I wasn’t about to explain that one.

“Leave me and Mom alone.”

“Boys’d never touch your ma,” he muttered.

That was delivered in a mutter but I believed it.

Thank God.

I believed it.

I fought back heaving a gigantic sigh of relief and instead demanded, “Leave me alone.”

He leaned deeper toward me and got a look on his face that what now seemed long ago would have had me dropping to my knees or flat on my back in a split second.

“Baby, I’m beggin’ you, drop the charges.”

“You didn’t ask me.”

“Rosalie—”

“You didn’t give me the chance to explain.”

“Rosie—”

“You choked me.”

“Rose—”

“And hit me.”

“Christ, baby—”

“And you spit on me.”

Beck shut up.

“Then you kicked me.”

Another flinch.

I stared into his eyes.

He had amazing eyelashes.

He stared into mine.

“I loved you once,” I whispered.

Those eyelashes swept down.

Yeah.

Amazing.

“You terrify me now,” I told him.

Those eyelashes swept up to reveal tortured eyes.

I knew it then.

He’d been ordered to deliver me to Bounty.

He might also have been ordered to start the proceedings.

But it wasn’t until right then that I realized that he’d done what he’d done in the beginning, and at the end, but in the middle, it was his brothers that brought down their version of justice on me.

He’d given them their show and he didn’t come back for more because he’d done as ordered and that was all he had in him when it came to me.

The parting shots were probably because he was pissed at me, worked up from watching his brothers lay me out, thinking I was hung up on Shy, possibly all of that.

Or still toeing the line.

There were leaders and there were followers.

But even if you were a follower, it was your job to find the right thing to follow and not to follow blindly.

Beck had failed at both.

“The only reason I can be here is because there’s a cop right there and a wall between us,” I shared, jerking my head toward the officer that stood by the door into the visitation room. “If you ever cared about me, keep them away from me.”

“I love you, baby, still, no matter what, you gotta know that,” he said into the phone quietly.

“Weirdly, someone chokes me, hits me, spits on me, and kicks me, that is something I do not know.”

“Drop the charges and we’ll get through this.”

We’ll get through this?

Was he crazy?

“Leave me alone, get your brothers to leave me alone, and I might not hate you until the day I die,” I countered.

“Rosie—”

“We’re done.”

“Rosie, baby—”

“You’re one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen,” I whispered the God’s awful truth.

He clamped his mouth shut again.

“And you made me happy, so unbelievably happy.”

His brown eyes lit and warmed.

“And then you didn’t.”

Despair flickered in his gaze before he dropped his head.

“Do you know one of the reasons why my father never joined a club?” I asked.

He lifted his head but said nothing.

“He wasn’t a man to be tied down, but that wasn’t all there was to it,” I shared something I’d told him before, but at this juncture, a reminder was deserved. “Most clubs expect you to put club before everything else, including your family, your old lady. And he just was not a man who could do that.”

“I’m not your daddy, Rosie,” he said gently.

“I know,” I replied, put the phone on the hook decisively and watched his face falter.

That was the last I gave him.

I got up, dragged the silver chain of my purse over my shoulder, and walked out.

The minute I went through the door, I stutter-stepped because there was a tall, exceptionally good-looking man built like a linebacker leaning against the wall of the hall outside. He had a badge on his belt and his whisky-brown eyes turned to me the minute I exited.

I’d never seen him in my life but I still sensed his gaze was apologetic.

The door swung closed and those whisky eyes shifted across the hall, taking mine with them, and that was when I stopped altogether.

Snap was there, hidden by the door but now revealed.

“Thanks, Nightingale,” he muttered half a second before he latched onto my hand and dragged me down the hall, turned and hauled me down another one, through reception and out the front doors.

He wasn’t done lugging me around because he then rounded on me and started forward, forcing me to walk backward, until my hips hit the railing at the side of the steps up to the station.

He then bent his neck so his face was an inch from mine and I saw his snow-blue eyes could be chilly.

Wintry cold with icy fury.

“Have you…lost…your mind?”

The first words were controlled, but barely.