Page 17 of This Christmas

“You haven’t paid me in two weeks,” he said evenly. “And I don’t work for men who use their ex-wives and kids as leverage to lie and hurt them.”

“Watch your mouth,” Ted snapped. “You don’t know a damn thing about my family.”

“I know enough.” Joe leaned against the counter with his jaw tight. “I know you’ve got someone tailing me right now. I know you’ve been calling her lawyer, stirring up trouble. You’re trying to make her crack.”

There was silence on the line, the kind that stretched too long. Then Ted’s voice came back, soft and dangerous. “You think you’re some kind of hero? You think she’s innocent? She’s not. She’s manipulative. She’ll twist you up until you can’t tell which way is up, and you’ll wish you’d never met her. She’s a narcissist. An abuser. She lies about everything.”

Joe didn’t answer.

Ted gave a short, bitter laugh. “You already took the bait, didn’t you? Jesus, Dalton, I expected better. Don’t make me remind you what happens to people who get in my way.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s a promise.”

Joe’s grip tightened around the phone. “You don’t scare me.”

“God, have you already fucked her? She always was such a whore.”

Before he could respond with something he’d regret saying, Joe ended the call and set the phone face down on the counter. His pulse pounded, hot and sharp, drowning out any other sound.

He stood there for a long moment, the quiet of the hotel room closing in around him. Outside, the snow thickened, the flakes swirling like ash against the gray morning sky.

If Ted thought intimidation would scare him off, he was dead wrong.

No doubt the man was using the same tactics on Ally to get to her. Only, she’d been dealing with the man for years, and would be dealing for a lot longer, no doubt.

Joe could walk away now and never deal with the man again. But his gut twisted at the thought of what the powerful man was doing to the innocent woman and child.

Not once in all the times he’d talked with him had Ted asked about his daughter. Every single question was about Ally. As if the child was just a tool he was using to get to the woman.

There was no way that he’d work for the man now. He didn’t even give a damn if he paid the invoice. Hell, he could pay him a hundred times what he’d asked and he wouldn’t do it. Part of him wished he wouldn’t pay him so that he could take him to court over it and give him a taste of his own medicine. Because, whatever happened now, he wasn’t just walking away from the job.

He was walking straight into hell’s fire.