heart. A frenzy lit, and I turned and ran from the bathroom and into the bedroom where my things were, even though I hadn’t slept in there in almost a week. I grabbed a duffel bag and started to shove whatever I could into it.
I felt him emerge in the doorway behind me. “Dakota.”
“Don’t. Stay right there. Don’t come near me.” I barely gasped out the words, my sight so bleary I couldn’t see. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
The only thing I could feel was the betrayal.
The agony.
It was too much. Too much of him to ask of me.
I slipped my feet into flats, and I pushed out around him and raced into Kayden’s room. I didn’t slow. I went directly to his crib and scooped him out of it, praying he’d remain asleep.
Ryder was right there. “Dakota, please, listen to me.”
“I don’t want to hear anything else you have to say, Ryder.” I elbowed out around him, my flats clacking on the floor as I rushed back down the hall and hit the stairs. I hugged Kayden to my chest as I took the stairs as fast as I could. I grabbed my purse from the entry table before I whipped out the door, never slowing as I ran across the porch and down the pathway.
Ryder followed, gritting his teeth against the pain.
His presence big.
Profound.
Horrible.
Perfect.
My love.
My demise.
Revulsion slammed with it all. My restaurant. What I’d built. And it’d been built on this.
And Ryder…how could he remain involved in something so horrible? How could he? Did I know him at all?
Because he felt like a stranger right then. Someone I couldn’t recognize. All while that familiarity tugged through the connection.
I fumbled to get my keys so I could unlock the doors, barely able to get my trembling hands to cooperate as I buckled Kayden.