AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Well?”
I clear my throat. “You can.”
“If you were me, and I was you,” he mutters. “Wouldyoutrust me?”
“I’m sorry, would I trust you, being me, to be…me?”
He glares at me as my grin shrinks.
“Sorry, that was supposed to be a joke.”
“Trust isearned, Una,” he growls. “I want to trust you. But I’m a suspicious person by nature. And that nature only goes into overdrive when the person telling me I can trust them is the same person who put a knife in my friend’s side with the intent to kill him. The same person who then went and tried to do that asecondtime.”
My jaw tightens. “You do know I was being coerced, right?”
He nods. “I do.”
“By a lunatic follower of my insane father—who I hated, in case you haven’t got that memo yet.”
“Yes, a mysterious lunatic follower of your father’s. The one you’ve never met, never heard his real voice, never seen his face, don’t have anything but an obviously fake name for…”
My eyes narrow. “And?”
He inhales slowly, his eyes locked on mine. “The Kildares might as well be my family. Cillian is a brother, Neve and Eilish are sisters, and I amveryprotective of that family.”
I get the ferocity and weight to what he’s saying. I would have killed—literally almostdidkill—for Finn.
“Look, Una, I’m not trying to pick a fight with you. I like you—”
“Yeah, no, that’s super obvious,” I mutter dryly.
Castle smirks, lifting a shoulder. “And I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, being an O’Conor—”
“You’re right,” I hiss. “You can’t. You don’t know anything about me.”
He nods. “So, let’s change that.”
“Yeah. Let’s not.”
He chuckles. “I’m actually one of the good guys, Una.”
“With trust issues.”
“Guilty.”
I sigh. “You don’t think if there wasanythingunderhanded or sketchy about me, that Cillian wouldn’t have batted an eye about cutting my throat and dumping me in the Hudson before he’d let me get near his family?”
Castle tips his head back and forth before turning to stare thoughtfully out the window at the passing traffic.
“Before? Sure. Now?”
He exhales slowly as he puts the Range Rover in drive and pulls away from the curb.
“Now, I honestly have no goddamn idea.”
* * *
Hell yes.
