Chapter 22
Emma
Harlow Slater is not who I pictured.
In my head, I’d compared her to Heath. Painting her as a Morticia type from the Addams Family. Instead, she’s petite, with streaks of silver in her blonde hair. Her eyes are not nearly as full of malice as her son’s, and her features are far softer than his too.
She looks like any normal woman.
Yet, she had a hand in raising a monster. Just like Felicity did.
She’s seated on the front porch of the cabin, a mug of coffee in her hand. Dylan remains near his truck while I’m sitting next to her, waiting for the woman to speak. Which she hasn’t done since we were introduced.
Though. every now and then, I catch her staring at me. Is she seeing Felicity when she does? Or the woman her son intends to marry?
“You look like her,” Harlow finally says. “Like Felicity. The spitting image of her when she was younger. Before Gio put her through the Botox injections and plastic surgery.”
“She had plastic surgery?”
She nods. “He thought her nose was a bit too sharp. That was just the start of it too. He molded her like clay. Top to bottom, even though she was beautiful before—like you are.”
“Did your husband do that to you?”
“They all do it,” she says. “There’s an expectation of women married to dangerous men. We must look as beautiful as they consider themselves lethal.” The way she says it makes the ache in my chest grow.
The fear I’ve been trying to bury threatens to surface again. Is that what will happen to me if Heath gets his hands on me? Will he change me? Stripping away everything God blessed me with until he’s not only destroyed my heart and soul but my body as well?
I glance over at Dylan.
Heath won’t get to me.
“How long did you know my mother?” I ask, hoping to gently steer the conversation away from Heath—for now.
“Since college,” she replies. “But that’s not what you really want to know.
” Harlow turns to me. “How about you ask me what you really want so I can go back to the solitude I’ve been placed in?
” She looks so sad—so broken. What was she like before?
Back when she and Felicity were college girls with their entire lives ahead of them?
“Why does Heath want to marry me?”
“It’s not about the marriage,” she says. “Truthfully, the only thing Heath wants to do is destroy. The Karvers are in to him for a lot of money, and he told them they have until the new year to pay up, or he’s going to wipe their entire line from the face of the earth.”
If it’s a New Year deadline, then why did Felicity insist on November 1st?
“How did I end up getting offered as payment?”
She sighs. “I wasn’t supposed to be privy to that conversation, but I overheard Heath on the phone with your fath—Gio,” she corrects.
“He said that he had a daughter who grew up in a tiny town with no outside corruption. Asked Heath if that would buy him some additional time to get the money together.”
My stomach twists. I was a pawn to be sacrificed for the betterment of the king. A story as old as time, but never easy to digest. “No outside corruption, what does that mean?”
“You’re a good girl,” she replies. “And Heath loves to play with his food. You would be an innocent flower he got to crush just for the fun of it.”
Bile burns the back of my throat. “Seriously?”
“My son is a terrible man, Emma. And I refuse to pull any punches. You want information from me? You have to be strong enough to stomach it.”
“I am.”
“Are you?” she asks, eyeing the floral dress I’m wearing.
I know that I probably look exactly like the innocent flower she’s describing. But inside, I’m far stronger.
“Yes.” I tighten my hands into fists in my lap. “So he accepted me as a partial payment.”
“Yes. But only because he had no intention of letting Gio live past the wedding. Heath had every intention of ensuring the entire Karver line—except for you—died the moment you said ‘I do.’”
“Why?”
“Because then you would be the sole heir to everything they had. With your background, no one would suspect you had anything to do with his dealings. And since they never got anything actually concrete enough to freeze his assets entirely, they would all be yours. And by proxy—”
“They’d belong to Heath.”
“Yes. And not just the money or real estate holdings. The drug manufacturers Gio used would be fair game too. By eliminating the Karvers, Heath is putting himself at the top of the food chain.”
“What was he planning to do with me?”
“He would’ve broken you down. Made you wish for death. And then he would’ve granted you that mercy.”
“Death is not a mercy.”
“Oh, honey, sometimes death is just that.” She shifts her attention to where Dylan is standing. “Ask your soldier; I’m sure he’d agree with me.”
I swallow hard, recalling Dylan’s words from the other day. “I wanted to die.” Could Heath have truly pushed me to that point? Somehow, I have no doubt that he could. That before he was done with me, I’d be begging for God to take me from this life.
Dark thoughts breed darker ones, though, so I shove those to the side. “Why did Felicity tell them to keep me hidden until November 1st? That I would be safe after that?”
Harlow takes a deep breath. “She called me the night they brought you into that dining room. She was panicked and told me that this couldn’t happen.
That we had to save you. So we took all of the evidence we have on both Gio and Heath, compiled it into one envelope, and set it on a time delay with a messenger service to send to the authorities. ”
“Why a time delay? Why not just send it immediately?”
“To give us time to get out of the way when their empires came crashing down around them. By then, Felicity had already contacted your soldier and started those dominoes.”
“Can you remove the time delay? Send it now?”
She continues staring off into the distance, tears in the corners of her eyes.
“The night Felicity was murdered, Heath managed to get the information out of her. He broke her, and she gave him the name of the messenger service. He made me watch as he burned the documents. I literally watched my freedom go up in flames, and I had to pretend like I didn’t know anything about it and that I didn’t care.
” She turns to me. “There is no hope, Emma.”
“There is always hope.”
“No. Not this time. Heath is coming for you, and he will destroy everything in his path. There is no stopping him.”
I swallow hard, trying to absorb everything she’s telling me. There is no countdown. At least, not in the way we thought. Instead, Heath is coming for me—and Dylan was right. We have to stop him.
“He has to have a weakness. Something else we can use to stop him.”
“All of the evidence is gone,” she says. “It was too risky to keep digital copies, so we relied on those papers.”
“There are no copies?”
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Emma, but there’s nothing.
I truly hate that this is your fate, but it’s time to accept it.
” She nods toward Dylan. “He’s going to die because he won’t let this go.
But the rest of these people?” She gestures toward the ranch.
“They stand a chance at surviving if you just accept what’s coming. ”
“Dylan won’t die.”
“Honey, he signed his death warrant the day he came for you on that beach. Heath won’t stop until he’s dead too.”
“You’re quiet.”
I look over at Dylan as he comes out onto the porch with me. I’ve been sitting out here for hours, ever since we got back from meeting with Harlow. The rest of the conversation was just the same information over and over again.
I’m going to be taken.
Dylan will be killed.
And there’s nothing we can do to stop it.
All we can do is damage control, making sure no one else gets hurt.
“You know, when I asked her why he hasn’t come for her yet, she told me that he knows she’s too afraid to do anything. That she’s not really a threat, and if he wanted her dead, that sniper wouldn’t have missed. She said he likes to play with his food first.”
“I would agree with that.”
I glance over at him, shocked and disgusted that Harlow wasn’t exaggerating. “Really?”
He nods. “She was used as a lure. To draw us out into that shop so he could challenge me in that hospital room. It was a strategy. He just thinks I’m too stupid to play chess.”
I smile, though inside I feel anything but happy. Dylan was always good at chess. Competed for a while too. “Remember when you tried to teach me how to play?” I ask, resting my cheek on my knees as I look at him.
He smirks. “I remember you were terrible.”
“You let me win once.”
“I did. And the smile on your face when you did is still something I think about.”
Tears burn in my eyes, the emotion hitting me out of nowhere. “She said you’re going to die. That you signed your death warrant when you came for me on that beach. Why did you come?”
“Do you think there was ever an option for me?” he asks, tone low. He moves closer to me. “Emma, I would rather go back into that cage and live the nightmare of my captivity over and over again—for the rest of my life—than watch you suffer.”
The tears begin to flow now, and I turn my head to rest my forehead on top of my knees so he can’t see them. “I can’t watch you die. I already went through that once. I can’t do it again.”
The swing moves just a bit as Dylan takes a seat beside me. “Emma.”
I open my eyes and turn my face toward him. He’s trembling, his eyes dark and his body tense, but he remains there, seated beside me. So close that our thighs are brushing. “You shouldn’t be this close if it’s so hard,” I tell him. “It’s okay. You can move away.”
“Not until you understand.” He takes a deep breath.
“I didn’t walk away from you because I wanted to.
Or because I’d changed so much that I didn’t love you anymore.
I walked away because I was terrified of hurting you.
I am terrified of hurting you. You were the only light I was able to hang on to, Emma.
I’m trying to find my way back to God, trying to understand why He saved me.
And now I’m thinking that maybe He didn’t let me die in that cave so that, when it was time, I could save you.
” With trembling fingers, Dylan reaches over and takes my hand in his.
He threads his fingers through mine and sits as still as a statue.
“If that’s all I do with this second chance He granted me, then I’ll consider it a life well-lived. ”
“I love you too, Dylan,” I whisper. “I never stopped.”
“It’s a lot to ask, but I need you to be patient with me. I need you to trust that I’m trying.”
“I do trust you,” I tell him.
Even though I want to squeeze my hand and offer him some reassurance, I don’t because I sense that it might be enough to push him over the edge.
A suspicion that’s confirmed when Delta trots over and rests his head on Dylan’s lap.
With his free hand, Dylan strokes his dog, and I can feel him relaxing just slightly as he does.
“The countdown isn’t real. At least, not anymore,” I say, hoping that returning focus to our current predicament will help distract him.
“What do you mean?”
“Harlow told me that she and Felicity had documents. Physical evidence of Gio and Heath’s criminal dealings.
They submitted it to a delivery service for November 1st. They planned to have it handed over to the authorities so that they would have what they needed on both crime organizations to finally be able to dismantle them for good. ”
“Where’s the evidence?”
I can see hope on his face, and I hate that I’m going to have to destroy it. “It doesn’t exist anymore. Before they killed Felicity, Heath got the name of the messenger company out of her. Harlow said she watched as he burned the documents.”
His hope vanishes, and his cheeks flush with anger. “So even if we were to wait, it wouldn’t matter.”
“No. She says there’s no way to stop him. But there has to be.”
“There is,” he replies. “And we’ll find it.”