Chapter Twenty-Two
With every second that ticked by, Grace fell harder for him.
Years of wishing and wanting had come to fruition, and now her mind raced to catch up with the jumping jacks of awareness her heart was doing.
He’d always been in her orbit. A family friend.
A man she’d lusted after. But he was more than all that.
He made her heart ache for another chance at life.
Callum tugged his shirt over his head and leaned down to kiss her. “I’ll reheat dinner.”
The quick kiss turned into a lazy one. “Or we can forget about it and stay here all night.” Her stomach growled, and she covered it with her hands.
He grinned against her lips. “Maybe dinner first. You need sustenance.” He smacked another kiss on her lips and left.
After he shut the door, she covered her dopey grin with her hands. Callum Hale fucked like a god. She squeezed her eyes shut and relished the soreness in her body and the emotion caught in her throat. They needed sustenance. She sighed like a happy, dopey, lovestruck woman.
Callum could cook.
He could sweep her into a safe house and then into bed.
And, oh, the orgasms he delivered.
Stupidly blissful, she curled into the sheets. They even smelled like him, and like a fiend for more, she inhaled deeply. Had she fallen for him? This was so much more than she understood.
After a few minutes of pulling herself together, she padded into the living room.
Callum had the pot pie in the oven to reheat and was on his cell phone, amusement dancing across his expression as he listened to whatever the other person was saying.
He saw her, pointed to the trophy fish on the wall covered by a dish towel, and mouthed, “Not happy.”
“Tell Dean it was for his own good.”
Callum repeated her words and snorted at what Dean said.
Her cell phone buzzed on the coffee table next to her abandoned laptop. Grace hurried over. She wanted to catch up with Alicia, but saw her stepmother’s name on the display. “I’ll be two minutes,” she said to Callum and headed toward her bedroom to answer.
“Hey, Mari.” Grace shut her door. “Sorry. I meant to give you a call. But one thing led to another, and time has—”
“Oh, my darling. I’ve missed your voice.”
Every muscle in her body froze as the bile in her stomach threatened to launch itself from her body.
“Grace? Come on now,” Dominic purred.
She stood like a statue, her limbs stuck with the phone against her ear, as disbelief pounded in her chest. She needed to wrench the phone from her ear and double-check the screen. It had been Mari’s phone number, hadn’t it? But the man speaking to her was Dominic.
“Don’t go silent on me now. We’ve got so much to discuss.”
She shook her head. Words still wouldn’t form. Was Dominic with Mari and her dad? Where? Their house? Had he… she didn’t know, caught them? Taken them?
“It’s confusing,” Dominic cooed like the slick sociopath he was. “I understand, but I wasn’t sure if you’d pick up the phone if you weren’t sure who was calling.” He chortled as if this were charming small talk. “Have a seat, Grace.”
Could he see her? Her gaze darted around the bedroom. Callum had dismantled the security cameras. They had been hidden everywhere. It was possible Callum had missed one, and Dominic had watched everything unfold between them in bed.
Nausea hit her like a Mack truck. Her ex-husband could get eyes anywhere. Everywhere. Even the place Callum had promised was safe. Dominic could have turned someone at Titan.
“Take a deep breath. It’s time we caught up.”
His voice made her blood boil. God, fuck this guy. Would he ever be gone from her life? “Where are my parents?” She hated the shaking of her words. “What did you do to them?”
“There’s that voice I missed so much. You didn’t visit. You never wrote—”
“I want nothing to do with you.”
Dominic chortled. She could picture his head tossed back as he rocked in an expensive leather office chair, behind a desk the size of Manhattan, cocky and conceited—except he couldn’t be in one of his offices if he had Mari’s phone. “Where are my parents?”
“The years and distance have given you quite the mouth. I didn’t expect that after seeing you at the grocery store.”
“You didn’t see me.” But he confirmed exactly what she already knew. He had been there, had tracked her down, and wanted to mess with her. “Though I got your letter. I threw it in the garbage because I don’t care about you.”
“We never had pets like Alicia does. Did you enjoy her dogs and cat? Or were they just a mess of pet hair and—”
“Stop.” She wanted to throw up. Dominic was somehow with her parents and could get to her friends. “You don’t get to know anything about me. Let me talk to Mari.”
“Darling, you don’t want me to list the things I know about you. You’ll have nightmares for the rest of your life.”
Furious tears burned at the back of her eyes.
“Leave me alone. Leave my parents alone. Give Mari back her phone and go away. I don’t have anything to say to you.
I don’t have anything I want from you. I don’t want you.
That’s why we’re divorced, Dominic. Don’t you get that? I want nothing to do with you.”
“I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s not why I called. Wait, wait, darling. Don’t hang up. You know you want to know why I called.”
She only wanted to know Mari and Dad were safe. “I want to talk to my parents.”
“I can’t do that right now. Listen, you’re going to meet some friends in the next few days.”
“We don’t have any mutual friends—”
“Shut up, Grace, and listen.”
Her hands trembled. Trepidation rolled through her limbs, and she couldn’t produce a single word. She hated who she became when he was near. Weak and unable to fight. She couldn’t even hang up on him.
“When you meet with our friends,” he said with such cool detachment that slivers of ice pricked her skin, “you’ll be the woman I married. The woman who knows her place. Who knows what to say, and most importantly, what not to say.”
“We are not married anymore,” she said, voice shaking.
“Marriage isn’t something you can walk away from. I chose you. You’re mine. That’s the bottom line.”
“No.” Fear had a stranglehold on her.
Dominic’s laughter poured through the phone again. “You’re stuck with me. That’s simply the way it works.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “This little game you’ve been playing of hide-and-seek has been fun. We’ll keep it up until it’s time for you to come home.”
He sighed like he was disappointed in a petulant child. “In the meantime, focus on the business at hand. When you meet with our friends, you’ll do, say, and behave as I would expect of you. Understood?”
She didn’t speak.
“I’ll take that as a yes. We’ll chat after the meeting. Nothing too formal. Just to check in and see how the conversation went.”
The line went dead.
Her heart hammered. Grace fumbled the phone. Her fingers danced over the keys and dialed her dad. He answered on the second ring.
“Dad?” she cried.
“Gracie, honey?” Worry dripped in his voice, but not the fear or anger that would come from sitting next to Dominic. “What’s wrong?”
“Where’s Mari?”
“She’s reading in the living room. Gracie, what’s going on? What’s the matter?”
“Do you see her? Tell me if you see her. Dad, go look for her. Now.”
“Hang on. Honey, everything’s okay. All right. I’m looking at Mari and putting you on speakerphone. Gracie? Can you hear us?”
“Hi, Grace,” Mari said. “What’s going on?”
Tears crashed down her cheeks. “Oh, thank God.” She dropped onto the bed and folded over. She couldn’t catch her breath. “You’re okay?”
“Sure, yes,” they both said.
“Everything’s fine,” Dad said with a harder edge. “Where are you? What’s going on? Is Callum with you?”
She ignored her dad. “Mari, do you have your phone?”
“Yes. Right here,” Mari laid on her stern-mom voice. “What is going on?”
“I don’t know. Dominic called, but it was Mari’s number that he called from.”
“I promise, sweetheart. I have my phone in my hand.”
“She’s dancing it in front of my face,” Dad confirmed. “What the hell did Dominic want?”
There were so many things Grace hadn’t told them over the years. She didn’t know where to start and wasn’t ready to discuss the meeting with the attorneys. It would needlessly worry them when they’d worried so much about her already. “I don’t really know. To mess with my head.”
“What did he say?” Mari demanded.
She bit her lip. Was she allowed to mention the attorney’s meeting?
Even if she was, she didn’t know the details.
Dominic obviously knew about the meeting and wanted her to keep her mouth shut.
There was no need to involve her parents in anything he was involved in.
The man was a black hole and sucked the life out of everything. “That he missed me.”
“He’s an abuser. That’s what they say and do. You need to stay away from him,” Mari ordered.
“I know. I’m staying away.”
“People get sucked back into bad situations. There’s no shame in asking for help—”
“Callum is helping me with Dominic. He will deal with him. He’ll fix everything.”
Dad and Mari paused two long beats before Dad added, “What does that mean?”
“We have to meet with investigators.”
“Why?”
“It’s sort of hard to explain.” After telling them time and time again that she would explain later, Grace could tell that her dad and stepmom were reaching their threshold.
She was their grown daughter but was skating dangerously close to the brink where one of them—probably Mari—would put their foot down and demand Grace be more forthcoming with details. “I have to go. I need to tell Callum about Dominic’s call. I’ll call you later. I promise.”
She ended the call and tried not to fall apart.
Callum knocked on the bedroom door and walked in. “Hey, do you—” His scrutiny tightened on her face. “What’s wrong?”
Grace tossed the phone onto the bed and wanted to curl into a ball and hide.
He moved closer. “What’s up?”
“Dominic called.”
“Just now? That’s who you were talking to?”
“I called Dad and Mari. I had to make sure they were safe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My phone rang while you were on the phone with Dean. It was Mari’s phone number, but Dominic spoke. I couldn’t wrap my head around why they were together or how he had Mari’s phone. But they’re safe. She has her phone.”
“He spoofed her phone number.”
She nodded. That made sense. “I get that now. But when it was his voice…” The bile that had coated the back of her throat was just now going away. “I freaked.”
“Why did he call?”
“He knows about the attorney meeting.”
Callum frowned. “You’re sure?”
“I’m positive.”
“Those plans were made under lock and key.”
“I promise you. He knows, and he doesn’t want me to say anything.”
Callum scrubbed a hand into his hair. “How the hell does he know?”
“Not only does he know about the meeting, he knows what it’s about.”
He paced between the bed and the window. The lines on his forehead deepened, then he shook his head, like her, not understanding how this was possible. “Then what’s it about?”
Defeated, exhausted, she shrugged. “He didn’t say.”
“Then he doesn’t know.” He continued to pace. “Tell me his exact words.”
“He didn’t specify a meeting with the attorneys.
He called them ‘our friends’ and said that I should behave like we’re still married.
He was…” She rolled the bracelet beads between her fingers, wishing that black tourmaline would protect her from Dominic’s energy-sucking venom.
“Amused. He acted as if I’d been off on an adventure and would eventually go home to him. ”
Fury ticked in Callum’s jaw. “How does he know about any of this?”
“How? I keep telling everyone how. He uses money and resources to get what he wants. He’s tapping into your network. Or the attorney general’s office. Just like he did with the witness protection people.”
Callum ran a hand over his face. “I have to talk to Viv—”
“Wait. Don’t you understand? Dominic knows who we’re meeting with. You can’t call your office.”
He cut her a sharp look. “The leak’s not my people.”
Grace folded her arms across her chest, almost scared to say aloud what had to be true. “Someone’s working with him.”
Callum inched closer, ready to argue his point, but his rebuttal died, and his pupils became pinpricks of sudden apprehension.
“The attorneys. The DOJ. Your people. We only have a few options to choose from.” One of their resources had failed them. “Dominic told me to sit down.” She scanned the bedroom. “Can he see me?”
“No. I tore this room apart. No cameras.” Callum rubbed his forehead, thinking over what she had shared. After a long moment, he looked over. “Did he know about me?”
She thought it over. “No. He would have had lots to say if he could have seen in this bedroom.”
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“We’re going to eat. We’re going to think. Sitting here, getting aggravated does nothing but help him out. He wants you off-kilter. Why else would he show his hand?” Callum pulled her off the bed. “Either way, we won’t figure it out in here.”