When Doom Found Violet novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Marcy Turns

Zane's name was on a list, and the only man who could take it off was the one I had just humiliated in front of three hundred people.

Doom had sent two prospects to sit outside Zane's shop before we left the hotel.

I sat on the clubhouse steps and watched the gate and did not know what I would trade to keep my brother safe.

At midnight the prospect on the gate called up on the radio.

"Prez. There's a woman here in a purple dress. She's alone and she's crying."

I was sitting on the clubhouse steps with Doom's jacket over my shoulders, still in the red dress.

I didn't need him to say her name.

"Let her in the yard," Doom said. "Keep your hands off her."

"You're not coming?"

"I'll be ten feet behind you."

I walked down to the gate, and he did exactly that.

Marcy stood on the gravel with her mascara down to her chin and one shoe in her hand.

She had walked the last half mile.

"I'm not here to fight," she said.

"That's the dress you wore to my wedding," I said.

She flinched and held up both hands.

"I know what I did. Please, Vi. Just let me say it."

I looked at her for a long time.

Behind me, Doom's boots scuffed once and stopped.

"Talk," I said.

"There's no baby."

I had known it, and it still landed.

"There was never a baby," Marcy said. "Kent told me to say it. He said if you thought I was pregnant, you'd feel too guilty to file."

"And you did it."

"He said it would only be for a few weeks. He said once you dropped the divorce papers, he'd take care of everything."

"Take care of what?"

She wiped her face with her wrist.

"Me, I thought." She laughed, and it came out cracked. "I thought he meant me."

"Why would you do that?"

"Because he was kind to me."

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