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"And?"

"HR told Parker-Downey."

My blood begins to boil.

"They told him," Pete repeats. "Within forty-eight hours of her filing, someone in HR flagged it directly to the CEO's office. And then..."

He stops again.

My knuckles are white on the chair. My jaw is locked so tight I can feel my pulse in my teeth.

"Pete."

"According to her statements, he went to her apartment. Kicked in her front door." Pete's voice drops, and I can hear the uncharacteristic empathy in his tone. "He raped her, Dante."

I don't move.

I don't breathe.

My world tilts on its axis and every cell in my body vibrates with a dark frequency.

Rage.

Pure unfiltered rage.

"She went to the police," Pete continues. "Filed a report. They took her statement, ran a kit. Then the report and the evidence disappeared. Like they never existed. I had to dig hard through a big pile of bullshit to find out what happened."

"Parker-Downey." I say his name with the kind of venom that annihilates in minutes.

"His lawyers. His connections. His money. She was erased from the system."

My vision narrows. The edges of the room blur, and I see nothing except my wife being erased from the system because a raping cunt made her disappear.

My hand sweeps across my desk, sending everything crashing to the floor, and I am on my feet, my chest heaving and my vision blurred with fury.

I’ve known rage before, but this is something entirely different. I feel it growing in my chest. It’s not hot. It’s deadly cold. The temperature at the bottom of the ocean where only darkness lives.

I close my eyes.

Behind my eyelids, I see her sitting on my kitchen counter, eating peanut butter straight from the jar with her spoon. I see her sunshiny smile. I hear her sunny chuckle. And I have never felt so murderous in my life.

But then I see her standing in my library, telling me she needed to know if I was human.

Of course she did.

Because the last man who had power over her used it to destroy her.

The last man who claimed ownership of her body took it without asking.

I dragged her into another powerful man's domain without any real choice. But instead of crumbling, she looked me in the eye and asked me if I was a monster.

She needed to know if it was going to happen again.

My chest cracks open.

"Dante." Pete's voice is careful. "You still there?"

"What happened next?” I ask through gritted teeth.