The fury in Dustin's eyes only deepened.
"So now you're calling her a liar? Calling my wife a liar?"
"Wife?" I couldn't stop myself from repeating the word. My expression must have been grotesque. "Dustin, who exactly is your wife?"
He shielded Alice behind him. Only her eyes were visible past his shoulder, fixed on me, glittering with undisguised triumph.
"Shut your mouth!" The rage in his dark pupils had become something uncontainable. "You've gone too far, Cecily. Alice is fragile enough as it is. How could you be this cruel to her?"
"She slammed herself into that wall!"
The words tore out of me in a ragged scream, my voice splitting apart.
Then I remembered what Alice had said moments ago. My head snapped up, and I couldn't stop myself from hurling the question at the bastard standing in front of me.
"My baby. The one I lost. Was that really an accident?!"
"Enough!" Dustin sucked in a breath and grabbed me by the collar, hauling me close. His voice dropped to a snarl only the two of us could hear.
"Whatever Alice told you, she's mentally unstable. You can't take the words of a deranged person seriously."
"That baby." His gaze cooled degree by degree until there was nothing left but ice. "You have no one to blame but yourself. You were pregnant and still went running around in the middle of the night. That's what caused the miscarriage. Who else is there to blame?"
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Did he really not know why I'd gone out that night?
It was this woman, this fraud playing her little madness charade, who had insulted one of his biggest clients to his face, called the man a backwater hick, and sent him storming out on the spot.
To salvage a deal worth hundreds of millions a year, I'd dragged myself out into the pouring rain in the dead of night to beg forgiveness.
I knelt outside that hotel entrance for three solid hours. My knees were raw and bleeding by the time the man finally relented, saying he'd give Delgado Group one more chance, for my sake alone.
And in Dustin's mouth, that became me "running around." Whatever warmth was left inside me turned to ash.
"Lately, you've really disappointed me." He looked down at me the way someone looks at a disobedient pet, his eyes brimming with nothing but impatience. "Someone take her to the basement. She can stay there until she's reflected on what she did wrong."