Paradise Found: Cain (Paradise #2)(22)

The adrenaline snaked within me. I hissed as Rustin got my chin, but another strike and he was on his back. I stood over him, seething with frustration, arm raised to take him out, but something stopped me. A fear I hadn’t known before: the terror of killing. In my second of weakness, he almost got me with a kick to the chest. Without lessening the blow, I struck with a final hit. Rustin was down. I was back on the pedestal as a champion.

Returning to the locker room, I was still tense.

“You need a good lay and a stiff drink,” my father suggested, as I beat a locker door then double jabbed in mid-air. The match with Dweller hadn’t been long enough. Kursch recognized my irritation. A decent f*ck and hard whiskey weren’t going to be a cure. My father eventually excused himself. He had investors and sponsors to schmooze. The smile on his face would have appeared approving, but it was only false praise. He was still expecting more of me. I was never going to be good enough for him until I killed a man for real. I couldn’t go where those thoughts led.

Still struggling with pent up aggression, I practically wrestled the wraps off my hands. I kicked out like a toddler about to have a tantrum. I groaned in annoyance. Energy hummed through my body, demanding release. My heart pounded in my chest. My fingers twitched with the necessity for contact. I punched the locker and the vibration of metal ricocheted up my arm. The dent equaled the hole in my heart. Fuck! I screamed internally. I had to stop thinking of her.

“I reviewed the papers,” Kursch broke into my childish outburst. I hadn’t seen him since the night I returned to my home without Sofie. I’d called him to let him know I was leaving for Vegas. I’d left the papers on the dining room table, afraid to touch them after she had. He assured me he would review them, notarize them, and forward them to the lawyer I hired outside my father’s team. I couldn’t afford for someone within his inner circle to know what I’d done. Not to mention, I needed a lawyer in California where we were married, not in Nevada.

Kursch’s comment brought on a new tremor of contained tension. I picked up a chair and tossed in against the opposite wall. The clattering of cheap metal did nothing to relieve me. Break. Smash. Crush. These were my thoughts. I wanted to shatter something whole and concrete down to nothing, like I felt.

“She crossed off all the zeroes.”

I froze. My body still in uncontrollable motion as blood seethed and heart raced. My chest rose and fell as the rest of me stilled. I was alert to his words only.

“What?” I growled, my voice rough with the effort it took to calm my wired body.

“She put a line through the numbers. Wrote I promise to take it to my grave, till death do us part, and signed the bottom of the papers.”

“What does that mean?” I barked, not fully comprehending what he was telling me.

“It means she doesn’t want anything from you and it means it’s official. You’re divorced once we submit to the lawyer.”

Fuck! This was good. This was bad.

“Give me the papers,” I spit. She was too good for me, and a better man would have let her go. I should have let her go, but I couldn’t. Kursch stared at me with dark brown eyes that were the only soft feature of his appearance. He’d looked at me over the years with love and concern after my father’s accusations and beatings. He’d been mother and father, although he was no blood relation. He gave off the impression of a killer in his own right rather than a gentle giant, but he nodded once in acknowledgement. As if anticipating my intention before I did, he handed over the blue envelope.

“That’s what I thought,” he grumbled with a slight chuckle and let me return to my attack of an innocent locker room.





Midweek, I was back at the science building. Although my concentration was flawed lately, I was doing my best to throw myself into anything that took my mind off the unbelievable events of the last ten days.

He fingerf*cked me.

He told me we were married.

He divorced me.

It was worse than a poorly written romance novel.

I was in one of those deep moments of thought when I saw Abel Callahan approaching me. My first instinct was to turn and walk away. I didn’t want any more to do with the Callahan clan, but Abel had been sweet, and I couldn’t fault him the sins of his brother.

“Hey, Sofie,” he addressed me cheerfully.

“Abel.” I falsely smiled in return. We fell in step together, although I wasn’t certain where he was heading. I needed lunch and was on my way to La Cantina for something quick and takeaway.

“I haven’t seen you since we returned. How are you?” he asked, eyeing me in a searching sort of way.

“I’m fine,” I exaggerated, “and how are you?”

“I’m good,” he singsonged in return, teasing me with the words, but the look of happiness on his face told me he was more than good. I’d heard from Lucie that Elma had decided to move in with Abel. They were officially official, whatever that meant. I wasn’t much of a dater before, so I didn’t know much about being official with someone, although I hadn’t been a virgin when I married Cain. I shut down thoughts of him immediately. It didn’t matter that I’d been married. There had been no official commitment in those vows.

“So did you hear about Cain’s fight?”

Without thinking, my reaction was to glance at Abel in concern. I scolded myself internally and turned away. “I haven’t.”