Watching her bare feet on the grass with the dress she’d chosen from her new collection hit hard.
Scars didn’t heal overnight.
My dick wasn’t a magical solution.
Gabriel was still unpredictable.
But locked away next to me, I could keep her from harm—for now.
The short term solution for Gabriel was prison. However, the shameful fact was that only 7% of police recorded domestic abuse cases resulted in a conviction. He didn’t have a criminal record and even with the best lawyer it was likely that he would receive a suspended sentence at best. The system that was supposed to protect women like Sayla had failed her before and the cold probability was that it would fail her again. That brand of fury I kept tightly contained. It served no one if I let it run loose.
This was the reality.
A horrid one for my Princess and the potential three daughters we had.
I glanced at her chasing after a butterfly.
She said her maximum was two.
I argued that she wouldn’t have Elias if her parents had stuck to that rule.
She wasn’t convinced, but she was quite content with the thought of our babies.
I followed her onto the lawn and she turned at my touch before a wide smile spread across those pretty lips.
“Thank you for my frog pond. They need to have some shade too. It was on one of your posts—or was that a lie too?”
I smiled and took her down.
We lay on the grass and stared at the sky.
“It was all factual information.”
She grunted but shuffled closer to rest her head on my outstretched arm.
“Can we have a beehive as well?”
“Let’s stick with something that won’t sting our children.”
“We could train them to be killer bees.”
If only life were that simple, I thought, my mind drifting back to Gabe.
Chapter 14
Sayla
I watched the tall electric gates open. The ones that weren’t there when I arrived all those weeks ago. I glanced at him but he didn’t say anything. We just waited for the gate to slide open.
Was he keeping me in or someone out?
I plucked up some courage.
“Has Gabriel been here?”
The tyres of the car crunched on the gravel as we moved forward. He stopped past the gate and turned to face me as they began to close.
“He’s been served the divorce papers by my attorney,” he said, taking my hand and placing it on his thigh.