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“Give me a moment.” I open the other file and then scan the summary report.

Motherfucker.

I reach over to take her hand in mine. Bringing it to my lips, I kiss her knuckles.

“Okay?” She angles her head to the side and narrows her eyebrows.

I pass her my phone. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

She frowns and clicks on the video. “That’s Vito. What is he doing? Where is this?”

There is a part of me that wants to somehow shield her from this. Protect her. Give her all the money and let her move on.

But that wouldn’t be fair to her. As painful as this discovery is, I can’t fix it for her. Not immediately.

The feeling of helplessness coils around my stomach, and fuck, I want to get on the plane right now and kill that bastard.

“Baby, Vito has been placing bets in your name. He’s the person who not only embezzled your money, but he also put you in jeopardy when he pretended to act on your behalf.”

She shakes her head left and right vigorously. Tears pool around the crevices of her eyes, not yet spilling.

How have I just gotten a reluctant commitment from her and I’m already failing her? I stand and round the table to sit beside her, pulling her chair between my legs. “Talk to me, baby.”

“That can’t be.” She wipes a stranded tear and snatches the phone again. I let her watch one of the security videos showing Vito at a high-end bookie shop. “This proves nothing.”

Leaving the phone in her hands, I click out of the video and open Mathison’s summary.

“There is footage at several locations where you owe money. And sure, that might be a coincidence, but the online bets are traced to his computer. All his online aliases are linked to your bank accounts. He’s been doing it for years, but only got more reckless recently when he bet and lost a substantial sum. He borrowed to cover the debt. From the wrong people, and the ball started rolling.”

She drops my phone and aims her gaze at the empty space in front of her. I rub her back and sit there like an idiot, wanting to do something, anything to take her pain away.

Having her money and identity stolen is shitty, but fixable. Having it done by a person who she trusted and loved like her own father, that’s traumatizing. Unforgivable. Terminal.

“We’ll get him,” I offer, uselessly.

I can have him arrested and convicted easily. I may be able to make sure he returns every single penny to her and fucking dies a slow death.

But none of it would be enough, because it doesn’t even scratch the surface of the betrayal.

She continues staring in front of her, and while she is motionless, still sitting beside me, I feel her retreating, erecting the walls, and leaving me on the other side.

It’s the subtle shift in her energy that makes me hope she’s just composing herself to stand up against the challenge. But that hope is feeble, just in my head.

When she looks at me after what feels like an agonizing eternity in the worst purgatory, I know she has made up her mind. That I’m no longer in her plans.

That after being abandoned by her parents, and now betrayed by the only proxy she’s ever known, I’m slowly but surely becoming yet another person—man—in her life she can’t trust.

“You promised me that marriage certificate,” she says.

Her tone is impersonal, and her detached words fall like stones into my stomach. And for the first time in my life, I’m scared shitless. And I choose not to bully someone to my will. Also a first.

She needs time to digest it.

I’ll fight for us from afar for the time being.

I kiss her forehead, and she flinches.

Fuck. One punch after another, but I take them all.