POV Harper
He slapped me.
The thought circles through my consciousness like a bird that's flown into a window and can't find its way out. My fingers press against my cheek where the impact landed, and instead of the outrage I should feel, instead of the feminist fury that would be entirely justified, I find clarity settling over me like a blanket pulled from cold storage.
The slap was the only thing that could have stopped me.
I was spiraling, launching words designed to eviscerate him, watching each syllable land with the precision of a surgeon removing organs. Worthless. Pathetic. Contamination. I was so consumed by the need to hurt him that I couldn't hear myself becoming the monster I accused him of being.
"Are you going to call the police?" Jaxson's voice emerges raw, devastated. "I wouldn't blame you if you did, Harper, because what I just did is inexcusable no matter how many horrible things you were saying, and I need you to know that I've never hit a woman in my life and I don't know what came over me except that I couldn't listen to you call me worthless one more time."
"I'm trying to figure out if I've lost my mind completely." I lower my hand from my cheek, examining my fingers for blood that isn't there—his blood, transferred from his knuckles, nothing more. "Because the rational response to being slapped is not standing here wondering why it took you so long to do it."
"Harper, please don't rationalize what I did because there's no excuse for a man putting his hands on a woman in anger, and if you let me off the hook for this, I'll never forgive myself even if you somehow manage to forgive me."
"Stop talking for thirty seconds and let me think." I press my palms against my temples, trying to organize the chaos of the last forty-eight hours into something resembling coherent thought. "The slap wasn't violence, Jaxson—it was the only thing that could make me shut up long enough to actually see you."
His expression shifts, confusion replacing the self-loathing that had carved itself into his features. He moves toward the study, gesturing for me to follow, and I trail behind him because I've apparently decided that following bloodied men into dark rooms is just who I am now.
"The woman you saw that morning." He pulls a thick folder from the desk drawer—the same folder Elena handed him, the one he sent flying in his earlier rage. "Her name is Elena Marchetti, and she's not some Italian mistress I've been hiding from you. She's a former Interpol agent who now works as a private investigator, and I hired her eighteen months ago to document every single one of Preston's affairs."
The folder lands on the desk between us, and when I open it, photographs spill across the mahogany surface like accusations given visual form.
Preston at a hotel bar, his hand on the waist of a redhead I don't recognize. Preston leaving a boutique hotel in Back Bay with a brunette young enough to be in college. Preston in a restaurant booth, feeding chocolate-covered strawberries to a woman wearing a wedding ring that doesn't match the one on his finger. Six women, maybe seven, across what appears to be two years of systematic betrayal.
"I've been protecting your reputation this entire time, Harper, because I knew the moment you found out about Preston's extracurricular activities, you would confront him, and he would find some way to make you the villain." Jaxson's voice carries exhaustion that goes deeper than physical pain. "The man has been sleeping with half of Boston's female population while convincing you that bland missionary sex twice a month was the pinnacle of intimacy, and I couldn't let you marry someone who viewed you as a prop rather than a partner."
"Why didn't you just tell me?" My voice cracks on the question. "Why hire investigators and collect evidence for eighteen months instead of simply showing me what he was doing?"
"Because you wouldn't have believed me. You would have assumed I fabricated everything to drive you apart, and you would have run straight to Preston to confirm his version of events, and he would have found some way to explain away every photograph and receipt until you doubted your own judgment more than you doubted his fidelity."
I flip through credit card statements that tell their own story—hotel rooms charged to accounts I never knew existed, jewelry purchases for women whose names don't match mine, and then the receipts that make my stomach lurch.
"Abortion clinics?" The words emerge strangled. "He paid for abortions?"
"One of his affairs resulted in a pregnancy he handled with a checkbook." Jaxson's jaw tightens. "The woman in question received fifty thousand dollars to terminate and sign a non-disclosure agreement, and Preston went back to his country club tennis matches like nothing happened."
My hands shake as I continue through the documentation, and then I reach a photograph that makes my vision blur with horror.
"This girl can't be older than sixteen." I hold up the image—Preston at a charity event, his hand resting far too low on the back of a teenager in a cocktail dress. "Who is she?"
"The daughter of a client. Elena is still gathering evidence on that particular relationship, but what she's found suggests Preston's interests extend to women who aren't legally old enough to consent to his attention."
I sink into the nearest chair, the weight of revelation pressing me into the leather. All those months of convincing myself that stability was worth the absence of passion, that Preston's predictability meant he was safe, that I was building a life with a man who would never hurt me the way Jaxson's intensity threatened to.
I was wrong about everything.
"Why is his ring still on your finger?"
The question cuts through my spiral, sharp and demanding. Jaxson stands over me now, close enough that I can see the damage done to his hands—fingers swollen at the knuckles, two of them bent at angles that suggest fractures rather than bruises. His shirt has shifted during our conversation, revealing ribs that bloom purple and yellow beneath torn fabric.
"What happened to you?" I reach toward his damaged hands, needing to understand the price he paid for whatever happened in Milan. "Your fingers are broken, Jaxson, and your ribs look like someone used you as a punching bag, and you've been standing here bleeding while I screamed at you about being worthless."
"The ring, Harper." His voice drops to a register that makes my spine straighten. "Answer my question, because I just drove like a man possessed to get back to you, and you're still wearing another man's jewelry on your finger."
"The ring stays on until Preston is handled." I meet his gaze with determination I didn't know I possessed. "He threatened to expose us, Jaxson—to tell everyone in Boston society that I've been sleeping with my stepbrother. If I remove this ring before I have leverage to neutralize him, he will destroy everything my father built and everything I've worked for."
His hand shoots out, fingers closing around my wrist with violence that should terrify me but instead sends electricity arcing through my nervous system.
"No." The word emerges as a growl, his grip tightening until I feel bones grinding together. "It comes off now, or I cut the finger off with it."