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“What are you doing?”

“I’m leaving.” You she wanted to add.

He knew what she wanted to add too. And in that instant, he knew it was best. After the pain he’d put her through, and how he was asking her to trust him and navigate a path fraught with dangers she’d never experienced before, she was better off without him. If he loved her, he’d let her go.

Joy waited a moment longer after she said she was leaving him. A part of her wanted him to beg her to stay. A part of her needed him to beg. To show her that she was worth it. That he was truly sorry for hurting her. That he was wrong when he tried to convince her not to believe her own eyes when she saw how that video clearly showed that he was having sex with another woman four months ago. Right around the time they were planning their wedding. But he was saying the date-stamp was wrong. But even he said he’d already met Joy when he had sex with the woman. And that he’d cheated on his first wife. And that he knew that the woman in that video was married. And married to his own client.

It was too much!

And when he didn’t fight for her; when he didn’t beg her to stay or even ask her to stay, she left. She was going to leave anyway. It just would have eased some of the pain had he fought for her.

She walked out of that bedroom and made her way down that hall. She peeped in the living room and saw that Michael Iverson, the man William had assigned as her bodyguard, was fast asleep in a chair. Bobby and Max had undoubtedly left last night and returned to their own lives and problems and situations.

Michael had driven her car to the house she didn’t even know William owned before last night, and she saw her car keys on the side table. She eased her way into the living room, quietly got her keys, and made her way outside. Once she got into her Lexus and drove out of that long, winding driveway that had brought her there, she exhaled. But she was still in turmoil.

She went home. To the big house she shared with William in Chicago. But that was an unsatisfactory move for her too. Because that whole house reminded her of him. And of his betrayal. And of how he wanted her to overlook the truth that was right in front of her, and believe him instead. The same thing her ex-boyfriend Sanchez used to always ask her to do. It was the same thing all over again.

But it hurt more. Way more. Because it was William causing her all of this pain, not some joker like Z, when she never dreamed in a million years that William would ever hurt her. That was how delusional she had been!

She wanted nothing more to do with him.

She took a shower, brushed, gargled, got dressed, and packed a bag. She took off his ring and threw it on the dresser, and that so-called exclusive American Express Black Card he had given to her. Then she threw her bag in the trunk of her Lexus, the car she was buying with her own earned money thank God, and she took off. She was going back to Bridell. Back to Gramps. Maybe even back to Maylene’s, the very place she couldn’t wait to leave.

She cried nearly the entire way to Indiana. She had to pull over several times just to collect herself. By the time she got in Bridell, it was lunchtime, Gramps was at Maylene’s having his daily lunch, and she was sitting with him making it clear, by her appearance alone, that there was trouble in her paradise.

Little did they know that just a few minutes later, when Gramps went to the restroom and Joy went outside to wait for him, that even more hell would break loose in their lives.

First William would show up. He told himself, when he saw her tipping out of the bedroom of his other home, that she was better off without him. That if he loved her he’d let her go.

But he was too worried about her to be that cavalier.

He called Max as soon as she walked out on him and ordered him to put a clandestine security detail on her. They weren’t allowed to spy on her, but only to report if she was facing any kind of dangerous situations.

Max informed him, a couple hours later, that she appeared to be heading for her hometown in Indiana. Again. Which worried him even more. She wasn’t just going to cool off if she was going all the way to Indiana. She was leaving him for good!

Panicking, he notified his pilot, drove to his Chicago home where he also found her wedding ring on his dresser. Which didn’t help either. Then he went out to his helipad in the back of his property, hopped into his chopper, and flew to Bridell.

Along with Michael Iverson, who flew to Bridell with William, they hopped into a rented SUV with a hired driver, and arrived at Maylene’s just as she was walking out of the very restaurant where they first met.

And then a gunman showed up too. He shot Michael Iverson, shot the hired driver, and then he had his gun trained on Joy, ready to take her away from William forever.

But that was only happening over his dead body.

That was why William flung Joy behind his big body as if he was her human shield. He saw that gun, and he knew he was probably going to die, but his only prayer was that Joynetta wasn’t injured. That God spared her life even if it cost him his life.

As soon as William flung Joy behind him, and held her back there even as she wanted to protect him from that gunman too, she immediately began to hear shots being fired over and over and over again. Another car had driven up that she assumed were William’s guys although she couldn’t be certain, and they were firing too. She heard it all.

Until she didn’t hear anything.

Or saw anything.

Just silence.

And blackness.

Four hours later, she would wake up in a hospital. Dazed and confused. And so traumatized that she was unable to remember, at first, all the pain and commotion that had brought her to that devastating point in her young life. For a few precious moments, she felt nothing.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN