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I turn back to him. “And I asked you some too. And you won’t get another word from me until you answer them.” I glare at him.
He stands quickly, pushing the chair he was sitting on against the wall, and I flinch, scooting back along the bed. He stands before me, bending low and leaning his face close to mine before wrapping one of his powerful hands around my throat. “Do not fucking test me, Jessie, or I will snap your neck like a twig.”
I stare into his eyes, that are so dark they no longer appear green at all. Silently, I challenge him to do it. I’ve had enough of this shit to last me a lifetime. Will I ever not be at the mercy of men like him? How fucking ironic that just a few days earlier, I completely believed him when he told me that he loved me.
“Do you have any idea what you did to them when you walked out of here with him?” he spits, his face and his voice so full of venom, I shrink back from him. Why is he pretending my leaving hurt them? Like they weren’t planning on betraying me all along. Where are his brothers, anyway? Don’t they have the guts to face me after what they were planning?
Shane tightens his hand on my throat and I close my eyes and wait for him to do his worst. I am so damn tired of it all. A few seconds later, he releases his grip and pushes me back until I am lying flat on the bed. I lie still and listen to his footsteps crossing the room before he opens the steel door and slams it closed behind him. I listen to the silence for a while, making sure that he has really gone before I open my eyes.
Chapter
Seven
LIAM
As Mikey keeps himself busy cooking, Conor paces up and down the kitchen. He sits every few minutes and pulls out his cell phone, trying to focus on something, but it doesn’t last long. Tension weighs heavy in the room as we wait for news from Shane.
“She must be awake by now,” Conor barks.
“I’m sure Shane will let us know as soon as she is,” I say.
“You think?” Conor pushes his chair back and walks to the refrigerator and takes out a beer. Twisting off the cap, he throws it into the trash.
“He’s not going to hurt her, Con. He’s not going to do anything without discussing it first. You know that.” I frown at him.
“But he’s not thinking straight, Liam. You’ve seen how he’s been these last few days. He’s so fucking furious with her. What if...” Conor takes a long swig of his beer and then walks toward the window and looks out at the New York skyline.
I look across at Mikey who simply shrugs his shoulders and goes back to cooking. I can’t remember a time in recent years when Shane and Conor have been so at odds. They are usually on the same page about everything and them being on opposing sides on an issue upsets the whole equilibrium of our existence.
Shane is the boss. That is an undeniable and unquestionable fact. Conor is his second.
Mikey and I enjoy being the ones who don’t have to make the difficult decisions, because we are never made to feel like we are anything but equal partners when it comes to our business. I trust both of my older brothers to do a better job of it than either me or my twin can, so it makes me uneasy when they’re not acting like the cohesive team they usually are.
Mikey will often jokingly refer to them as the folks, and I see what he means. If I had any happy memories at all of my parents or my childhood, I suppose I might compare this situation to the feeling kids must get when their mom and dad argue.
I walk across the kitchen and stand next to Conor. “Why are you fighting him so much on this?”
He turns to me with a scowl. “Why aren’t you?”
“She left us, Conor. After everything she promised us. After everything we said to her. She just fucking up and left.”
His face softens and he turns back to the window. “She must have had a reason, Liam.”
“I hope she fucking did. And who knows? Maybe she’s down there explaining everything to him right now?”
Conor snorts and takes another drink of his beer.
“You know what it took for him to let her in, Con. You saw how happy she made him. And you know people only get one chance with him. I don’t see how he’s going to get past this.”
“I know,” Conor says with a sigh as he hangs his head low. “That’s what I don’t get, Liam. She worked so hard to get through to him. When she finally did, she was so fucking happy. That morning before she left, she was smiling. She looked at us like we were her whole fucking world. So, if that wasn’t true, what was her game plan?”
“She left the day we put her fingerprints in the security system. That can’t be a coincidence, Con.”
He shakes his head. “But you saw how good she is, Liam. As sophisticated as our security system is, she could have hacked it in a day.”
I put a hand on his shoulder and don’t know how to answer that because he has a point. “So what could it have been then?”
“I don’t know,” he sighs. “But there must be some reasonable explanation, because if there isn’t, what? She sucked us all in and made us fall in love with her for what? Plain old cruelty? I can’t believe that.”
