Vicious Carousel (Suncoast Society #25)(38)

But what Nolan would never forget were the men he and his father lunched with, men his father had apparently fought with. There’d been a look in some of their eyes as they’d talked, censoring their discussions before they’d gotten to what Nolan at the time had thought of as the “good stuff.”

June had a similar expression in her eyes out in their driveway. Cold. Hard.

Deadly.

Tilly was a lot of seriously scary bluster that took care of ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the asshats single female submissives had to deal with in their local group.

June reminded him of a silent, deadly watcher, a ninja.

Waiting.

Then Kenny pulled him in for a kiss, for a moment sidetracking Nolan’s brain even to the point of forgetting June’s glittering, deadly gaze and that dinner was cooking.

“Yeah. Both of us, together,” Kenny said.

“Huh?”

“Killing that guy.” Kenny smiled and released Nolan. “I don’t know what the future will hold, but I’m glad she came into our lives.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”





Chapter Thirteen


During dinner, Nolan finally brought the subject up. “June said we need to tell you something,” he said. “We didn’t want you worrying about it earlier.”

There was something disquietingly prey-like in the way her head popped up, eyes wide and nostrils flaring, as if a rabbit preparing to bolt from a predator.

“What?” she finally asked.

Nolan told her what June had told him—minus the revenge not-quite-fantasy part of the tale.

She didn’t react at first, and he wondered if she’d actually heard him despite sitting just across the table. She remained frozen, staring at him.

“Bets?” Kenny softly said. “You okay?”

That seemed to break her spell. She blinked her left eye, her right one still swollen mostly shut. “I don’t want you two hounded by the press,” she said.

“That’s not your concern,” Nolan told her. “That’s ours. And they won’t hound us, because they don’t know where you are. Even if they did find out, we won’t let them talk to you.”

“I should probably call my parents and warn them, shouldn’t I?”

“Might not be a bad idea.”

She held her fork for a moment, motionless, before setting it down next to her plate. “Would it be easier if I just let him skate on these charges?”

“No,” both men strongly said, making her left eye widen again.

Nolan softened his tone. “You cannot let him get away with what he did to you. If it goes to trial—and it might not, because he might plead out eventually—we will all be there by your side, with you. You won’t be facing him alone.”

“He’s going to say all sorts of horrible things about me,” she said. “I know he will. He used to love telling me the things he’d tell people about me if I tried to leave him.”

“Unless you were grinding up live puppies in a blender,” Kenny said, “there’s nothing he can say about you that will make us think any less about you.”

“What if he outs all of you? What if he mentions peoples’ names in open court?”

“Just because he says it doesn’t make it true,” Nolan said. “This is about him beating you, torturing you, holding you against your will.” Nolan had a really bad feeling gelling in the pit of his stomach. That maybe, now that she was free of Jack, she might drop the charges against him just to make him go away.

Meaning he’d be free to do this—or worse—to someone else, smarter now in the knowledge of exactly how far he could push a woman without her rebelling, how to keep her firmly under his control.

It sickened Nolan.

Kenny said it first. “How about if he kills the next woman?” he asked, hitting low. “How would that make you feel?”

She stared at him.

“I know,” Kenny continued, “that it’d make me, personally, feel like shit. That in the name of you trying to protect my privacy you didn’t testify and let him walk and someone died. I’d rather face a few weeks of media scrutiny that would settle down rather than live with the guilt that someone died because I didn’t press you hard enough to testify.”

Nolan hated the shocked expression on Betsy’s face, the borderline hurt there, but he knew Kenny was right.

They couldn’t let her back out.

Eventually, she nodded. “I don’t want him doing this to anyone else,” she said.

“Exactly,” Kenny said. “If you ask any of our friends if they have a choice between risking being outed and that f*cker going to jail for what he did to you? I know our friends. To a person, they’d all tell you to testify. I can start calling them right now, if you want me to.”

“No. That’s okay.” She stared down at her plate as a long, shuddering sigh escaped her.

Nolan couldn’t help that he wanted to sweep her into his arms, hold her, comfort her.

Finally, “Please keep reminding me,” she said. “Please keep telling me that.” She looked up, first meeting Kenny’s gaze, then Nolan’s. “Keep reminding me that this is about more than just me. That I have to be the one to finally make a stand.”