Page 19 of The Retaliation You Deliver

I guess it just goes to show what the love of a good woman can achieve.

He mutters something to Letty that makes her groan before chastising him and pushing him from the apartment.

“Sorry about that, he’s—”

“Completely in love with you,” I finish for her. “I think it’s cute.”

“It is. Just… don’t tell him that,” she jokes. “He doesn’t like that people know he has a soft side.”

“I’m sure everyone knows. It’s in his eyes every time he looks at you.”

She laughs. “If only it was always that way,” she mutters, walking into the kitchen and pulling the refrigerator open. “Wine?” she asks, holding up a bottle.

“Umm… I don’t really drink.”

“After the past twenty-four hours, I’m surprised you haven’t turned into an alcoholic.”

She’s kinda got a point.

“Just a small one. I’m the world's biggest lightweight,” I concede.

“I think you deserve it,” she says, pouring what I definitely wouldn’t describe as a small one.

“Thank you,” I whisper when she passes it over.

“Come sit.” She curls herself into one side of the couch while I take the other. She stares at me for a beat while I try to come up with where I should start. Thankfully, she beats me to it. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

I blow out a long breath at that question as I try to figure out the answer.

Did he hurt me? Yes.

But I wanted him to. I needed him to.

“I understand why he did what he did.”

“That’s not what I asked, Macie,” she warns.

“I know, I just…” I take a huge sip of wine as I try to get my thoughts together. “I knew it was too good to be true,” I blurt out.

“I’m going to kill him for hurting you. I warned him. I fucking warned him,” she seethes.

“You can’t be mad at him. What he went through—”

“Still doesn’t give him the right to hurt you no matter what’s happened. You were a kid, Macie. He said it was ten years ago, so you were what… eight?”

I nod.

“Did you even understand the significance of what you walked in on that day?”

I shake my head because I didn’t, I truly had no idea at the time. I knew it was bad. But I didn’t know things like that happened, that people could be just that evil to take advantage of kids like that.

My uncle being mean to me was one thing. But one of his boys. Never in a million years would I have thought that was even possible.

“No. I had no idea how serious it was. It was only in the years that followed that I understood what I even saw.”

“None of it was your fault, Macie. Leon had—has—no right to blame you for it.”

“He’s hurting, Let. It’s festered inside him all these years, slowly eating away at him.”