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He wanted something. Finn was the kind of man who only did something for others when there was something in it for him. He wouldn’t run my father’s business and arrange his funeral out of the goodness of his heart.
“Why am I here, Finn?” I demanded. “Ye don’t love me, and I don’t love you. Neither of us can pretend that we do.”
“Ye don’t know what you’re sayin’, flower.”
“Finn, stop it!” I shouted. “Don’t tell me that I don’t know what I’m thinkin’ or what I want. Everythin’ I want is back in Dublin, and no matter how much ye beat me, that won’t change.”
He darted around the car, and I screamed when he dived on me, knocking me back onto the ground. Both of us were swinging wildly. I hit him a few times and screamed all the while. I cried out in dismay when Finn overpowered me and pinned my body and limbs to the ground under his weight.
“Stop it,” I cried. “Please, stop.”
“You fuckin’ stop!” he bellowed. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why’re ye being like this? Ye’ve never talked to me like this before, and ye fuckin’ hit me!”
I struggled under him. He stared down at me, almost in confusion. He was hurting my arms by pinning them to the ground, and the weight of his body on top of me made it hard to breathe, but seeing the raw disbelief swimming in his eyes that I was defying him, that I was standing up to him … it felt incredible to bear witness to.
“I’m not the same woman I was when I left Kildavin, Finn. I refuse to be treated like I once was by you.”
“Ye were treated well, and I don’t want to hear another fuckin’ word about it.” He suddenly stood, and I drew in a deep breath when I was able to. I screeched when Finn reached down and hauled me to my feet by my hair.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Finn, stop. You’re hurtin’ me.”
“Give me what I want, and I’ll stop.”
I couldn’t fathom what on earth he’d want. I was already here with him. What more could he possibly want from me?
“What d’ye want from me?”
He let go of my hair, and I stumbled back a few steps, putting much-needed space between us.
“Marriage.”
When Finn spoke, the world might as well have fallen away from my feet because I felt like I was floating. Marriage. Finn wanted to marry me. He had just kidnapped me after physically assaulting my boss. He forcibly hauled me to my home county, my hometown, where he had so far beat and berated me, and he wanted to marry me? It was so ridiculous that it was almost laughable.
“Marriage?” I choked. “Ye want to marry me? Ye can’t be fuckin’ serious, Finn!”
“Curse at me one more time and see what I do to ye.”
I clamped my lips together, not wanting him to hit me again.
“To answer your question, I’m dead fuckin’ serious,” he continued. “We’re gettin’ married, and I’m takin’ over your family’s business. We’ll work together and make it an even bigger chain than it already—”
“The farm,” I said, realisation dawning on me. “Oh my God. Ye want to marry me so ye can own the farm!”
The muscles in Finn’s jaw rolled back and forth. I felt like the biggest idiot in the world. He wanted the fucking farm.
“Oh, my God.” I laughed so I wouldn’t cry. “Christ, I thought ye came for me because ye were obsessed with me or at the very least so stuck up your own arse that ye refused to let me one-up ye by runnin’ away, but it was all about the fuckin’ farm and business. It was about money.”
Before he could answer, Finn and I turned our attention to the mobile home when the door opened. A woman stepped out. She was young and looked scared shitless. I stared at her, and I knew this was the woman Finn had been having an affair with. One thing that I noticed that was very hard to miss was that she was heavily pregnant.
“Finn, what’s goin’ on?”
“Nothin’, baby,” he said. “She’s just being difficult.”
Finn didn’t say my name or explain who I was or what I was doing here, which meant this young woman knew who I was, and she knew why I was here. She knew that Finn had kidnapped me.
“I’m Ina,” I said even though she clearly knew who I was. “I knew about you, ye know?”
Finn’s jaw dropped, and the woman’s face went scarlet. She had the decency to look ashamed. “Ye knew?” Finn repeated. “And ye stayed with me?”
The no-good prick was judging me. He actually looked disgusted with me.
“I stayed because I had already decided to leave you, Daddy, and the farm. I was just bidin’ me time until the time was right for me to leg it.”
