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“Maura.” His voice was pleading, and I found that shocking.
“I need to do this.”
“There aren’t just two left.” His voice was frantic. “There’s still whoever betrayed us to the Aryans. If you die there, you won’t be able to finish what you set out to do. You have to come home.”
“She’s in New York,” someone said in the background, and I could have sworn it sounded like Vincent.
“Manipulative bastard,” I said with affection instead of anger.
“You’re my daughter.”
I nodded because I understood. But it didn’t change anything. “I love you, Daddy.”
“Maura, wait—”
I hung up the phone.
Apparently, I was a fool.
CHAPTERFOUR
The baby woke one more time before the sun rose and Amelia still didn’t even stir at his cries, nor when I toed off my other shoe and threw it at her. That meant I was left to attend to himagain.
Annoyingly, he didn’t go right to sleep like he had the previous time. Nope. I was currently holding him as he stared up at me. His little hand found his cheek and began to claw at it. I took hold of it to stop him from hurting himself. His tiny fingers wrapped around my thumb and didn’t let go.
The curiosity and wonder in his big blue eyes absorbed my full attention. Being a few days old, everything was a new discovery to him. I didn’t realize at first the way his innocence had sucked me in or how easily it had happened, but when I did, I was completely rattled.
I quickly grabbed his blanket and wrapped him up. As I began rocking him, I tried to deny the brief moment of ease he had granted me from the weight of reality and the realization of what I was truly capable of. But no matter how much you deny something, you can never escape the truth.
I didn’t hate this baby. I hated the idea of him and what he reminded me of. Out of desperation, I needed him to just be athingto me, a weakness to use against his father. But the first time I’d held him, he had stopped being athing.Or maybe I had found my limit of what I was willing to do, even to get revenge.
Every part of me felt heavy by the time he finally fell asleep. My body. My soul. I sat there battling with myself for a little bit. Should I just throw in the towel and call Stefan back? He’d send Jamie and the cavalry in and Jamie would end this. Just envisioning that pissed me off and my anger fueled me more than my exhaustion dragged me down.
I lay on my side and tried to sleep after I returned the baby to his mother’s side. Just as I was about to doze off, I heard voices coming from the hall. I took in a quiet, calming breath to keep myself relaxed and kept my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. With my ear close to the floor, I could hear every step Buck and his one remaining fellow Aryan took as they made their way into the living room.
“Want me to wake the bitch?” the Aryan lackey whispered.
From the sound of the steps, one of them moved closer until I could feel them standing over me. “Nah.” Buck’s voice sounded like he was hovering right over me. Then came the snap of a camera phone taking a picture and a flash of light that I could see through my eyelids.
“She looks dead. Are you sure that’s enough proof for that Irish prick?” the lackey asked.
“It’s all the proof he’s going to get,” Buck said as he moved away.
“I don’t understand why you’re even considering handing her over to him. We should just kill her.” The lackey’s voice was laced with equal parts trepidation and frustration.
“We can’t kill her until we get the money,” Buck said, his own irritation evident in his tone.
The lackey sighed. “I don’t know, Buck.”
“We have nothing left, nowhere to go, and our allies have turned their backs on us because they’re too scared of Quinns,” Buck argued.
“Yeah, because it only took one of them to wipe us out,” the lackey snapped. “And now you’re making deals with another, who happens to be the same fuck who put us in this situation in the first place. You should have never taken that deal with him. The guns weren’t worth it. Everyone is dead—”
The lackey’s words cut off with a grunt and a thump.
I cracked my eyes open just enough to see that Buck had the lackey pinned to the wall by the apartment door with his arm pushing against his throat. “We all voted on that deal for the guns,” Buck snarled at him. “So don’t put that shit on just me.”
The lackey thrashed a little. Buck shoved his arm harder into the lackey’s neck and leaned closer until their faces were inches apart. “We need the money. We’re dead without it.” Buck’s voice had gone low and authoritative. “You standing here bitching about shoulda-coulda ain’t fucking helping. Get your shit together.”
