“Look at me.”
“You don’t understand.” I won’t let them get to her.
A hand is on my face now, and all I can see is her, but that’s because everything else around her feels fuzzy. “Tell me.”
“They nearly ran us off the road on our way to the funeral. They followed Stella for months. Months, Elle. Me for longer. They wanted us upset. They wanted their soundbites. They wanted to see us broken and then break us further.”
She steps into me, pressing herself against me, her soft eyes clinging to mine, forcing mine to cling back. Desperately. “They can’t break us now because we’re no longer broken.”
I exhale on a shudder.
“What about your family? That guy knew about David cheating. That wasn’t random.”
Her eyes bounce back and forth between mine, then drop to her phone that’s still clutched in her hand. She breathes harshly through her nose, then makes a call. I watch her, but she spins away from me, facing the back hall.
“Did you break your promise or was this Mom and Dad?”
She listens. Then sighs.
“I paid the bastard, Cat. I paid him yesterday. I talked to the monster for an hour, then I paid him. So what the hell happened?” She listens again, her hand going to her hip and her head dropping. “What the hell do you mean they’re here?!” she yells. “I told you to tell them I was done.”
She growls at whatever this Cat—her sister, I presume—says on the other end.
“Well, now it’s all fucked up, and it’s not just me and David who they dragged into it. Disappear, Cat. I mean it. I’m more than done with all of you.”
She disconnects the call, then storms back toward me, only she’s not coming for me; she’s headed for the door at my back. Her hand hits the knob, and I loop my arm around her waist, spinning her around.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Going to clear this mess up. My parents are out there with that guy. They had started this mess before I even spoke to Cat. She claims she didn’t know, and when she told them I was done, evidently they weren’t having that.”
“You can’t go out there.”
She thrusts her finger past me. “My parents are out there, Landon. I’m going to stop this.”
That’s when the perimeter alarm goes off, blaring through my house. My phone lights up instantly with a call from my security company, and I give them the all clear because I don’t want the cops showing up. Not yet. I want to handle this myself.
But first, I want to get Stella and Elle out of here.
Except Elle isn’t waiting. She’s flying past me, heading through my house and going for the front door. Goddamn her!
“Elle, stop!”
“No,” she yells back, not slowing until she rips the front door open and storms outside like a tornado ready to mess some shit up.
Whoever tripped the alarm is nowhere to be found, but that doesn’t stop her. Especially when she spots a white sedan parked one house down from hers. She runs toward it, and immediately three people step out. The paparazzi guy, and a man and woman who appear to be in their mid-fifties or so. The man is tall but round and portly, with a ruddy complexion I’ve seen more times on chronic alcoholics than I can count. He looks absolutely nothing like Elle. But there’s no mistaking the woman is Elle’s mother.
They have the same eyes and the same frown and the same coloring.
“What the hell did you do?!” Elle screams at them, not even caring that she’s doing so out in the open.
“He broke my camera,” the stupid asshole says, pointing at me. “I’ve called Intertainment. They’re going to sue you.”
I grin at him, following closely on Elle’s heels. “I’d love for them to try. You forget I have a restraining order against you assholes.”
He blanches as he should because I do. Like I said, money can buy you just about anything, and I have a lot of money. I have a restraining order against Intertainment and several other bullshit internet rags, magazines, and newspapers that forbid them from coming within a hundred feet of my house or Stella without my explicit, written permission.
“I-I-I didn’t know you lived there,” he stammers.
I just shrug lightly. “So who tripped my alarm then? The police will be here shortly. You can figure it all out with them.” That last part is obviously a lie, but he has no clue about that. He heard the alarm. No mistaking that.
He turns purple and instantly dives back in the car, shutting the door and peeling out of here, leaving Elle in a standoff with her parents, who suddenly don’t look as smug and confident as they did when they stepped out of the car.
“I paid off Cat’s debt. Why are you doing this to me? Haven’t you taken enough? Caused enough damage?”
Elle is less than a foot from them now, but her voice hasn’t lost any of its fire.
“You paid off Cat’s debt,” the man growls at her. “You took care of her, but what about us? What about what we need? David’s money was keeping us afloat. Without it, we’re destitute. You owe it to us, Ellery. We’re your parents. You lived under our roof for eighteen years. We fed and clothed you.”
Elle laughs. And it’s the most are you kidding me bitter laugh I’ve ever heard in my life. “Is that a joke? What you need?” she snarls sardonically. “You think I give a rat’s ass what you need or the fact that you think I owe you for biologically being my parents and providing legally obligated bare necessities? You blackmailed my husband! All of you did, and you didn’t care when I cried to you and told you how cruel and awful David was to me. You told me to suck it up and deal because he was my husband. I don’t give a crap what you need or what you feel entitled to. You are no longer my parents. You are not my family, and I’m done with you. All of you.”
“Except now we know about him,” her mother says, pointing to me. “We looked him up. Just now after Kevin told us who he saw you with. He showed us the pictures he took of you two running away after he smashed Kevin’s camera, so I’m guessing he doesn’t want to be photographed. If you give us the same amount you paid Giancarlo, we won’t make trouble for him. Or his family.”
Oh, hell to the fuck no.
Except Elle just shakes her head like she’s done with all of this. “I’m calling the police. I’m filing a restraining order, and I’m telling them how you extorted money from my ex-husband. You people are sick. You really, truly are. I don’t even know what to say to you anymore. I don’t know why you’re here or what you were hoping I’d give you, but threatening Landon and his family is one hundred percent not the way to get me to do anything.”
“We need that money, Ellery!” her father yells, spitting and turning redder by the second. “Cat took us for everything we had. Every last penny. We lost our car and our condo. Now we have nothing, and you will pay for that. You will.”
That’s when two very different things happen almost simultaneously.
The first is three large, black, identical SUVs come racing down the street, two parking in my driveway, one in front of my house. Fairchild steps out along with other security, some of them I know, some I don’t, but that’s not surprising. We’re a large family with a large security force on retainer, and anyone with Fairchild, I trust.