Fair enough, but only because I literally had nowhere to go without him. “You should have told me about this.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t have come if you knew what it was like.”
“So, it was like an involuntary kidnapping. I see.”
“No, I just— I wanted you to give me a chance.”
“I was willing to!” I screamed. “I wanted to make this work. I gave up everything to be here!”
“You gave up living on the ranch with your family. Not much else.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, getting more pissed by the second. “I gave up my family, my friends, and walked away from Jeff and our business ventures.”
He paused, giving me that funny look. Yeah, I probably should have brought that up sooner.
“Your business ventures?”
“Yes. Every spare penny I had went to Jeff because he’s been buying businesses around town and turning them around. I’m his silent partner.”
He swallowed around the lump in his throat.
“Yeah, remember that conversation about how I have no money and shouldn’t have that house?”
He winced. “I thought you were just really terrible with money.”
“You made that perfectly clear,” I snapped.
“But there’s no money trail?—”
“Because I took cash out and gave it to Jeff!”
“Why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you invest it in the company with a money trail like a normal?—”
“You might want to check your next words,” I seethed.
Shoving his fingers through his hair, he turned away from me. Yeah, I knew he was confused and pissed, but not nearly as much as I was.
“Okay, we can talk about this. We can figure out a way to get around the protocols and everything else.”
“How? Everyone follows them!” I shouted. “Are you going to give me a special pass that says I can leave whenever I want? Do I get points for good behavior?”
“It’s not like that,” he argued. “These protocols are in place for a reason.”
“And yet, I’ve gone my whole life on that ranch without needing them,” I argued.
“You were drugged in Vegas!”
“So were you!”
“And look how that turned out for us.”
I laughed at his words. “Yeah, look at us. Married and yelling at each other. Yep, this is working out so well for us. We should have gotten that divorce in Vegas like we originally planned.”
“Is that really what you want? To just walk away from everything?”
Frustrated tears stung my eyes, and I quickly wiped them away. “What I want is a normal life with a normal man. I want to walk out of my house and know that nothing is going to stop me.I want to go into town without an escort. And most of all, I want to live in my house without a killer robot that might shoot deadly toxins at me because it doesn’t recognize my profile!”
His shoulders slumped in defeat as he nodded, staring at the ground.