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Knowing Cora had been sniffing around in my business had hurt the first time, but to see just how far she was willing to go, all because of how childish I had been in the past, was too much to bear.
I never thought she would stoop so low or threaten our safety just to get a good story on me. Regardless of her knowledge or involvement with the Gleason’s, she had landed herself in that position one way or another. She had to know that I would find out somehow.
And yet, I opened myself up to her. I was willing to see where things could go between us.
The drive came and went, and before long, I was parked in front of her apartment building.
No matter how blinded I was by the anger and hurt, I had to confront her. I needed to warn her that if she continued communicating with them, things would only get worse.
Even if I was furious with her, I still cared. I needed to know she was being safe, regardless of how recklessly she had gone about it all. Her well-being mattered more than my emotions.
Standing in front of her door, I knocked several times, able to smell her inside. After a moment of waiting, her feet padded against the wood floor, and the lock clicked.
The door peeled open, and Cora looked surprised to see me there without any warning.
But that shock only grew as I pushed my way in, hot on the heels of my fury and every heated word I needed to get off my chest.
Chapter 23 - Cora
I hardly had time to say anything, let alone close the door, when Liam turned on his heel and faced me from within my apartment. A rush of wind moved in with him, catching me completely off-guard.
Expecting a civilized conversation with him, everything about the initial greeting caught me off-guard—if I could even call it that.
“What’s going on?” I asked, worried about the raw anger drenching his aura. While he had been irritated before, he had never been in this state around me before. There was something so primal about that outrage that worried me.
“Why would you go to them for information?” He demanded, reeling from the fury. “Why would you meddle in something like this when I specifically told you not to?”
Trying to understand what he was talking about, I furrowed my brows at him and crossed my arms over my chest. “What do you mean by ‘meddling’?”
Liam pulled in a single breath and began, laying everything out like he had been bottling it up inside himself. It made me wonder just how long he had been holding onto those words in his mind.
“I just came back from talking to Kai, and the man who attacked you was sent by the people you spoke with about me. While you were off, likely to get dirt on me, they sent him to attack you. If you hadn’t communicated with those men, you never would’ve been jumped. You could’ve been seriously hurt, Cora!”
Recoiling from the explanation, I tried to put the pieces together in my mind. As far as I knew, the attack had been random. A wrong place, wrong time situation. I never thought it had been planned at all or executed by the man I had spoken to on the phone.
An unnerving feeling moved through me at that, wondering if they had truly been that sinister. Why lure me out when they could’ve just found Liam for themselves? He wasn’t an utterly reclusive figure in town, not when I had already written two articles about him.
“How deep does this thing go?” Liam asked, eyes laced with devastation. With deceit. “How much did you know about all this?”
Shaking my head, I couldn’t believe it. Beyond our arranged meeting, I didn’t have any other associations with them. But I wasn’t so sure Liam would believe me despite how I wanted him to.
“I was only asking them questions about you. I thought the man I talked to on the phone would be there to give me information until the attack happened.”
“So you could smear my name around town? I thought you were better than that,” Liam uttered, voice cutting me deeply. There was no ignoring just how much it bothered him and how disappointed in me he was.
Heat flushed through my system, bringing along an embarrassment that was hard to ignore. I wanted to crawl out of my skin and pretend like none of it ever happened. But of course, I couldn’t.
Searching for the right words to say, I stumbled to get them out, “This was before we started to reconcile! I was pissed at you, but I decided I would meet them and make my decision about what to do after the fact. I wanted to give you a chance!”
He looked wounded by my words. “Decide what? If I was evil enough to write a hit piece about?”
“No—” Cutting myself off, I sighed. “Everything about you seemed suspicious when you came back to town, and I needed to know if I could trust you. If anyone here could trust you. It was the only way I knew how to.”
Scrubbing a hand down his face, his frustration only mounted. “And your way of doing that involved bringing in the very men I was running from. They’re dangerous, Cora! I warned you, but you didn’t listen to me. I don’t think you’ve realized what you have done.”
“And how do I know you’re not lying to me?” I asked, feeling like I was stuck between two places. I didn’t know enough about these men he was talking about, but for all I knew, he could’ve been conspiring against them for reasons unknown to me. He could’ve been lying about how dangerous they were just as easily.
While it was a poor defense for myself, I wanted to believe that it wasn’t as simple as he was laying out. I didn’t want to think that my snooping had caused so many problems.
