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“Elena, don't.” Letta’s words are soft, but they carry across the room.
I turn my gaze in my sister’s direction, and my rage flares again. Her red hair is tangled around her shoulders, and I wonder if he fisted his hand in it to keep her under control. Her eye is swelling and there are finger marks around her neck.
I grit my teeth.
I should cut his balls off and feed them to him. Instead, I press the small flick knife in my hand deeper against his carotid artery. One slip and he will bleed out on the floor in front of me. It's no more than he deserves.
I turn back to Michael, unable to keep the bitter vitriol from my words. “You fucking prick.”
“Whatever she told you is a lie.”
I heard most of what happened. I was talking on the phone to Letta as me and Dex drove over. I heard her fear as Michael pounded against the bathroom door to unleash more of his rage.
“So, she hit herself, did she?”
He can’t deny the marks on her. They are clear as day and look savage against her pale skin.
“She’s my wife,” he hisses out, as if that excuses his behaviour. There’s also a hint of defiance in him, which pisses me off.
I push the knife deeper. “Do you think that means anything? You may have married her, but she’s an Adams.”
“She’s a Moloney,” he contradicts me. “She stopped being an Adams the moment I put that ring on her finger.”
Wrong.
Married or not, she is one of us. She’ll always be one of us. So will her children and their children too. A ring doesn’t change shit.
Dex also seems to think this because he crosses the room, and for the first time, he attacks the man who hurt his little sister. I release Michael just as Dex slams his fist into Michael’s face. “You touch Letta again and even your daddy won’t be able to protect you.”
I give Michael a dark sneer as he wipes at his bleeding nose. I want to grind this fucker into the dirt. I want to drop his body in a ditch, let his bones rot, but Dex will never allow me to take it that far. Like it or not, we need Michael’s father on board. Killing his son would destroy any alliance and put Letta in greater danger from the Moloneys.
I go to Letta and wrap my arms around her. My sister burrows against me, and for a moment, it is as if I’m the elder, not her. “Come home with us tonight.” I brush her hair back from her face, stroking her as I do. I need to touch her to keep grounded.
My sister glances up at me before she gives her husband her attention. “I can’t. This is where I belong.”
I narrow my eyes at her, not understanding the words spewing out of her mouth. Why would she want to stay here with this arse? “He hurt you, Let.”
Her throat bobs as she swallows, and the look in her eyes scares me a little.
It’s void.
Vacant.
Resigned.
“He won’t do it again.”
Violent men rarely change, and she knows that. She grew up under the cloud of my father too. Hamish was never violent towards me or Letta, but I saw him hurt Dex enough over the years. It made boys ‘men’, he’d say. As far as I can tell, it made Dex harder, and not in a good way.
“Letta—”
My sister grasps my arms hard enough to leave indents on my skin. “He’s my husband.”
I don’t understand what she’s trying to communicate, and that makes frustration surge to the forefront.
“Doesn’t mean he gets to hurt you. Dad—”
“Wouldn’t give a shit that he’s hitting me.” She swallows hard, as if it hurts. My gaze skims over the bruising on her throat. It probably does. “Michael won’t do it again. You and Dex have scared the life out of him, but this is my marriage, Elena. I can’t just walk away from it.”
