I blink at him. He couldn’t be further from the truth. He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t even guess anything about me right.
“And what? You just wanted the new girl in town to show off to satisfy your male ego? You don’t know me. Get the fuck out,” I spit back.
“Don’t I? Little gold-digging whore from New York thinks she can come here and play the Sterlings for their money. What? Was I not rich enough for you? You dirty little bitch.”
The word hits me like a slap. My fists clench at my sides. “Call me that again,” I say, and my voice is shaking, but it’s not from fear anymore. “I dare you.”
“Bitch,” he says it slowly. Savoring every letter. “A cheap, desperate, scheming little whore who opened her legs for a payday. That’s what you are. That’s all you’ll ever be. And trust me, Hunter won’t be interested in you either.”
“Get the fuck out of my apartment.”
“Your apartment?” He laughs again. “This ismyapartment. Everything you’re standing on is mine. The roof over your head? Mine. The lock on that door? Mine.” He leans in close enough that I can smell the whiskey on his breath. “You are mine, Lola. Not Hunter’s. You don’t get a choice in this.”
“I don’t belong to anyone.” I hold his stare even as my hands tremble. “And I never will.”
His nostrils flare.
“I’m calling the cops,” I say, reaching for my phone on the couch.
He laughs.
“Call them. Who do you think they’re going to believe? The lawyer who’s lived here his whole life? Or the gold-digging slut from New York who’s been here five minutes?”
My hand closes around the phone.
His hand closes around my wrist.
The pain is immediate, and a sound tears out of me that I don’t recognize as my own voice. He wrenches me forward, off balance, and my hip slams into the edge of the coffee table. The wine bottle topples and shatters on the tile.
He tosses me to the ground, and I cry out as my hand lands on the broken glass.
That pain ignites inside me. Something old and furious and built from every time a man thought he could break me and couldn’t.
“Say it. Say you’re mine,” he hisses, leaning over me.
I take a deep breath, ignoring the pain coursing through my body. I swing my elbow straight into his dick with every ounce of rage I have behind it. The impact sends pain shooting up my arm, but his head snaps sideways, and his grip on my wrist loosens for a fraction of a second.
A fraction is all I need.
I rip my arm free, snatch my keys off the counter, and run.
I don’t grab shoes. Don’t grab a jacket. Don’t grab anything except my keys because there is no version of this where I stay in this apartment one second longer.
I wrench open the front door, and I’m in the hallway, bare feet slapping against cold concrete, the stairwell door banging open ahead of me.
Blood drips from my hand as I run, and I fight back the tears.
“LOLA!”
His voice ricochets off the walls behind me. I don’t look back. I take the stairs two at a time, and my hip screams with every step, pain blooming across the bone where the table caught me, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop.
I hear his footsteps above me. He’s coming.
I burst through the ground-floor exit, and the night air hits me. The parking lot is half-lit, the overhead light flickering in that useless way it always does. My car is thirty feet away. Twenty. Ten.
My hands are shaking so hard that it takes me three tries to hit the unlock button. I yank the door open, throw myself inside, and slam the lock down.
He comes through the exit door.