The anger in Tucker’s voice could have smashed granite, and Della absently stroked his chest, trying to soothe him. She understood his rage intimately. There wasn’t one single word Tucker could call her ex that she hadn’t already used.

“It happened a lot after that. I used to dread the night. Dread going to sleep.”

“Did his father not intervene?”

Della snorted. “Pa was an Old Testament kinda guy. He believed in women being subjugated to their husbands and in sins being punished.”

She hadn’t lost any sleep when Arlo had informed her of her father-in-law’s death a few months after Todd’s.

“Was there no one you could turn to?”

Della shook her head. “We lived in isolation. Pa had a phone that never left his side, but there was no house phone or computer. My father visited once. I begged him to take me home, but he just looked at me with cold, cold eyes and told me I’d made my bed.”

She hadn’t lost any sleep over her father’s death, either. Her mother had tip-toed around him all her life, and while he’d never been overtly abusive, he’d been a quiet menacing force.

“I tried to run a few times, in the beginning. But as I hadn’t grown up in the area, I didn’t know where I was or where to go for help. And they found me every time. That’s when Todd started shackling me to the bed in the basement whenever they left the house.”

That had been more frightening than the abuse at times. It had been so dark, and she’d been chained like an animal.

“God…Della.” He hugged her tighter. “I’m so sorry.”

Della shut her eyes, clinging to the raw empathy in his voice as she remembered. Her fear of the dark had started with Todd’s abuse and been compounded by her captivity in the cellar. “That’s where Arlo found me that night.”

“Thank God he came along,” Tucker muttered.

“I was out front picking some tomatoes from the vines when he first called by. He asked me my name, then introduced himself—said he thought I might be his sister. I couldn’t wrap my head around what he was trying to tell me, but he had the kindest eyes. I panicked, though. Todd was home, and I knew he’d be furious if he saw me talking to someone.”

Della had been so beaten down she hadn’t even thought of Arlo’s sudden appearance as her ticket out.