After His Mistress Faked a Baby, I Burned It All Down

I changed back into a light pair of jeans and a shirt and went back to the Randall house.

I was digging for proof that Luke Randall had funneled the company's assets out from under me when I found something else: the ruby wedding rings, the ones that had witnessed our love, thrown into the trash.

I picked up the custom-made pair without thinking, and tears slid onto the back of my hand before I knew they were falling.

Seven years ago, I'd said offhand that I envied the way it snowed up north. He spent hundreds of millions within the day and ordered the weather bureau to make it snow for me every winter.

On one bitterly cold night, he stood with me in the falling snow and watched the flakes spin until they settled across both our heads. He pulled me close and kissed me like the rest of the world had stopped existing. After a long while he dropped to one knee and asked me to marry him, and we slid the ruby rings onto each other's fingers, so happy it hurt.

The first year we were married, Luke brought a woman home from some bar and had her right there in our marriage bed. Two bodies tangled together, the sounds of it too vile to listen to.

I froze in the doorway and let the tears come.

For more than twenty years, Luke had never been able to stand the sight of me crying. That night he ordered the housekeeper to press a pillow over my mouth to muffle it. "You done yet? If you don't mind, treat it like a live demonstration. Take notes."

Had any of that love been real?

Luke's bodyguard burst into the study and cut the memory off. I struggled the whole way, but he forced me into the car anyway.

They shoved me along until we reached one of Luke's private stadiums.

"I knew you were rotten underneath. You thought a little medical training gave you the right to take a scalpel to Tonya." Luke had his arm around the woman beside him.

She cradled the slight swell of her belly, her voice gone shrill. "Yesterday she cut me with a scalpel. If I hadn't shielded the baby the whole time, we'd have lost it."

I answered at once. "Where's your proof? I have an alibi."

Her eyes flooded on cue, and she sobbed up at Luke, sweet and helpless. "Luke, just let it go this time. As long as our baby's safe. I can take a little hurt, it's fine."

Luke pulled out a golf club and brought it down hard across my back. "I'm not blind and I'm not deaf! Don't think I don't know about all the filthy little things you do behind my back!"

The pain dropped me to the floor, my eyes burning red. "If I did it, I'll own it. If I didn't, you can forget making me."

Luke glanced at the woman with all that wronged grief written on her face, then dragged his gaze back to mine and said, bored with me already, "Touch one hair on Tonya's head again, and I'll scatter your father's ashes in the river. See if his soul ever finds rest."

Panic flickered through me before I could hide it.

My father's death was a wound that never dried out. And I knew Luke. Vicious, cunning. He would do it.

Before I could get a word out, the bodyguard threw a basin of cold water over me.

The cold went straight to the bone. I stared at that disgusting face of his and bit down into my own tongue until the rust taste cleared my head.

For the sake of finding the proof that Luke had emptied my father's company, I made myself say, voice raw, "Fine. I understand. I'm sorry."

Luke took the gun from the bodyguard and handed it to the woman. "Baby. Your turn to hit back now."

He looked at me, cold. "Ten rounds in that gun. You can dodge. Where you get hit is just down to luck."

"Wait—Tonya's pregnant, she can't exactly chase you around. Only fair we even the odds."

Luke pulled off his tie and bound my legs together.