Chapter 209: Old Resentment

"Miss me already?" Naomi asked.

Despite everything, he smiled.

"Yeah, but something is off with Ethan. I just saw him at my office."

"What? What did he say?"

"He says he’s keeping Millie safe and he loves you."

Naomi exhaled. "Oh... my baby. Something must have happened again."

Dorian looked toward the street where Ethan had disappeared. "Yeah, I suspected that, but why not come to you? Why come to me?"

Naomi sighed. "Everything has been so crazy, I haven’t had the time to go see them."

Dorian understood that.

Between Tessa falling apart, work, the house search and everything else happening in their lives, Naomi had been pulled in ten different directions.

Still, Ethan had chosen him, there was a reason for that.

Dorian’s instincts didn’t like that at all. "I’m going to try something. I’ll tell you when I get home."

"Okay, baby. Take care."

"Love you."

"I love you too."

Dorian ended the call just as his car came back around. He got in, ignored the schedule waiting for him at the office and started toward the Whitmore house.

The partners’ meeting could survive without him for a little while.

His uncle would probably enjoy the peace.

Richard Whitmore had been collecting red flags with impressive efficiency lately.

At some point, coincidence stopped being coincidence and started becoming a pattern.

By the time Dorian reached the Whitmore house, he had already decided what he was going to do.

He parked and walked to the door then knocked.

A moment later, Diana opened the door.

Her eyes widened. "Mr Heathcliffe!" She was clearly surprised to see him there. "How can I help you?"

"I need to speak with you." Dorian held her gaze. "Is your husband home?"

"No... no... come in," Diana said.

Dorian stepped into the house, his eyes moving over the space around him as he followed her deeper inside.

Nothing looked wrong. Everything could look perfectly fine. Family photographs placed where visitors could see them. A home that looked respectable enough to make outsiders question themselves before they ever questioned the people living inside it.

Diana led him into the living room and turned to face him. "What can I help you with?"

Dorian didn’t sit. He had no intention of easing into this conversation. "I’m going to be straightforward. If you need help, Mrs Whitmore, I can help you."

Diana frowned. "What are you talking about? Why would I need help?"

"How long are you going to keep tolerating your husband? How long are you going to allow him to keep hitting you, to keep abusing your children? Your niece?"

"I don’t know what you are talking about. We are a very happy family," Diana continued. "My husband is strict, yes, and whatever Naomi tells you, it’s because you are corrupting her just as you are doing to me now."

There were several things in that sentence he could have challenged, but one stood out more than the rest.

Corrupting her.

As if Naomi had somehow been better off when she was carrying bruises on her face.

"Strict is very different from abusive, Diana. My father is strict," Dorian continued. "He always has been. He expected discipline from us, demanded respect and made sure we understood consequences. Yet he has never raised a hand to any of his children."

Her face hardened. "Neither has my husband!"

He softened his tone slightly. "I’m not here to attack you. I have seen hundreds of abused women. I have helped a few. I know what this looks like."

Diana shook her head. "You don’t know anything about my family."

Dorian understood that people trapped in abusive situations didn’t always respond to rescue the way outsiders expected them to. Sometimes they defended the very person hurting them because admitting the truth meant admitting how bad things had become. "I’m not asking you to explain your marriage to me. I’m telling you that if you need help, I can help you."

"I can help the kids. But the first step is to break away, Diana."

She turned back to him sharply. "I do not need your help. My husband is a good man!"

"Stop lying to yourself!" Dorian yelled.

The force of his voice cut through the room, finally cracking the careful civility he had been trying to maintain since he walked through the door.

Diana shook her head furiously. "So Naomi came to you thinking she found the perfect man, and suddenly we are the bad guys. Where were you when her father died? Where were you when her mother shot and killed him? Where were you when she needed a place to stay and food to eat? No man is perfect," Diana continued, her voice rising with every word. "And does she even deserve perfect?! Does she?"

That stopped him. Suddenly, everything about Diana looked different.

Dorian went silent and took a slow breath, replaying what she had just said.

Does she even deserve perfect?

Dorian’s gaze narrowed. He had walked into this house thinking Diana was another woman trapped in an abusive marriage, someone who had spent so many years being controlled. He had believed Richard was the entire problem and Diana was simply one more person caught in his orbit.

But that sentence had come from somewhere else. Somewhere much darker.

"I read you all wrong," Dorian said quietly.

The pieces began shifting into place.

"You hate Marianne for what she did, don’t you?" He took a menacing step toward her. "You have been pretending all these years. But you despised Marianne. It’s why you never protected your niece from your husband. You have everyone fooled, including Naomi."

"She is just like her mother!"

The venom in Diana’s voice was so sudden that Dorian stopped moving. Old, ugly anger that had clearly been sitting inside her for years came loose.

"Ungrateful, selfish!" Diana spat. "Her mother left me with no protection. She took my brother! The one person that could protect me!"

The words came pouring out now as if Diana had been waiting years for permission to say them.

"And now Naomi runs off to live the good life, with the perfect man and perfect life?"