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Don’t lie to yourself, Carra.Deep in my heart, I knew that this could happen.Wouldhappen. Especially since I knew beforehand that I had been given away to a mobster.
But the overwhelming need to know Finn’s okay is killing me inside like a thousand razor cuts. Kieran promised I could call Ariel. Unfortunately, that’s all I’ll be able to do. Butwhen? I need it to be soon, but I’m not asking him now.
And I would never take a chance on contacting Nikki or her husband directly. It would be far too dangerous, Kieran or my father could somehow connect me to them, beyond being Ariel’s friend.
With a thousand-pound weight in the place where my heart should be, I curl up in the seat and angle my face toward the window.
The drone of the plane vibrates around me. Below, the landscape is so tiny. So peaceful. Little houses dot the rural countryside, a million miles away from anything I’ll ever know.
It’s foolish to dream of living somewhere like that. Kieran will have to be in the city. Chicago will be his base if he takes an active role in the family crime syndicate.
A bubble of hope rises with that thought. If I’m close enough, I can continue to volunteer at the private school system that Finn attends. Which of course, requires that Kieran allows me to leave the house.
Archaic bullshit. My lungs start to burn, making me realize that I’m holding my breath. Lost in desperate thoughts as I stare down at the green swaths of trees below.
There’s a creak of leather as Kieran shifts, leaning forward. “What’s so interesting down there?”
I regroup, find my focus and ask, “Have you ever thought about living somewhere rural, like the place we just stayed?”
Quietly, he says, “Aye, I like the peace and quiet. It’s why I thought we should go there. To get away. But that was a major clusterfuck.” The tone of his words grows more frustrated, “We didn’t have a damned bit of time to clear our heads. Instead, I made mine worse.”
When I turn to face him, his entire face is a mask of tension.
“Why do you think an Italian grabbed me?”
“Some kind of rivalry angle?” he speculates.
My face tightening in a frown, I look down at my hands. “It’s always going to be like that. I’ll never be safe. Never be… able to live a normal life.”
His stare is palpable. My eyes refuse to stay away from his worried gaze. Things are spinning behind those Mediterranean blue eyes. Dark and calculating. Dangerous and foreign to me. I’ve dealt with my father for a lifetime, but the two men are nothing alike.
Kieran breaks my thoughts when he asks, “What do you think it would take for that to happen?”
I blow out a breath, sending my hair lifting from my forehead. “My father to be behind bars. His rivals to be eliminated. Or maybe… this sounds stupid… but maybe to have a new identity or something. Except, that probably wouldn’t even work because of facial recognition. Someone would figure out who I am.” I laugh roughly. “Unless I got surgery.”
“Don’t,” he says abruptly. “Your face is too perfect.”
We look at each other as heat starts to sing under my skin. "Thank you,” I finally reply quietly. “But if it meant freedom, I’d take a face like the homeliest woman in the world.”
He’s so intense. The heat prickles, along my nerve endings, tiny warnings.
Questions, questions, so many of them. I take a big breath and finally ask what I’ve been agonizing over. Not that I don’t have a long list of other things, but this one has been eating me up since I walked into the kitchen this morning. “Things seemed so good last night. But today has been very different. What happened this morning?”
His jaw shifts from side to side as he scrubs his palm over his jaw. “A lot of things are spinning up right now. I had a few calls this morning that put me on edge.”
“I’m sorry.” Why I feel the need to apologize is beyond me.
He looks out the window this time as the white noise of the plane’s engine settles between us like a wet blanket. Thick, heavy, and uncomfortable.
Kieran’s explanation didn’t make me feel any better at all. The queen of overthinking continues her craft.
“Can you tell me where we’re going?”
“A nice hotel.”
A puff of heat rises through my chest as my mind flashes back to the last time I stayed in a nice hotel with Kieran. I must flush or make some kind of telling sound because he quickly says, “But I’m not staying. Your father and I have business, and there are some things I need to attend to for the wedding."
The W word makes my entire being clench. I have the ridiculous urge to chop my left ring finger off even though it would have zero effect.
