Page 81 of Vow of Vengeance

"Vin," I shake my head. "What was supposed to happen?"

"You were supposed to pass out. Tony was supposed to go up there once you'd already fallen asleep and throw you around a bit."

Tony.

Tony was supposed to go up there and throw you around a bit.

Tony, who I've let into my home half a dozen times when I've been alone in the months since I thought my husband died... in the months since Tony raped me.

"Why?" I refuse to cry one more fucking tear for my husband, and that includes crying to him about this. Because I won't let him see how much he shattered me, how stupid I was to love him so goddamn much that I ignored every fucking warning sign and red flag. I refuse to let him know that he was my entire fucking world, even though he already knows, and that I was foolish enough to think he cared about me back. But you don't drug your wife so another man can come 'rough her up'. What was the point?

"Why?" He scoffs. "I know you're naive, Ren, but you're not fucking stupid. You know I didn't want a baby!"

My chest hurts. It feels impossibly heavy, like Tony's sitting on it all over again.

I can't breathe.

"Our baby?"

"Our baby?" He mocks me with a roll of his eyes. "I don't knowwhosebastard that was, Soren. I guarantee you it wasn't mine. I had a vasectomy when you stayed the weekend with Marissa, when her cousin got married."

I feel like I'm going to pass out. The air seems too thin.

You were supposed to fall asleep like you always do.

"V-vasectomy?"

"Surprise." He smirks. "You knew I didn't want kids. Why would I? They'd just interfere."

Interfere?

"Vin..."

I don't know whose bastard that was.

Saying his name feels like a betrayal. It feels like giving him something that he doesn't deserve.

Drink up, Soren.

"Whose baby was it?"

Finish your wine, baby.

Vin shrugs. "Too many options to speculate, really. Could have been Kahn's. Jimmy's. A stranger's. The coroner that helped me slip away and forged my death certificate.”

I can’t breathe. “What?”

“Blackmail is more effective than all the money in the world. Could you imagine if it got out that an elected official with all that access to dead bodies is into pseudo necrophilia?” Vin laughs. “It doesn't matter. None of them would have wanted a child with you, and I sure as hell didn't want my wife walking around carrying another man's baby. But you wouldn't have ever considered getting rid of it, so I had to take matters into my own hands... or, rather, Tony's hands. We worked out an agreement because I couldn't bear to hurt you myself, and he was just supposed to make you miscarry. He wasn't supposed to rape you and he sure as fucking hell wasn't supposed to shoot me."

Everything inside of me hurts.

It hurts so fucking much, because I put myself through hell for years and told myself it was just love. It was just life.

It was just my depression, my exhaustion, my fault.

And all that time, I never looked past it, because I didn't think there was a way out. I didn't know there was anything better.

I know love now, and what I had with Vin was never it.