Chapter 29
Asher
I could feel her questions. So I fed her a little quicker, trying to keep her mouth full. Raspberry-stuffed croissants were crumbly, but another favourite of hers. She rolled her eyes as she chewed.
It was done.
The new will was signed and notarised. The original was kept safe with several copies made and sent to the appropriate bodies. Gabriel was cut off. He couldn’t harm anyone to get hold of my wealth—I’d made sure of that.
My suspicions had always been there and time had only proved that the boy was a monster.
I let Sayla take a sip of her tea.
One. Two. She sighed and took a third sip.
“So good.”
Her lower lip shone from the tea. Those damn lips—
“Focus, Daddy,” she said and opened her mouth.
I smiled and popped the last bite of her croissant into her mouth.
Everything on her plate was finished. We’d worked up quite the appetite after last night.
“You know that I’m not on the pill, right?” she asked, lifting her teacup.
It was my fault for oversharing in the throes of trying to knock her up.
“I’m aware of that fact,” I said carefully before lifting my avocado-laden toast.
“Hm,” she hummed. Another sip of tea. “And you’re aware that you put buckets of your come inside me last night and again this morning.”
I choked on the toast.
The teacup came down and she began to thump my back. A little too vigorously if you asked me.
“Not a condom in sight,” she said before she began to slap the back of my neck.
How was she so strong?
I managed to grab her flailing hands while I swallowed.
“I might give birth to my husband’s sibling,” she said and tried to take a swipe at me again. “They’ll call me the whore of Babylon.”
The words landed differently than she intended. Said in her dry, deadpan way—weapons she wielded against herself before anyone else could. I’d heard her do it before. The self-deprecation of a woman who had learned to get there first.
I caught her hands and held them still.
“No one gets to call you a whore,” I said, kissing her palms. “Unless it’s me and we’re fucking.”
She tried to yank her hands away at that.
“Men never get called out,” she huffed. “I’m glad you got me a female penguin.”
“Forever. Remember?” I said, pulling her onto my chest. “The divorce papers are drawn up as is my will. It’s time for Gabe to grow up. I’m done with him.”
She gasped and tried to pull back, but I didn’t release her. I couldn’t quite contain my smirk.
“You’ll give me more babies. Three is a lovely number.”
Another gasp.
“Two?”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” she finally whispered against my chest.
“I’m eating avocados for you, aren’t I?” I said dryly. “Choking on them even.”
Her laughter made her body shake against mine and I slightly loosened my grip. I stroked the top of her head, down to her nape and rested my hand there.
“I’ve been waiting for longer than you can imagine,” I murmured.
“Not gonna lie, that sounds a little creepy, Daddy.”
Her voice was muffled against my chest. I kept my hand on her nape hoping she wouldn’t ask any more questions, but this was Sayla.
“I may have been tracking you on social media. My handle is @ukfroggsunited.”
Her head snapped up.
“The frog breeder?”
“There’s no such thing, Princess. The pictures are from the internet. I knew you liked frogs.”
“No wonder I ended up with Gabriel,” she muttered, but she placed her cheek on my chest.
These little moments of truth and trust were falling into place perfectly.
“I’ll always protect you. When you’re ready, we can visit your family.”
A tremor ran through her—deep and involuntary, the kind that started somewhere she couldn’t control. I kissed her head and whispered soothing words against her hair. She was strong, brave and the most perfect Princess on the planet. Not a single word was manufactured.
I despised what was done to her, but I couldn’t deny that his brutality brought her to me. That was something I would need to live with.
Her family were out there missing her. Worrying about her. That tremor told me everything about the shame she carried—shame that belonged entirely to him and not a breath of it to her. Getting her back to them would take time. But I would get her there.
I really needed to have a chat with her about internet safety at some point.
I held that thought while I swayed her gently against me, mentally slotting it onto my to-do list between divorce Gabriel and build frog pond.
My Princess was far too gullible.
?
?
?
The following day the work on the pond was underway. It would have some fish, frogs and toads along with some form of foliage. Twelve hours of her grumbling about my fake account pushed me into action.
A new feature on the estate was the right thing. It had been too long since the gardens had the same aesthetic. Sayla injected me with a type of enthusiasm that I thought I’d lost in my youth.
Watching her bare feet on the grass with the dress she’d chosen from her new collection hit hard.
Scars didn’t heal overnight.
My dick wasn’t a magical solution.
Gabriel was still unpredictable.
But locked away next to me, I could keep her from harm—for now.
The short term solution for Gabriel was prison.
However, the shameful fact was that only 7% of police recorded domestic abuse cases resulted in a conviction.
He didn’t have a criminal record and even with the best lawyer it was likely that he would receive a suspended sentence at best. The system that was supposed to protect women like Sayla had failed her before and the cold probability was that it would fail her again.
That brand of fury I kept tightly contained. It served no one if I let it run loose.
This was the reality.
A horrid one for my Princess and the potential three daughters we had.
I glanced at her chasing after a butterfly.
She said her maximum was two.
I argued that she wouldn’t have Elias if her parents had stuck to that rule.
She wasn’t convinced, but she was quite content with the thought of our babies.
I followed her onto the lawn and she turned at my touch before a wide smile spread across those pretty lips.
“Thank you for my frog pond. They need to have some shade too. It was on one of your posts—or was that a lie too?”
I smiled and took her down.
We lay on the grass and stared at the sky.
“It was all factual information.”
She grunted but shuffled closer to rest her head on my outstretched arm.
“Can we have a beehive as well?”
“Let’s stick with something that won’t sting our children.”
“We could train them to be killer bees.”
If only life were that simple, I thought, my mind drifting back to Gabe.