AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Let’s get moving,” he barks to Liam, who puts the car into gear and pulls away from the curbside.
As I look at her, my heart feels like it constricts in my chest. I brush the hair back from her face. She looks so fucking peaceful lying here, but I know that when she wakes up, there will be no peace for her. Not for a while.
Whatever reason she had for leaving us, I doubt it’s drastically changed in the space of four days. Shane is determined to make her talk, and I have no idea how he intends to do that, but I do know that he’s had the dingy cell in the basement prepared for her. It’s as small as a prison cell, but less comfortable. No natural light. A tiny metal bed screwed to the floor with a thin, bare mattress and a tiny stainless steel toilet in the corner.
We’ve kept plenty of people prisoner there before, but none that have ever got under our skin like this pint-sized little redhead lying on my lap.
So many emotions flood my senses that I don’t know what I’m feeling. Relief at having her back with us. Fear of what she might tell us, or of what lengths we might go to to make her talk. Anger that she left us. Jealousy that she might be in love with that man she left with, that she might be loyal to him in a way that she never was to us. And hope. Hope that, somehow, she has a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything and that it will piece my shattered heart back together.
I curl my fingers around her hair. Damn, Jessie! How the hell are we all going to get out of this in one piece?
Chapter
Five
CONOR
Mikey paces up and down the concrete basement while Liam stares at the heavy metal door, rocking back on his heels and rubbing his hand over the stubble on his jaw.
“What the fuck do we do now?” Liam eventually asks and I look to Shane, who is leaning against the wall beside the door with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Now we wait,” he replies with a shrug, as though it’s just some person who means nothing to us who we’ve just locked in that tiny room and not Jessie.
“One of us should be in there with her when she wakes up,” I snap at him. “She won’t have a clue where she is once those drugs wear off.”
“Well then, maybe she’ll have some time to think about the fact that she betrayed us,” Shane snarls at me.
“We don’t know why she left,” I remind him as I walk over to him.
“No. But she’s going to fucking tell us one way or another, isn’t she?”
I step closer to him. “And just what the fuck does that mean, Shane?”
He edges toward me, pressing his face closer to mine. “It means that she is going to talk, Conor. And I will cross any line I have to in order to make that happen.”
“But that’s Jessie in there.”
“Yeah? The same woman who promised us she’d never leave, only to walk out of here holding some cunt’s hand after leaving us a shitty note.” He snarls. “That Jessie? She’s a fucking snake, and she fucked us all over, and we were all too fucking pussy drunk to see it,” he rages.
I shake my head in exasperation. I know there’s logic in what he’s saying, but I don’t want to accept that it’s true. Turning, I look at Mikey and Liam. They’ve always believed in Jessie just as much as I have. They both stare at me without speaking.
“Liam?” I say when I can’t bear the silence any longer.
“I don’t know, bro,” he says with a shrug. “Shane has a point. You saw her walking out of here.”
I suck in a breath. Of all people, I figured he might back me up.
“Mikey?” I try.
“Hey, we’re not saying there isn’t a possibility she has a good explanation for what she did, but right now, it’s not looking likely, is it?”
“For fuck’s sake!” I bark.
“Conor,” Shane snaps. “You saw that house. The room she was staying in. She was a fucking guest there, not a prisoner. Whatever her reasons, she left willingly. There is no escaping that fact.”
I look up into my older brother’s face. I’ve always trusted his judgment and I accept there’s every chance he’s right about this. But I can’t let myself believe that she lied to me, to all of us, because I don’t think I can take it. And I fear what I might do to her if she tells me that Shane speaks the truth. I’m scared of what Shane, or any of us, might do to her.
“I’ll wait down here. I’ll check on her, and when she wakes up…” Shane offers.
