AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Aidan
Liamclaimsthechair in front of my desk while Grace remains standing. Every muscle in my body is shouting at me to get her the hell out of here before the safe, sound walls I’ve built around us come crashing down.
Jen clears her throat, flashing a concerned look at Grace. “Would you like me to call Benjamin and have him bring the car around?”
“Yes,” I tell her. “And hold all of my calls.”
“Hey, can we get two coffees?” Liam says. “I did promise Grace coffee in exchange for coming all the way up here.”
Jen looks to Grace, who shakes her head.
“Sorry,” Jen says, scowling. “We’re all out.”
She leaves, shutting the door to my office.
“I don’t think Jen likes me,” Liam says.
I stare daggers at my son. No, not just daggers. Swords. Fucking poison-tipped spears. When the receptionist called and said Grace and a friend were downstairs, I assumed she meant Jasmine.
How the fuck does Liam even know who Grace is, and what is his game in bringing her here? He wants to unsettle me, that much is obvious. And I can tell he’s taking sick pleasure in her bewilderment.
Fuck if I’m going to let him get off on her suffering.
I take Grace by the arm. “You and I will discuss this later. Right now, Benjamin’s going to take you back to—”
“You have a son?” she says, refusing to move her feet.
The look of betrayal on her face guts me like a knife. I’ve been struggling over whether to come clean about what happened with Liam’s mom. I almost told Grace the whole story the night I snapped and claimed her, then decided against it at the last second. I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t stomach the thought of her looking at me this way, with her brow creased in confusion and her face twisted with hurt.
If I had told her then, when it was just the two of us, this conversation would already be over. But I held back because I was afraid to lose her.
Now she’s as good as lost.
“It’s complicated,” I say. “But I owe you a full explanation, Grace.”
“Seems pretty straightforward to me,” says Liam. “Man meets woman. Sperm meets egg. Hello, baby.”
I match his smug expression with a glower. He’s watching our exchange with a level of amusement that I’m about ready to spoil with my fist. I try again to draw Grace toward the door, but she slips out of my grasp.
“I need to sit down,” she says. She claims the other chair in front of my desk, and fixes me with a look of defiance. She’s starving for an explanation, and she deserves one.
“I would prefer to discuss this in private,” I tell her.
“I would like to discuss it now.” She’s not going to leave my office unless I literally throw her over my shoulder and drag her out. It’s an appealing notion, but one I suspect won’t lead to a better outcome. “You lied to me, Aidan. You hid things from me. Big, important things. Why?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
“From himself,” Liam says. “He didn’t want you to know about me, because then he’d have to tell you what he did—”
“You shouldn’t have dragged her into this,” I say in the most measured tone I can manage. “This is between you and me.”
“It wasn’t my intention to drag her into it. Not at first, anyway. I didn’t even know you had a ward until I went to check out your house.” He gestures to Grace’s neck. “Then I noticed her necklace, how it looked an awful lot like a collar, and I thought to myself, could he really be that twisted?”
Grace’s hand drifts to her collar, as my own grip tightens on the edge of my desk.
“Don’t talk about things you can’t begin to understand, Liam,” I say.
