The bodyguards started forward, and this time Noelle made no move to stop them. Victor’s face got worse by the second. She’s really going to let this happen. Resentment flickered through him. His eyes moved over Noelle and over Wren beside her, and then he shouted. “Noelle! You’re really going to let them beat her father in front of her?” One line stalled Noelle and all five brothers at once. Wren looked from one adult to the next and lifted a hand to say she didn’t mind. The hand barely made it up before Noelle caught it. Wren might not mind, but Noelle was not letting her daughter watch this much violence on her first day home. “Let it go.” She let out a quiet breath. Victor smiled at that. He had known Wren would hold her back. Nobody knows her better than I do. Dorian’s face went cold, and he cut a look at Wren. I knew it. That little girl is exactly the handle Victor will use on her. Julian finally turned his attention to Wren, his eyes giving nothing away, and asked one question. “Is she his?” He was measuring her, and nothing in his face said whether he liked what he saw. Noelle caught it and corrected him fast. “She’s mine.” Then she nudged Wren to greet them. “Wren, these are your five uncles. They all came out to bring us home.” She leaned on the word us, afraid her brothers would hold the other half of Wren’s blood against her. In truth, the Ashby brothers felt very little toward Wren. Wren had been found so recently that the family still pictured the Daisy they had been hearing about for years. None of them had paid much attention to Noelle’s daughter over the years. What little reached them suggested a thoroughly spoiled child. None of them minded Noelle raising one more kid. What they minded was whose kid it was. Most of all they worried that now, with her mind finally made up, Wren would keep tying her to Victor for years. It was happening right in front of them already. Wren was small, but she read people quickly. She could feel that her uncles were not especially warm toward her, so she kept her face still and did not call out to them the way she had with her mommy. Julian’s eyes passed over her and he did not push it. Judging the timing right, he gave the order. “We’re going home. Everything else can wait.” Julian had spoken, so his brothers moved at once and the bodyguards fell back with them. Watching her actually leave was more than Victor could take, and knowing he could not stop her, he pulled himself up on Marla’s arm and spat the words at her back. “Noelle! I’m not agreeing to a divorce! I’m not agreeing, and you’re not taking that kid anywhere!” She turned, and the disgust showed plainly. Victor acted like he could not see it, dragged a smile onto his face, and made his voice soft. “Noelle, I know today was rough on you and on her. Go home for a couple of days. I’ll come get you both once things settle down.” He intended to stonewall the divorce all the way to the end. She was seeing this side of him for the first time. She turned to answer, and Julian raised a hand to stop her. Julian had never been one to draw anything out. He looked at Victor and spoke. “An Ashby daughter wants a divorce. That’s our call, not yours. “My lawyer will drop the papers off later.” Then he glanced at Wren and added one more thing. “From today she’s an Ashby. Wren Ashby.” Wren’s ears pricked at that. She looked up and reported the rest in a clear little voice, the way a child tattles. “He said he wasn’t giving Mommy a single dollar.” Wren did not understand what it meant to walk away with nothing, but whatever belonged to her mommy was coming back. She could have gotten it back herself. She decided to see what Julian could do about it first. If he came up short, she would step in. Grown-ups need a chance to show off too. Julian heard her out, and something close to a smile touched a face that rarely allowed one. “Don’t worry about it. He’s not keeping one cent of your mother’s.” He paused, glanced at Victor, and added the rest with weight behind it. “Not unless he’d rather walk out with nothing himself.” Victor’s face went black the moment he heard it. He did not doubt a single word of it. With what the Ashbys were in Crestmont, once they set their minds on getting Noelle out of the marriage, nothing he did would stop it. If they turned it around and stripped him instead, everything he had built over the years was gone. Letting her walk still stuck in his throat. With her brothers standing right there, he did not dare push it any further. All he could do was talk himself down. A divorce isn’t the end of it. Win her back and we can remarry later. Remembering how much she used to love him put the confidence back in his chest. ***** Daisy and Toby had noticed the commotion at the front door a long time ago. Those men were frightening enough that neither of them dared come out, and only after Noelle and Wren left with five very dangerous-looking strangers did the two of them creep outside. Daisy had never heard of the Ashbys, but watching Wren get walked to a car by the mother who used to fuss over her and nobody else put a strange, sour ache in her chest. Toby was older and understood more. He knew his mother’s family outranked his father’s by a wide margin, and his fists closed at his sides. He thought about the moment she asked whether he wanted to come with her. He had told her no. If he had known, he would have gone. It’s her fault! Why didn’t she just tell me? Noelle had no idea that her last attempt to keep her adopted son had earned her his resentment. She was in the back of Julian’s car with Wren. The first relief of getting out of that house thinned as the car drew closer to the Ashby estate, and unease moved in behind it. She was going home. Her brothers had doted on her since she was small, and angry as they were about how she left, they would never leave her to fend for herself. But the final word in that family belonged to someone else. It belonged to her father, Harlan Ashby, who still ran the house. As the youngest and the only girl, Noelle had never been her father’s favorite. On top of that, she had cut ties with all of them, and she had no idea whether he would take her back. This homecoming was not going to be simple. She did not care whether her father blamed her or resented her. She cared whether any of it would land on Wren. As though she felt it, Wren turned in her booster seat and looked up at her. “Mommy, don’t worry. I’m here.” She had no idea why her mommy was uneasy, but that hardly mattered. Wren would handle it. The absolute confidence in that small voice finally pulled a smile out of Noelle. Julian listened from the front seat and watched Wren in the rearview mirror, and after a moment one brow lifted. The car ran on and left the city behind, turning into an area thick with green. A tree-lined drive opened out into wide, clear ground. Through the window, Wren caught sight of the estate ahead, ringed on every side by lawn. As the cars came closer, the front gates rose into view. The gates swung open on their own. The cars rolled through one after another and stopped on the apron in front of the main house. Outside the door the household staff stood in two rows in matching black and white, and as Noelle stepped out with Wren they spoke together. “Welcome home, Ms. Noelle Ashby. And welcome home to you, Ms. Wren Ashby.” Their voices carried without any show in them, and every face stayed respectful. Nothing in the greeting suggested an opinion about a daughter who had stayed away eight years. Wren’s eyes went wide as she took it in, like she had walked into another world. It was a world a whole lot bigger than Victor’s house. Her small face stayed tight for a long moment before she let out a slow breath. That was close. I almost had to be poor with Bad Daddy.