Maeve’s pleading turns to anger after the guys zip tie her hands behind her back. “I can’t believe you would do this to me!” she yells. “I hate you! I fucking hate you for this, Wirth!”
“Let’s go, sweetheart,” Devlin says as he grabs her elbow and escorts a sobbing Maeve out of the apartment.
“You fucked her first?” Malcolm asks when she’s gone.
“Yeah, I did,” I respond.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” Rian yells as he gets dragged out by Nash and Silas.
“Pretty messed up,” Malcolm says. “She’ll never forgive you.”
I turn away and start for the door, so he doesn’t see me wince. “I had to figure out a way to distract her until he got here,” I lie.
“Whatever you say, man,” Malcolm mutters, shutting the apartment door behind him.
The guys get everyone loaded up in the stolen SUV we haven’t chopped up yet, and I climb on my bike, glad I don’t have to be in that vehicle with Maeve on the way back to Carolina Beach.
Instead of going to the clubhouse, we take them to Malcolm’s old beach cottage, not the house he shares with Naomi and his kid.
The guys bring Maeve and Rian in. They take her to the bedroom and sit her brother down in one of the kitchen chairs, his arms around the back rails to keep him from going anywhere fast.
“How’s the shoulder?” Rian asks Malcolm with a smirk, which was the wrong fucking thing to say. The kid has balls, but they’re going to get him killed before I have a chance to fix what I fucked up.
Our president hauls back and knocks the shit out of the boy’s face, sending a spray of blood across the wall. I can’t help but be glad that Maeve is locked in the bedroom and didn’t see it.
“Tell us about the Irish and maybe we’ll let you live after you tried to assassinate me and fucking missed.”
“Not gonna happen,” the kid responds.
“Well, if you don’t want to talk, maybe we’ll knock your sister around a little until you change your mind,” Malcolm says while I glare at him. I’m pretty sure he’s bluffing, but I don’t even like the threat of him hitting Maeve.
Rian doesn’t say another word for the next half hour despite Malcolm’s fists continuing to abuse his baby face.
Unable to take anymore, I decide to go check on Maeve.
In the locked bedroom, she’s sitting on the floor with her back to the foot of the bed.
“Lean up, and I’ll cut off your zip ties,” I shut the door behind me and tell her. There is no risk in untying her. The windows have been sealed shut, and the door will be locked whenever someone’s not in here with her.
She scoots forward without looking at me. Taking out my knife, I slice through the plastic and then hurry to put the knife away before she gets any ideas, like stabbing me in the chest with it for betraying her. Now she knows how I feel.
“He’ll never talk,” she mutters, wrapping her arms around her raised knees that are drawn up to her chest. “Rian would die before turning on Cormac.”
“Guess we’ll see. All we want is to know what his fucking problem is with the MC. Malcolm’s threatening to hurt you, so he might just break before you expect.”
Maeve
I’m so furious that everything in front of me is blurry from the anger and tears.
I thought Wirth cared about me the same way I cared for him. I thought he was going to leave with me and Rian so that we could be together and be safe away from the Irish and the MC.
I’ve never been more wrong about a man.
That’s what I get for trusting one. I knew better. My own father showed me everything there was to know about men – they don’t care about anyone but themselves. The one thing I never understood about our father was that he had plenty of money. Tons of it. So, did he just want to hurt me by taking my innocence from me? It’s not like he needed the ten grand he made to feed us or keep a roof over our head. I told myself at the time that he must have been desperate for the cash; that’s the only reason a father would hurt his only daughter so brutally. But when he died, I had all the proof I needed that he had millions in the bank, even back then.
“I’m sorry it came to this,” Wirth says, making me scoff at his insincere apology as he towers above me in the bedroom. “I am,” he says again. “And I’m sorry that I took advantage of you earlier…”
“Right,” I huff. “You’re just like every other man,” I tell him. “All you wanted was one thing from me, like you think I’m nothing but a few body parts, not an actual person with fucking feelings!”
“You know that’s not true,” he replies. “I risked my fucking life for you and for what? You choose your brother over me, and I can’t blame you. But don’t act like you’re the one who got fucked over.”
I hate that he’s right.
Even more, I hate that we met because of my deceit with the Knights.
I think I could’ve loved Wirth and he could’ve loved me if things had been different.
But they’re not.
And now I don’t know what the hell happens next.
Chapter Twenty
Wirth
Malcolm is only aware of part of my plans to set shit right.
If I had told him what else I planned to do, he would’ve stopped me and called me a fucking fool.
And he probably would’ve been right.
I told him I needed to get out of the house for a while, to get some
