Chapter 36
Julia
“Are you ready?” Ian asks before we get out of the Jeep.
He’s been incredible through all of this.
Patient when I needed to process, fierce when I needed defending, and trusting enough to let me handle this my own way even though every protective instinct in his body is probably screaming at him to stand between me and my soon-to-be ex-husband.
“I’m beyond ready to put this all behind me.”
He opens my door—I definitely need help getting in and out of the car these days—and we walk up the driveway together.
I left the original evidence at the lawyer’s office for safekeeping, but I have copies of all the documents in a folder, along with the settlement paperwork that Mako helped me prepare.
“This is more than enough to bury him,” he’d said. “The question is only how deep.”
I hope I won’t have to. I hope Richard will see reason, sign the papers, and let me go. But I’m prepared for whatever is coming as I ring the doorbell to my own house.
Richard answers it, and his smile when he looks me up and down, taking in the shape of my very pregnant body, is the same one he used to give me across the breakfast table, smug and condescending.
“Finally decided to come crawling back?”
“I’m here with some paperwork.” I keep my voice steady. “Can I come in?”
“Certainly.” His gaze shifts to Ian, and his expression curdles. “Not you. I have a rule about no dogs in the house,” he sneers.
Ian doesn’t react to the slur, but I feel him tense beside me. “I’m here for her safety, that’s all. I’m not going to interfere.”
Richard sighs, ignoring him and directing his words to me. “You can’t be serious, Julia. Surely we can have an adult conversation without your guard dog drooling in the corner.”
His pupils are hard and glittering, and I know he’s not going to back down on this. He wants a win so he can start this conversation with the upper hand, but he has no idea what’s coming for him. I turn to Ian, touching his arm. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”
His golden eyes search my face. Then his hand brushes my wrist, feeling until his fingers bump against the small emergency button hidden in my sleeve, checking to make sure it’s still there.
“I’ll be here if you need me,” he says quietly. “Right outside.”
“Thank you.”
He holds my gaze for another moment, then steps back. Not far, just to the edge of the porch. Richard watches this exchange with barely concealed disgust, then opens the door wider and jerks his head for me to come in.
I spent twenty years walking through this doorway, telling myself I should feel grateful to live somewhere so beautiful.
Now, as I step inside, I can acknowledge that it’s a nice house, but it no longer has the same power over me.
Even though nothing has changed since I left, I don’t recognize it as my home anymore.
Richard leads me to his study. I never spent much time here among the dark wood paneling and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves because he locked it when he was away.
He sits down at the massive desk and steeples his fingers, watching me with that same superior smile as I wedge myself into the chair across from him.
“Well?” He motions expectantly at my folder. “Go ahead.”
“Before I give you the proposal, I want you to know that I have a lawyer involved. He has copies of everything and is aware of what you’ve done.”
His eyebrows rise slightly. “And what, exactly, have I done?”
“You’ve been going after my friends. My workplace.
I know about how you stopped Nicole’s lease renewal, the bogus complaints to the school board about Heidi, the fake reviews for Dog-Eared Pages.
” I tick them off on my fingers. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more we don’t know about yet. But all that stops now.”
For a moment, surprise flickers in his eyes. Surprise that I figured it out, maybe, or surprise that I’m confronting him about it. Then he laughs.
“Or what, Julia?” He spreads his hands. “What are you going to do about it? You have no home. No money. No skills. You’ve been living on charity and working in a bookshop.
” He says the words like they’re obscenities.
“You have no strings to pull. I genuinely thought you were going to come in here and beg for mercy, and honestly, I was ready to give you some. I only wanted to humble you a little first.”
“Well, I’m not here to beg. I’m here to propose divorce terms that are fair to both of us.
” I set the folder on his desk, flipping it open to the first page.
“You keep the vacation properties and the majority of the investment accounts. Your business, obviously. I’d like funds set aside in trust for the girls’ education.
I’m asking for this house and a modest settlement that reflects my contributions to our marriage. ”
“What contributions?” he scoffs.
I struggle to keep my face and voice neutral, when inside I’m swarmed with hurt and fury. “Managing the household, cleaning the house, raising our daughters, supporting your career, et cetera. It’s reasonable.”
I push the proposal across the desk, but Richard doesn’t look at it. He’s looking at me, eyes narrowed like he’s seeing me for the first time.
He barks a laugh. “You’re even stupider than I thought if you believe I’ll give you a dime.
The prenup is ironclad, Julia. Our marriage ends, you get nothing.
I brought all the assets to this relationship.
I’ve earned all the assets since we’ve been married.
You are worthless, and the divorce decree will reflect that. ”
The words are designed to wound. But this time, I don’t let them under my skin. I don’t let them become part of me. Richard waits, expecting me to crumble and cry. When I don’t, his smile falters.
“Say something,” he orders.
“All right. If you don’t agree to my terms, which are very favorable to you, by the way, I will be going to the police with evidence of your criminal activities.”
I push the rest of the folder’s contents across the desk, too. Now he’s paying attention. He flips the folder around and starts going through them, turning the pages slowly.
“Bribery. Embezzling. Tax evasion. It’s all in there. So are the numerous affairs.” I look up and meet his wide, stunned eyes. “I’m positive your parents don’t know about any of it. Will they write you out of the will when they find out what you’ve been up to?”
The change in Richard is instantaneous.
The smug superiority drains from his face, replaced by something dark and dangerous. His jaw tightens, and when he stands, his chair scrapes back against the hardwood floor with a screech that makes my heart stutter.
“You don’t want to go there, Julia.” His voice is controlled, but I can hear the threat underneath it. “You don’t want to mess with my family.”
I stand up, too. “You’ve been messing with mine.”
He moves faster than I expect, stepping around the desk to grab my wrists. His grip is bruising, fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks.
“Let go of me!” I try and jerk my arms away, but he just holds me tighter, pain lancing up both forearms.
“You think you can walk into my house and threaten me? After everything I’ve done for you?” he shouts, red-faced, all pretense of calm gone. Veins throb at his temple, and his pupils are eerily huge and dark. “You are nothing. Nobody. No one would even miss you if you were gone.”
He shoves me backwards against the bookcase. Pain blooms across my hip where it hits the wood. It hurts enough to make my eyes prickle with hot tears, blurring my vision.
“Stop, Richard. You’re hurting me!”
He laughs, the sound chilling. “Good. Maybe you’ll finally learn something.”
“What am I supposed to learn from this?” I whimper, still trying to tug my wrists out of his grip. But he’s not budging. If anything, my struggle is pleasing him. He likes that I’m helpless. He likes that I’m hurting. “I don’t know what you want from me!”
He pins my wrists to the shelf behind me and puts his face close to mine, too close to focus. The hair rises on the back of my neck. “I want your gratitude. I want your apology. I want your obedience.”
Panic surges through me. Richard seems capable of anything right now, and I can’t reach my emergency button. For one horrible moment, I think about apologizing to try and smooth things over.
But I’m not that person anymore. I’m not here to make myself smaller for him. He can’t treat people like this and expect to get away with it. I gave him a fair chance to walk away with his business and reputation intact, and he threw it away to salvage his ego.
I shift my weight like Nicole drilled into me when she gave me a self-defense crash course. Fight hard, fight dirty. I bring my knee up fast and tight between us, foot snapping forward in a short, brutal arc.
It’s not pretty or controlled, but it works.
My instep connects, solid and sickening, with his groin, and the sound that tears out of him is nothing like the powerful man who was shouting in my face a second ago.
His grip collapses instantly. I wrench one wrist free, twist hard, and shove him away as he folds in on himself, hands dropping too late to protect anything.
I don’t wait to see if he recovers. I’m already moving away from him as I press the button under my sleeve.
For three seconds, nothing happens. Richard howls on the floor, but my heart is pounding so hard I can barely hear what he’s saying.
Then the front door crashes open.
Ian enters the room first, ears flat against his skull and teeth bared, his massive form filling the doorway of the study.
I stumble toward him, so relieved that I almost fall, but Ian’s already there to catch me.
And right behind him are his brothers, Ben, Sean, Will, and Marc, all in black tactical gear with PACK DYNAMICS emblazoned across their chests.
Richard’s face goes white when he sees them. “Who the hell are you? You can’t just break into my house! I’ll have you arrested for—”
“Richard Norman, this is a citizen’s arrest,” Ben says coolly. “You’re being detained for assault. Please don’t resist.”
“She came into my house! She assaulted me!”
But Ian’s brothers are already moving, surrounding us. Ben and Will catch Richard’s flailing arms and pin them behind his back with zero apparent effort. Marc and Sean help zip-tie his hands and prepare to march him out.
“This is illegal! I’ll sue every single one of you into the ground!” Richard screeches.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Marc says dryly. “I suggest you exercise it.”
Ian hasn’t moved from his position between me and Richard, a low growl rumbling in his chest as his gaze remains locked on the potential threat. I reach out and touch his arm.
“He’s not worth it,” I whisper. “Ian, I’m okay. Really.”
His growl fades, and I let myself sag against his side.
The brothers haul Richard out of the study. He’s still shouting threats about lawsuits, about connections, about how we’ll all regret this. But his voice is getting farther away, and then the front door closes behind them and there’s silence.
Ian’s arms wrap around me, pulling me close, one hand cradling the back of my head.
“That went way worse than I thought it would,” I admit.
“You did so good,” he murmurs into my hair. “You were so brave. It’s over now. Ben will give them the evidence file he compiled when he drops Richard off at the police station. You should press charges for assault, but he’ll go to jail for a long time based on the file alone.”
I’m shaking. I didn’t realize it until just now, but my whole body is trembling, adrenaline crashing through me like waves. I press my face against his chest and breathe him in. Cedar and the gingerbread he baked this morning before I got up. I let the tears come.
“Let me see.” He pulls back just enough to examine my wrist, turning it gently in his hands. Finger-shaped marks are already blooming purple. Ian’s jaw tightens, but his touch stays careful. “Does anything else hurt?”
“I hit my hip on the bookshelf.”
He checks that too, lifting the edge of my shirt just enough to see the angry red mark that will probably become a bruise by tomorrow.
“No broken skin,” he says finally. “But we’ll take pictures and ice both of these when we get home.”
Home. Not here. The cabin. Our cabin. The word wraps around me like a blanket.
I let out a breath that feels like it’s been trapped in my chest for the last two decades. “Is it really over?”
“It’s really over.”