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“Didn’t I tell your ass not to come to Bridell without me?” It was his usual demanding tone. The tone he used on his thousands of workers. He wore another one of his expensive suits, and was buttoning it as he approached her. “Didn’t I tell you that, Joynetta?”

She always felt as if she was on the hotseat when William came at her with that much heat. But she was still going to stand up for herself. If she didn’t, who would? “I needed to talk to somebody.”

William’s look softened, because he knew he’d hurt her, but that was beside the point. This was a matter of her safety for him. “When they told me you were heading to Bridell, and speeding like you were the gotdamn Road Runner, you had me worried sick, Joynetta. I had to leave my busy schedule to come and get you out of that mess you got yourself into four weeks ago. And you’re back here again?”

But Joy heard his first point. “You said they told you I was heading to Bridell? Who told you where I was heading?”

William didn’t answer her question. He kept clandestine security on her at all times. They were ordered to never spy on her, but to report to him if her movements went against his own standing orders to her. Her slipping out of his bed after a major fight and heading straight to the town he told her never to visit without him was one of those instances.

When his men reported back to him and told him she was indeed heading to Bridell, his already exhausted body got out of bed, hopped onto his plane, and flew in. With an SUV waiting at the airfield for him, he hurried to where his clandestine security detail said she was located.

His fear didn’t just center around bad guys attempting to kidnap her, although that was always a concern. But he feared those small-town Indiana cops pulling her over and mistreating her because she was a woman, or because she was a woman of color, or because she was his wife and they’d love to stick it to the man. It was his constant concern because even his men, though highly trained, couldn’t circumvent a law enforcement officer.

“How did you know I came here?” she asked William again when he didn’t answer her the first time.

But before he could answer either one of her questions, it all happened so fast.

Neither one of them saw the masked gunman run from the side of Maylene’s with an assault rifle already drawn. Although William’s bodyguard saw the gunman before anybody else did, and was about to draw his weapon and protect the boss, the gunman shot the bodyguard with rapid shots and quickly turned and shot William’s driver, who was pulling out his weapon as well.

And as the hidden security vehicle that had followed Joy to Bridell sped out of the shadows and hurried their way, the gunman turned his assault rifle on Joy and was ready to pull the trigger until William quickly grabbed her, slung her behind him, and stood as if he was a human shield protecting her.

He was ready to die for her. His only prayer was that his hidden security detail he ordered to follow her would make it over in time to protect Joy when he was incapacitated and unable to do so.

But as soon as William slung Joy behind his back and held her there as if she was his prisoner, all she could hear was a continuation of gunshots. He was firing a hail of bullets, a mountain of ammo, in rapid succession. So loud she felt her ears ringing. So deliberately violent she felt her entire body shaking.

She heard people were screaming. She heard cars screeching.

Until it all began to fade, like a slow-motion drop in light, until it all went black.

And she could not hear, nor could she see, a solitary thing.

CHAPTER THREE

TWO MONTHS EARLIER

Joynetta Johnson, the former waitress, knew that her brand-new life as the wife of Mr. William D. Skeffington the Fifth, the billionaire consultant and financier, would never be the same again. That truth could not have been more real for her than during the entirety of their monthlong honeymoon. That whole month in Europe and Africa, from Paris to Ghana, was like living a dream to Joy. She loved every second of their vacation.

But only a day after they returned to Chicago, they were summoned to the home of William’s parents on what was described to William as a matter most urgent. Most urgent, in his family, could mean anything from a simple dinner party snafu where there would be a couple of empty chairs at the table and his mother would be the laughing stock of Scarsdale society, and all of Westchester county, if those two seats weren’t filled, to a true, dire emergency. You could never tell with his parents.

But just in case it was dire, they agreed that they should go.

Joy was a bundle of nerves as the tall electronic gates parted and their limousine entered the property. All she could see before them as they rode up the long driveway was a home that could easily stretch an entire city block. Huge would be an understatement. It had so many layers to it, and so many windows and sections that it reminded Joy of a medieval castle. Or Buckingham Palace. She couldn’t make up her mind which.

She looked at William. Surprisingly, he seemed like a bundle of nerves too. “You grew up in that big house?” she asked him.

In William fashion, he didn’t answer her. Mainly because he was always on edge when he went to see his parents and was dealing with his own emotions. But his silence always gave the answer too. Which would be a yes.

They didn’t invite his parents nor Joy’s mother to their wedding to avoid any drama, and the only time she ever met his parents was briefly at his country club. And even then he did not introduce her to them at all. They left with the impression that she was just another one of his lady friends. She didn’t like that he gave them that impression, but she knew for herself that parental wounds ran deep. She wasn’t about to reopen them. She let it go.

But sometimes, even on their honeymoon in Paris, she wondered if she was giving William too much rope. If she wasn’t questioning him and his activities and his family background enough. But she was never a nag, and she wasn’t going to become one.

“Wondered what it’s about?” she asked him.

William sat quietly in the backseat of his parents’ limousine that had picked them up from the airport, with his legs folded and his arms resting comfortably across his lap. But she could tell his relaxed posture hid his concern. She’d been intimate with William in ways she’d never been intimate with another human being. She knew him.

But he knew her too. “You asked me that before.”

“You didn’t answer me before,” she shot back.