Page 85 of Liberating Lily

Ronan just stared at him.

“All right. I’ll convince my father. Somehow. Will you give us some money?” Rick asked.

“No,” Ronan said coldly. “And if you try to sell her to me, I’ll end your life now. You’re not a good person, and you don’t deserve to go on living an easy life.”

“You hurt and drugged Lily,” Harvey told him.

“I never did anything to Lily. I never drugged her. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. What drugs?”

Harvey studied him for a long moment, then glanced over at Paddy. His brother nodded. Rick seemed to be sincere, so maybe he hadn’t known about Lily’s being drugged; but he had to notice how zombielike she’d been.

“You had to see that there was something wrong with her, though,” he said to Rick. “You can’t have spent that much time with her and not have noticed.”

“I noticed you looking at her,” Rick said bitterly. “I knew you wanted her. Didn’t realize you’d jump on her as quickly as you did.”

Harvey shrugged. “Your loss is my gain. Lily is amazing. Beautiful and sweet and smart.”

“She’s fucking brain dead. I could barely get her to do anything. She was blank inside.”

“Jesus, this guy is dumb, isn’t he?” Paddy said.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Someone was drugging her, you idiot,” Paddy told him. “She isn’t always that way.”

Rick frowned. “Someone really did drug her? But why? Who?”

“That’s what we intend to find out,” Harvey said. “But I know what you did, Rick. That you lied and told Clem that you and Lily were sleeping around behind her back.”

Rick swallowed heavily. “So? Her mother wanted me to do that. She said it would be for the best. It was just a little lie.”

“A little lie that fractured what relationship the girls had left.”

“Rick, Rick, didn’t your mom ever tell you not to lie?” Paddy said as he patted him on the back with a wide grin. “Now, run along. We don’t have any need for you anymore.”

“But we’re good now, right?” Rick said with a hopeful look.

“Aww, of course we are,” Paddy told him.

Rick left with a grateful look.

“Until we fucking ruin him,” Paddy added once he’d walked away. “Prick.”

“I said I’d leave his family alone. Whatever you two want to do is on you. Now inside. I want to know what the fuck is going on,” Ronan ordered.

They stepped into the room; Ronan closed the door then turned to them both. “Well, do you want to explain that little spectacle out there?”

Harvey remained quiet, knowing Ronan had more to say.

“Do you want to tell me why I had to hear from other people that you had kidnapped Lily St. Clary out of her mother’s house over a week ago, and that since then, no one has seen her. And you haven’t been home since then. So where have you been staying? With her, I presume. And why?”

Harvey sighed.

“Better tell him, brother. He’s not going to be happy if he has to learn it from anyone else,” Paddy told him as he took a seat in a chair.

“I’m not that happy with you either,” Ronan told Paddy, who just smiled back at him.

“You asked me to watch Rick, to get close to him,” Harvey said.