“Don’t lie to me, Dove,” he growled, and I imagined picking up a chair, tossing it at his head, and watching him bleed out all over my floor.

  “If you already know where I was, then why are you asking me?” I felt nerves course through my already-tense body.

  I assumed Trevor had me followed at times, but I’d been careful today. No cars had tailed me. I’d made sure and checked the way my dad had taught me when I was just a teenager.

  “You’re not allowed to see him.” His blue eyes narrowed into angry slits, and I hated that he truly believed he could control me. He pointed a finger at me. “Don’t see Dom again. Don’t talk to him. Don’t text him. Don’t call him. No more private fucking meetings someplace you think I won’t know about. I. Know. Everything.” His fists slammed on top of my desk, punctuating the last three words before he looked around to make sure no one in my office was watching him lose his composure.

  My throat instantly dried up. “What are you talking about?”

  Reaching for his cell phone, he typed quickly before spinning it around to face me. “Don’t play stupid and don’t act like I’m not always going to be ten steps ahead of you, sweetheart.”

  I squinted my eyes to try to read what was on it before realizing it was information about my phone—location, recent texts sent, and messages received. I should have known better. Trevor was deep in the political arena, so being able to infiltrate my phone shouldn’t have surprised me, but for some reason, it still did.

  If there were strings to be pulled, Trevor yanked on them. The second he left my office, I planned on heading down to the cell phone store to make sure my device couldn’t be tracked like that. If he had put something on it, I’d have it taken off. If there was software available to block my phone from being accessed from the outside, I’d purchase it. I refused to lose my privacy that easily.

  “What did you tell him, Dove? What did you tell Dom?” he pushed, and my mind raced, trying to think up an excuse that sounded plausible enough.

  “Nothing. I didn’t tell him anything,” I said. It wasn’t a lie.

  “Then, why did you see him? Oh, right. Because the two of you can’t live without each other.” He mimicked a weak-sounding voice, clearly making fun of what Dominic and I shared. “Better start learning how or else he’ll be the next to fall. You have no idea the amount of dirt I have on them. I’ve been planning this for years.”

  Threatening my dad had scared me half to death, but threatening Dominic filled my guts with pure, unadulterated rage. My jaw slid open with my surprise at his admission. Who the hell had the patience to plot something for so long? Someone with a vendetta, I imagined. And I genuinely believed that he had the power to go through with it, especially since when he had first told me about said dirt on my dad, he’d mentioned the person that my dad had taken the bribe from all those years ago. It wasn’t out of the question that my dad had done it more than just that one time. It was probably more likely that he had than that he hadn’t.

  “He’s been texting and calling me nonstop. I had to see him to tell him to back off.”

  “I highly doubt that.” Trevor knew better.

  He leaned even further across my desk in some feeble attempt to close the space between us, but my body pulled away in response. He laughed at my discomfort. It was like it brought him joy in some sick and twisted way.

  Forcing myself to calm down, I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “What more do you want from me, Trevor? I’ve agreed to marry you, and I will. I’ve kept my mouth shut, which I will also continue doing. All of this is going to destroy Dominic, and I know that’s all you really want anyway.”

  His features curled as a smug smile appeared across his face. “You’re not wrong.”

  I shook my head. I’d never been able to get him to admit that this whole charade was about Dominic even though I knew it had to be. He’d always alluded that ruining Dominic was only part of the reason, but now, I was actually getting somewhere.

  “All of this is just to hurt Dominic? Why?”

  Trevor looked almost relieved that I’d finally asked, and he launched into some sort of maniacal diatribe. “Because he has everything without even trying! The last name. The power. Money. You. He hasn’t had to work for anything! Everything just falls into his lap, and the whole town worships him for it. I’m sick of being in his shadow. It’s time the town saw me as a winner instead of second best to the golden boy who doesn’t even want the title!”

  I wanted to argue because Dominic had started his business without any help and made it into what it was today all on his own. He’d never used his name for clout, refused to fall in line and do what was expected of him. If anything, he’d made his life so much harder by going against his father’s wishes.

  “He looked out for you. Brought you home, so you could have a better life.”

  Trevor made a disgusted sound as spit flew from his lips. “He pitied me. He’s always pitied me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  At least, it hadn’t been at the start. Dominic had genuinely liked Trevor, trusted him even. But all that had changed sometime during high school.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he challenged. “None of it matters now because I have you. So, you see, Dove, I win.”

  My stomach twisted into knots. I knew this was a game to him, but it seemed so fucking insane that the only reason behind all the conniving and manipulation was because he despised Dominic.

  “You really hate him that much?”

  He leveled me with a glare so vicious that it made my skin crawl. “I want him to know what it feels like to have nothing. To know how the misery can burn through the cells in your body every second of every day. To wake up each morning filled with dread instead of hope and knowing there’s no way out of it. He’s never experienced a single day like that. Now, he’ll live a whole lifetime of it.”

  Trevor sounded so proud of what he’d been able to accomplish—blackmailing me into leaving the only man I’d ever loved.

  “You know I’ll never love you, right? This will never be real,” I asked, my voice coming out in a broken whisper as he sat down and crossed his legs. He looked so relaxed and in control, while I felt completely out of it.

  “Yes, Dove, I know you’ll never love me. The thing is, I don’t care. This isn’t about love. Knowing that Dominic will never be happy again is all that matters to me. I want to destroy him.”

  “You really are vile,” I said, my tone louder this time.

  “Don’t sound so surprised, sweetheart.”

  But I was. I truly was. Knowing that Trevor felt competitive was one thing, normal even, but this was on a completely different level. This went beyond typical guy-ego stuff.

  “Oh yeah, if you are even thinking about planning something disruptive during our wedding, you’d better stop now. There is no scheme that the two of you could come up with that I haven’t already anticipated. So, if I were you, I’d call Dominic off, or I’ll have your dad arrested during our reception. In front of everyone. And you and I will both stand there and watch him get hauled off in the back of a cop car. Are we clear?”

  If I’d thought my throat had dried up before, it was the Sahara Desert now. I almost started choking. I couldn’t breathe. I despised feeling weak and powerless, and somehow, Trevor excelled at making me feel both.

  “There are no plans,” I attempted to say, but the words got caught, and I started coughing. Thank God there was a glass of water on my desk. I downed the entire thing in one long gulp. My eyes met Trevor’s as I repeated the last line. “There are no plans. Nothing is happening.”

  “Keep it that way,” he demanded before shoving the chair back and standing to leave. “Don’t forget about dinner tonight. I’ll have a car pick you up at seven. Wear the black Chanel.”

  I watched him walk out the door before I lost it completely. A hundred different ways of bashing his brains in flashed through my mind.

  If only I wouldn’t go to prison after doing it, I thought to myself.

  Dominic had never controlled me. It was such a foreign feeling—being told what to do at every turn. How to dress. How to speak. How to act appropriately. I wasn’t usually the type to acquiesce, but this wasn’t a normal situation I’d gotten myself into.

  Kristina walked into my office, her dark hair swishing across her shoulders, distracting me from my own self-hatred. “I can’t stand that you’re engaged to that prick. But I hate more that you won’t tell me why or what happened between you and Dom.”

  She was starting in again, and I was in no frame of mind to deal with her nonstop questions.

  “Just stop. Please.” It was all I could manage at the moment.

  Seeing Dominic earlier had drained me. Listening to Trevor’s threats had only further deflated me. My head was still spinning from the fact that he had been able to get into my phone this whole time and I’d been too stupid to realize it.

  “I’m just saying, you understand that no one buys this, right? Not a single person in this entire town thinks that you love Trevor O’Connor.”

  I wanted to throw up, but I steeled myself and looked right at my best friend as I delivered a single word that I knew would tell her everything she needed to know without actually admitting anything. “Good.”

  “I knew it.” She started shaking her head as her features hardened. Kristina had always been a fiercely loyal friend, and I loved her for it. “You have to let me help you.”

  “I can’t,” I said before my resilience started to fade. I got nervous that she might accidentally slip and say something in front of the wrong person, and everything I’d worked hard to save would fall apart. “Trust me, if there was something you could do, I’d let you. But there’s nothing. And you can’t say anything, Kristina. I mean it. Not to anyone.”

  “Not even Dom?”

  “Especially not Dominic, said, emphasizing his name. I’d already awoken that particular beast, and I needed to figure out how to put him back to bed.

  “What about your dad?”

  “Not him either. Promise me you won’t say a word.”

  “I don’t even have anything to say.”

  “I need you to promise,” I pushed.

  She looked at me before locking her lips with her fingers and tossing the key. “I promise. But I don’t like it. Not one bit. Just for the record.”

  “Neither do I.”

  WE HAVE TO SAVE HER

  DOMINIC

  I left the diner and drove straight to the police station without so much as a plan or any inkling of what I was going to say to Dove’s dad.

  The chief of police hadn’t always been my biggest fan, but I soon realized that it wasn’t me he despised as much as it was the family I came from. He tried his best to separate who I was from my father, but I could see how much he struggled with it … especially in the beginning, when I spent more time at his house than my own.

  Once he realized that I wasn’t going anywhere and that Dove and I were absolutely mad for each other, he took the time to get to know me better. I modeled myself after him, wanted to be the kind of man that he was rather than the one who had raised me.

  Bob Tryst took me in, and the person who used to look at me with disdain every time he saw me started looking at me like I was family. I had no idea how he’d look at me now.

  Sauntering up to the reception desk, I smiled at Sarina, a woman I’d known since she moved into town.

  “Well, well, well. What brings you in here, sugar?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh as she fussed with her graying hair, pretending to make herself presentable for me.

  “Just came to see you,” I teased, and her cheeks instantly blushed.

  “Stop it. You’re going to give an old woman a heart attack.” She tapped her acrylic nails on top of the counter, one at a time.

  “I came to see Bob. Is he here?”

  “Sure, honey. He’s in the back. Just sign in, and I’ll ring him,” she said as she pushed a clipboard toward me to fill out.

  I grabbed the pen and signed my name before looking at the wall for the time and adding it on the next line. My stomach turned when I realized that I had no idea what I was going to say to him. What if he was happy about the wedding? It never occurred to me that he might be on board with it.

  I closed my eyes tight. Sarina cleared her throat, and I opened them, remembering that I wasn’t alone.

  “Didn’t want to interrupt whatever war you were battling in there.” She tapped on the side of her head, her expression sad. “He’s waiting for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and she let me walk away without another word.

  I was grateful she hadn’t mentioned Dove or the upcoming wedding or else I might have broken down in the middle of the hallway.

  The door buzzed as I approached it, signaling that it was unlocked, and I pulled it open and stepped through another set of doors and into the “war room,” as the cops called it. There were desks and whiteboards with cases being worked on. My eyes scanned over some of the writing, stopping on an entire oversize board devoted to the Firenzi organization, complete with photographs and flow charts.

  They were a family here in town with ties to the mob. Everyone knew it, but no one apparently knew how to prove it. Anyone who got too close ended up either missing or dead. It wasn’t hard to figure out who’d done it, but they were incredibly clever at covering their tracks. No one had been able to hold them in jail for longer than twenty-four hours. There was never enough evidence against them. At least, not the kind that was sticky enough to hold up in court.

  Bob suddenly appeared in front of me, a grim smile on his face. “Hey, son. It’s been a while.”

  He extended his hand and shook mine harder than I’d expected before giving me a nod toward his office. I followed close behind him, avoiding the eyes in the room that were undoubtedly watching my every move. Everyone knew that Dove was engaged to Trevor, and I was sure it made about as much sense to them as it did to me.

  “Still trying to bring down the Firenzi family, eh?” I said, hoping to break the ice.

  His steps faltered for only a second before he gave me a curt nod. “Someone’s always working that case. They’re bound to screw up at some point.”

  Heading inside his office, he closed the door behind me and dropped the blinds covering the windows, so no one from the war room could see inside.

  “So, what brings you in today?” he asked, and I almost laughed at the absurdity of the question.

  “I think we both know why I’m here.” I tried to sound composed, but my damn voice cracked as I sat down across from him.

  He looked older than the last time I’d seen him. His eyes bore more wrinkles around the edges, and the bags under them appeared bigger. Was he as worried as I was?

  “You’re going to have to be a little more specific, Dominic.”

  I decided to come right out with it. “I saw Dove this morning.”

  His eyes widened as he leaned back in his desk chair, the pressure making it squeak. “Did you talk to her?” The tone of his voice was almost animated.

  Now, we were getting somewhere.

  I nodded. “She’d asked me to meet her.”

  “What did she say?” he asked a little too quickly before he sucked in a loud, long breath. “Hell, Dominic, what did she ask you to do?”

  Sometimes, Bob was too good at his job. He had the ability to put all the pieces in place before most people even realized that there was a puzzle to put together. Or maybe he just knew how Dove and I operated better than most.

  “It doesn’t matter what she said. What matters is, everything she didn’t.”

  “I don’t know what happened between the two of you,” he said, and I had to stop myself from completely coming apart.

  The idea that he, of all people, would simply accept that we broke up—for any reason—was beyond asinine.

  “Nothing! That’s just it, Bob. Nothing fucking happened! One minute, she was here, and the next, she was gone,” I tried to explain, but I felt like nothing I was saying made any kind of sense. I still hadn’t been able to figure out where we’d gotten so sideways, or why, or more importantly, how.

  “That’s not what she told me.”

  I blew out a sound of disgust. “I’m sure it isn’t. But in what universe does us breaking up make sense to you? Tell me.”

  His lips pressed together in a straight line. He knew this was as fucked up as I did, but for whatever reason, he refused to admit it to me. Maybe it was his fatherly side that didn’t allow him to see Dove as a deceiver, even when he knew that she was.

  “There’s only one thing I can think of.” I looked him dead in the eyes. “She’s doing this to either protect you or me. And I’m ninety-nine percent positive that there isn’t anything worth a damn on me. I’ve been careful. So, I’m asking you, Bob … what could Trevor possibly have on you?”

  Anyone else would have missed it. But I wasn’t some nobody off the street. I knew this man inside and out. Knew that he wasn’t perfect even though he always tried to be. So, I didn’t miss the way his face started to turn ashen before he regained his composure. Or how his hands balled into fists so tight that his knuckles turned white before he put them in his lap, out of my view. Or the way his jaw clenched, forcing the muscles in the back of his mouth to flex with the pressure before he released it.

  “No idea, son. I really don’t.”

  “This isn’t the time for games. She’s going to marry him! You have to tell me the truth. I can’t lose her. I can’t.” I stumbled over the words he already had to know were true as what was left of my heart crashed to the floor at my feet.

  “Dominic, pull yourself together. You’re no good to me like this. Go home. I’ll talk to Dove. And I’ll be in touch.”

  Pull myself together? My fucking world was falling apart, and he wanted me to pull myself together?!

  “Just tell me one thing,” I said, and he waved a hand in the air, indicating that I should go ahead and ask. “You think this is messed up, right? Dove and Trevor? It doesn’t add up to you, does it?”