SARAH Malachi yanks me off Aaron’s bleeding face, with his arms tightly wrapped around my waist. I kick my feet in the air, screaming, as tears blur my vision once again. No one should take me away. No one should stop me from killing this motherfucker! My fingernails claw the air as I scream for Malachi to put me down. I’m desperate to dig into Aaron’s scrawny flesh again. “Let me go!” I scream, thrashing in his grip. “I’m not done with him! Let me teach him a lesson he will never forget!” “Sarah—stop,” Malachi growls in my ear, trying to keep me still. For the first time, his voice doesn’t work. Maybe because I’ve gone way past reasoning. Maybe his atrocities have gone past forgiving. There’s no reasoning with a man like Aaron. Only reaction. And I’ll be damned if I do not show him what I’m physically capable of. I twist, fighting him with every inch of strength I have left. Still, it’s not enough to wriggle out of Malachi’s hold. How strong is this man? “You lying, filthy son of a bitch!” I shout at Aaron, who’s backed up against the wall with his ugly split lip, and not enough blood smeared across his shirt. If it was solely up to me, he’ll be lying in a pool of his own fucking blood by now. “Six years!” I point at him. “I gave you six fucking years of my life and this is what you do?” “What the fuck did I ever do to you? I was nothing…nothing but a good wife to you! I’ll have raised hell and brought down the heavens to make you happy. Fuck this.” I spat on the ground as Malachi set my feet down. “I damn near did. You say you took care of me? That’ll I’ll have been nothing without you,” when I take two steps towards Aaron again, Malachi blocks my path with his right hand. I stop on my tracks, but I don’t look away from Aaron. It’s hard to believe. I can’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that he could do something so evil to me. “I blamed myself for our problems for years. I told myself before going to sleep every night, that maybe if I had been able to have our babies, you would love and respect me some more, when all this time…” I pause to sniff in and swallow the lump in my throat. “You were lying to me. You conspired with a doctor, looked me in the eyes, and you lied to me. If you didn’t want to have a baby with me, you could have just fucking told me. You could have just…” I shake my head, unable to speak any further. My words fail me. My throat fails me. I stagger backwards, and Malachi catches me in his arms. It’s at that moment that Ronan steps forward. He takes one short look at me, before dragging his gaze to meet Aaron. “I’ll take care of it. Just breathe, Sarah.” “No,” I snap, wriggling out of Malachi’s hold. I shook Ronan a glare. “I don’t want anyone to take care of anything. Give me whatever you have. The footage, his medical report, everything. I know the doctor. I’ll pay him a visit myself. I want everything. I want to deal with this fucker.” “Sarah,” Jaxon tries to interject, but I slice a hand through the air, warning and pleading with him not to fight me on this. “No, Jaxon. My own husband, and the man I married felt like I was a scared, powerless, lost puppy he could mistreat and get away with it. I’m about to show him he made a big fucking mistake.” I take a shaking breath, then turn to Aaron. I’m filled with so much disgust, I resist the urge to puke all over his pathetic looking face. What the fuck did I ever see in this man? “Go ahead. Release the footage. Let the world see me getting fucked by someone who isn’t my husband.” His eyes widen. I keep going. “By the time I’m done showing them what a manipulative, abusive monster you are, no one will blame me. No one. They’ll understand exactly why I did what I had to do. We’ll see whose side they’ll be on.” The silence that follows is deafening. I spin on my heel and storm out with my heart pounding against my chest. The brothers follow me. They say nothing, even as I push open the front door and collapse onto the steps of the porch. My chest rises and falls erratically. I’m trying, but I can’t seem to catch my breath. When I raise my knees and bury my face into them, I break down into pieces again. Aaron could have killed me if he wanted. He was clearly evil enough to do that. I can’t believe it. I can’t reconcile the man I met eight years ago to this monster. I just…I can’t. He was sweet, loving, caring. The best that there was out there. I would always brag to my friends that he was different. “A different breed.” I always said, when they would say all men were dogs. He was a different breed, alright. The worst fucking kind. And I couldn’t see it, and I married him. I fucking married him. Jaxon crouches beside me first, his hand finding my back in slow, steady circles. “I really thought he loved me,” I whisper through clenched teeth. “I didn’t think—I didn’t think he could be this evil.”Malachi and Ronan stay behind. I can feel their heat, the way their silence still carries a protectiveness that wraps around me like a blanket I didn’t know I needed. “I need to get away,” I murmur. “From all of it. From him. From this city. I need to go somewhere new,” I raise my head slowly. “But first, I need to talk to my brother.” They don’t try to stop me. They just nod. Jaxon squeezes my shoulder and lets me go. I walk to my car, hands trembling as I pull out my phone and call my Kevin.” “Hey berry baby,” his ever cheerful voice greets me at the other end of the line, and my heart squeezes in my chest. God! I miss my brother so much. I haven’t seen him in over four years. My voice shakes, but I get the words out long enough to tell him something happened with Aaron, but not everything. I leave out the part I rebounded and fucked his best friends…twice. Kevin is screaming at the other end of the line when I’m done. “By the heavens! And you kepy this all to yourself? All this time, berry? I called you. I called you to ask about this, and you fucking lied to me. Why would you do that, berry? Why?” “I…I didn’t want you to leave everything you had going on just to come and rescue me.” I cry. “What the fuck? Berry, of course I’m going to leave every god damn thing to come for you! You’re my baby sister, for heaven’s sake! You’re the only family I have left. Do you know what would happen to me if anything happens to you? I’ll be left in this world with nobody.” The way he says the last word causes my grip on my phone to tighten. “I’m so sorry, Kev,” I sniff, wiping under my eyes. “I wanted to be strong. I thought I could handle it.” “And you can. But that doesn’t mean you have to shut everyone else out. Listen, I’ll be in Durmont next week. So you better be expecting me. Is that clear?” I don’t say anything. I only nod. But he hears me regardless. Kevin and I have the sibling ability to hear things we don’t say. “We’ll deal with him, Sarah. You and me, together. Like it’s always been.” By the time I return to the porch, the brothers are waiting for me. “How did that go?” Malachi asks with a small smile on his face. I know it’s because he knows his best friend enough to know that Kevin might be on the phone with a hit man as we speak. I can’t help the smile that forms on my face. “He’s coming to Durmont next week.” Malachi and Jaxon shake their heads, when Ronan chuckles.“Still hasn’t changed a bit. So, you have one week then. We’ll push your return date forward.” I narrow my eyes on him. “Return date for what?” “You need to pack a bag,” he says. I blink. “What?” Malachi smirks faintly, like he’s been waiting to say it. “You’re catching the first flight out to Mykonos tomorrow morning.” “What—wait, Mykonos? Why?” “You said you wanted to get away,” Ronan answers. “You’ll get a break. Full detox. Sun, salt, ocean air. Time alone.” Alone. The word stabs something inside me. I stare at them. “The last thing I need is time alone.” I take a step forward with my arms folded across my chest. “Now, I know you three are busy and your schedules might be busier than that of the President, but I’m not going anywhere unless you three come with me.” I watch them exchange glances—Ronan’s brow raised, Malachi’s mouth twitching, Jaxon already shifting his weight like he’s halfway convinced. “So, what’s it gonna be?” I ask, my voice is softer this time. Finally, Jaxon exhales. “Yeah. We’ll come.” Relief floods through me, but beneath that relief, I can feel something else stir. Darker. Hotter. I’m about to have the sexiest, sluttiest, one week of my life.