The guy was gasping, wheezing now, but Dylan didn’t want him to pass out. Not yet. Not until he heard every word.

“I know you think you’re powerful. I know you and your family have probably won every legal battle you’ve ever been in. Between her word against yours and your parents’, you probably think you could win because of your track record with charity. Even after hearing what she has on you, you might still be cocky enough to think you’ll win. But Grace and her son, they’re with me now. With my family. And if I were you, I wouldn’t make the mistake of taking on a Sullivan. We’ll tear you apart so fast and break you into so many pieces that your family will never recover.”

Dylan had to force himself to drop his hands from around the guy’s neck before bones were crushed. The bastard dropped to the ground, clutching his throat with both hands as he tried to choke down oxygen.

“Jesus, you’re crazy.” Her ex could barely scratch the words out. “You could have killed me.”

“You haven’t even seen crazy yet,” Dylan said in an ominous tone, even as he smiled a joyless smile, one full of the promise of more pain than the guy could imagine even after nearly being crushed beneath Dylan’s hands. “If I ever hear that you’ve come near Grace or her son again, if you ever try to sneak contact with them, if you ever threaten them in any way at all, my family will hit yours from all sides. We will leave no stone unturned. We will drag up every dirty, messy, ugly thing you and your ancestors have done, personal and business, for the past hundred years. And we will make damned sure the entire goddamned world hears about it all.”

The guy had scooted back from him by then, still on the floor, with his back against the wall. “We don’t want anything do with them anymore. It was a mistake. All of it was a mistake. Coming here. Ever being with her in the first place.”

“You could have had everything.” Dylan had seen stupid before, but never on this scale. Money and power often took everything good and bad about people and amplified it—but whatever good there might have been in Richard Bentley had long been buried by the cocky belief that he could get away with anything because no one could touch him. “One misstep and I’ll make sure you’re left with absolutely nothing. Do you understand?”

“I won’t speak to her,” Richard said, his voice a whine of pain. “Won’t do anything to her or the kid. I’ll make sure my parents don’t, either. We won’t bother her again. Never again.”

Dylan didn’t trust the snake’s words, but he trusted the fear he saw in his eyes, which said more than any spoken promises would have. He forced himself to rein in the rage still burning through him. Any more violence, however satisfying, would only take him down to her ex’s level.

Without giving the worthless heap another look, Dylan left the building and headed for the harbor. He needed a fast, wild sail tonight to clear his mind and burn through his frustration, and most important of all, to figure out a way to win Grace and Mason forever.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Grace, Mason, it’s so wonderful to see you again!” Claudia Sullivan’s smile was wide and genuinely happy as she opened her front door to let them inside on Sunday afternoon.

Dylan was so close to his mother that Grace figured Claudia would know what had happened yesterday. The whole horrible story, from thinking she was pregnant to Richard showing up, and then Grace pushing Dylan away. But Claudia’s expression didn’t show so much as a trace of anger.

“Thank you so much for watching Mason again,” Grace said. “You’ve been so kind to help out while I’ve been working on the story about Dylan.”

His name hitched in her throat, and she knew his mother must have heard it.

“I love spending time with Mason,” Claudia said in a gentle voice. “But I also know how hard it can be to let go. And to trust someone else.”

She could easily hear Claudia’s message: I know you’ve been hurt. And I agree that you have every right to be wary and cautious before trusting again. There was no judgment, just understanding. And that’s what made Grace feel even worse. Because even now, even after she’d pushed Dylan away, his family wasn’t doing the same to her.

Again and again she’d told herself that only fairy tales worked like this—where the single mother of the baby meets the perfect guy with the perfect family and he falls head over heels for them both. She’d reminded herself just as many times that it had all happened too fast and had felt too good for the blaze of heat not to cool as quickly as it had ignited. But none of those painful truths meant she wanted to hurt Dylan or anyone in his family. Not when they’d all been so good to her and her son.

“Claudia, I need you to know...” She instinctively drew Mason closer, even though she knew he couldn’t shield her heart and that she should never use her son for that purpose even if he could. “Dylan has been wonderful. He’s been amazing with Mason. And if I could—”

Claudia stopped her impromptu and very painful speech by putting a warm hand over hers. “Go for your sail with my son. It will help make things more clear. I just know it will.”

Repeatedly over the past two weeks, Dylan had said that sailing with him would give her the answers she needed to finally write a compelling magazine story about the heart of a sailor. But could it also give her the answers to her other questions about how to learn to trust—and love—again?