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By the time I hung up the phone, I was feeling better and worse at the same time. I was beyond glad that my children would be safe, but at the same time, I wanted nothing more than to have them at my side. My eyes shifted to Matias. He wasn't looking at me. Instead, his eyes were on the table. I hated that he no longer looked me in the eye when he spoke to me. I knew he was feeling guilty for all of this, but I was beyond being angry at him. The fact was that I needed him, every part of him, to get through this.
But I couldn't tell him that because none of this was real. He'd said that himself. It was just a terrible twist of circumstance that had led us here. Whatever relationship we’d had before he’d walked out on me was long over and I needed to remember that. The blow job he’d given me in the bathroom had been nothing more than his way of trying to blow off some steam.
I glanced over my shoulder as Ronan entered the house. Matias had said there were several men surrounding it, but I had yet to see any of them. I figured that was a good thing because I didn’t want to alert my neighbors to anything going on.
"Okay, so here's the plan." The man's eyes landed on me as I gestured for them to sit with me at the table. "As ill-advised as your plan was, the fact is that we believe it will draw Bishop out. The key is to make it look like Matias has finally given up on hunting Bishop. That he's too focused on his relationship with you to want to keep pursuing Bishop. That, in itself, will hopefully push Bishop to make a move."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I've been giving him what he's wanted all this time," Matias responded. "Me. He's enjoying the hunt. If we take that away from him…"
As Matias let the words hang, I felt a shiver go throughout my body. What kind of evil was within the man if he found such pleasure in his obsession with toying with Matias?
"But if Matias suddenly just gives up looking for him, won't that make Bishop suspicious?" I asked.
"Yes," Ronan said. "That's why Daisy is going to continue to delete the majority of your social media posts shortly after you put them up. It will make it look like Matias is trying to live a normal life with you but is still playing it safe. Daisy will conveniently miss a post or two on one of your smaller accounts. That way if Bishop isn't seeing the posts when they happen, he'll be able to find one or two here and there if he does a search. Unfortunately, we have no way of tracking him, so if and when he shows up, we won't know it until it happens.”
"So you want me to keep posting about Matias?" I clarified.
Matias shifted nervously at the other end of the table. The move surprised me because I'd never seen him nervous. But he wasn't the one who responded to me. It was Ronan.
"We actually want you and Matias to take it a step further."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"We want you to go out and do things that a normal couple would do. Dates, grocery shopping, stuff like that. Basically, we need it to look like you and Matias are living a happy life together. If Bishop is watching, seeing the proof in person that Matias has moved on will just enrage Bishop further. It will also give credence to your social media posts."
I found it difficult to swallow around the lump in my throat. Despite the fact that this entire thing had been my doing, now that it was here, I was terrified. Ronan must've sensed or seen something to indicate my growing terror because he said, "We'll have men following you the entire time; they just have to do so from a distance. Matias has been hunting Bishop for two years, so he knows the man better than anyone. Given the circumstances, the safest place you can be is with him."
"And who's going to protect him?" I asked softly.
My eyes found Matias’s across the table. I couldn't read the expression in them, though.
"What do you mean?" Ronan asked.
I shook my head. I wasn’t supposed to give a shit about Matias’s emotional stability or physical well-being. "Never mind," I murmured. "What else?"
"Chances are, Bishop is not going to stage an attack on you and Matias until you're out of the city. So over the next couple of weeks, you're going to hint at a dream trip with your boyfriend. My men and I are in the process of finding an ideal site that's both remote and accessible at the same time. The good thing is that Bishop will have no way of knowing that Matias isn’t alone anymore. He won't be expecting Matias to have the backup that he does."
