Chapter 7
The room tilted.
“He laughed?”
“Made a joke about hormones. His friends laughed with him.” Dominic’s voice went flat and cold. “Then he went back to Veronica like nothing happened. That’s when I followed you.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I’ve watched men like Marcus Martinez destroy women for sport,” he said, “and I’m tired of watching.”
He took out his phone, typed, and slid it across the table. A number glowed on the screen.
“You need help — real help — you call me.”
Elena stared at it.
“I don’t understand. You don’t know me.”
“I know enough. I know you just walked away from a man who’s going to use every resource he has to drag you back.” He leaned forward. “Not because he loves you. He doesn’t. Because he can’t stand losing — especially not publicly. By morning he’ll have filed a missing person’s report. He’ll paint you as unstable. Maybe a danger to yourself. By tomorrow afternoon half this city will believe you had a breakdown.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it’s exactly what I’d do if I were him.”
Something flickered behind his eyes when he said it — a door opening and closing very fast. Elena saw it.
“The difference is I’m not him,” Dominic said. “And I know how to fight men like him.”
“Who are you?”
He stood and pulled out his wallet. He laid several hundred-dollar bills on the table, then a business card beside them — heavy stock, a name, a number, nothing else.
“Someone who can help, if you let me.” He nodded at the money. “Hotel room for tonight. Sophie knows a place. Tomorrow, you start planning your next move.”
“I can’t pay you.”
“Didn’t ask you to.”
He paused at the edge of the table. When he spoke again his voice had dropped, and there was something underneath it she couldn’t name.
“Elena. Men like Marcus count on you being alone. Being helpless. Being too scared to fight back.” He looked at her for a beat too long. “Don’t prove him right.”
Then he was gone, and the bell over the door was still swinging.
Sophie appeared with a fresh pot of tea and slid into the seat Dominic had vacated.
“He’s intense,” she said. “But he’s good people.”
“You know him?”
“He comes in sometimes. Always tips well, never causes problems.” She hesitated. “But the people he meets here — they’re not the kind you want as enemies.”