Chapter 114: Prison Wall

"You’re vicious." Dorian muttered. "That is deeply concerning."

Naomi grinned. He escorted her outside and walked her all the way to the Range Rover. Neither of them seemed eager to separate.

Dorian opened the driver’s door for her, and Naomi paused before getting in. Dorian leaned down and kissed her quickly. "Drive safe."

Naomi climbed in, shut the door and started the engine. He stood there watching as she pulled away. She waved through the window.

He waved back and kept waving. The Range Rover disappeared into traffic. Only then did he realize what he was doing. "I’m really fucked." He had said that so many times since last night that it was beginning to feel like a diagnosis.

Unfortunately, repeating it had not made the situation any less true. He loved her.

Dorian headed toward his car. He was going to Bedford Hills to give Marianne the news that could change everything. He would no longer have to carry this secret around Naomi. He drove to Bedford Hills and made his way through the familiar security process. He sat down in the visiting room and waited.

A few minutes later, Marianne was brought into the room. She saw him and immediately sighed.

"You just cannot stay away, can you?"

Dorian rose slightly and gestured toward the chair across from him. "Please, have a seat Mrs Bennett."

"What do you want this time?" Marianne asked, deliberately looking bored.

"I’m going to get you out of here."

"I told you—"

"No." Dorian cut her off sharply. "I don’t care what you told me. I don’t give a fuck. I have respected your wishes. I kept Naomi in the dark because I was the one who pushed you into telling me the truth in the first place. I understood that much. You trusted me with something you never intended anyone else to know, so I kept it."

"But I am done carrying it. I plan to get you out of here, so I can tell her myself."

Marianne gave him a long look before leaning back in her chair. "You really want to score points with her. Your desperation is showing, Mr Heathcliffe. You will put her through the devastation of finding out that she was the one who killed her father just so you can keep fucking her?"

Dorian’s fingers curled against the table. Anger flashed through him so hard that he almost stood.

Instead, he breathed through it.

He had come here with a plan, not to lose his temper with a woman who had spent years destroying her own freedom. "I promise you, it will never come to light. And I am saying that because it protects her, not you. I am certain I can make a case without bringing Naomi into it. I met with one of your old friends. Mrs Denise Carter."

Marianne’s careful expression slipped. "Denise?"

"Yes. She remembers more than you probably hoped she would. She remembers enough to establish that your marriage was not what everyone believed it was."

"That proves nothing."

"It creates doubt."

"I refused self-defense."

"That makes my job harder. It does not make it impossible."

Marianne sighed. "She’s not going to love you, you know."

"This is not about that."

"It doesn’t matter what you do."

"I said it isn’t about that."

"You can dig through old witnesses. Rebuild a case I deliberately destroyed. You can drag me out of this place kicking and screaming if the law somehow allows you to do it. It still will not make her love you." Marianne had a talent for landing directly on whatever he was trying hardest not to examine.

He had admitted the truth to himself. That did not mean he was ready to discuss it with Naomi’s mother. "I just don’t want to keep this away from her."

"The last time I saw my baby girl, I told her... she only needs God in her life. She should never make a man the centre of her world."

"She was fifteen. You think she even remembers that?" Dorian questioned.

"She promised me. She promised me that no man was ever going to do to her what her father did to me in the name of love. Men love to trap women, to own them," Marianne continued. "You are no different. You are doing this because you want to keep her by your side. You want to own her."

"Shut up."

After everything she had survived, an angry lawyer wasn’t particularly frightening.

"You’re going to lose," she said quietly. "Because my daughter saw things a child should never have seen. She saw her father lock me up. She watched him starve me, beat me, rape me. You think Denise knew everything? You think anyone knew everything? Naomi lived it," Marianne continued. "She heard things through walls. She saw bruises I couldn’t hide. She cried with me when I couldn’t stop crying. She learned what love looked like from us, Mr Heathcliffe."

Dorian thought of Naomi saying she wasn’t capable of love. He had always assumed it was cynicism.

Now he understood how deep that fear went.

"But your husband never hit her," Dorian said carefully.

Marianne’s eyes widened. "God, no. He adored her. She was his little princess. He would still dot on her, take care of her after doing terrible things to me."

A child could love her father and fear what he did to her mother at the same time. Naomi had grown up watching affection and cruelty exist inside the same man.

No wonder love looked dangerous to her.

"And that," Dorian said, leaning forward, "is why I’m confident I can get you out without mentioning Naomi was involved. I can build around the abuse. Denise gives us somewhere to start. There will be other witnesses, people who saw things they didn’t understand at the time. I don’t need to put Naomi in the middle of this."

Marianne was silent for several seconds. Then she exhaled. "Then get me out first. But do not tell her."

***Will she get out? That’s the question now, isn’t it?***