the street and listened, timing him! He gave him one hour to take my virginity.”
Shaking his head, he says, “I don’t believe that. You were daddy’s little girl. If anything, he was overprotective of you to keep you safe.”
I scoff because he’s so fucking naïve. “Dad took the payment in cash and then listened, but did nothing when I was screaming for the man to stop. He had to have heard me sobbing when he didn’t.” Tears fill my eyes, and I try and hold them back. They didn’t help me then, and they won’t do anything to change what happened now. “The first man to undress me, to-to touch me, was some stranger! Our father took my innocence from me that night. So yeah, after that, sleeping around with whomever didn’t really seem like a big deal.”
Rian opens his mouth and then closes it before finally he says, “If that happened, I’m sorry.”
“It did happen!” I scream at him. And the anger is what has the tears racing down both of my cheeks.
“Then I’m sorry, dammit! What else do you want me to say? Dad’s dead, so I can’t kick his ass for it. Why didn’t you tell me when it happened?”
“Because you were only ten,” I remind him. “You didn’t even know what sex was yet.”
“Oh,” he mutters.
“And I don’t want your pity. That’s not why I told you now,” I explain. “I just want you to be different from him. Don’t become an evil asshole that finds joy in shooting people and hurting them, okay? That’s why I’ve slept with all of the Knights, to help you!”
“I didn’t ask you to do all that,” is his response. “I would never ask you to whore yourself out.”
“No, you didn’t ask me to whore myself out,” I agree with a sigh, ready to drop the entire conversation. He doesn’t get it, and I can’t tell him that Cormac is going to find a way to push him out because of our deal.
Swiping away the dampness from my cheeks with my fingers, I say, “Could you please leave now, or are you going to stay and eat the rest of my food?”
“Not like you don’t have plenty of cash to buy more groceries,” Rian responds, still pissed that I have access to my trust fund dad left but he won’t until he’s twenty-one and more responsible, if that day ever comes. If it’s up to me, he’ll at least live to see his twenty-first birthday, and many more after.
“Right, like a few hundred thousand can make up for the hell he put me through,” I mutter before going over to my purse. I pull out all of the cash from my wallet and then take it to him. “Here.”
“Thanks, sis,” he says as he accepts and pockets the money. “Let me know if you hear any updates about the Knights.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say, even though I know I won’t as I show him out the door.
It was one thing to try and help Cormac to save my brother, but I won’t keep doing it if it means other people get hurt or killed.
There’s enough guilt on my shoulders that three men were shot. And I’ll have to live with that blame for the rest of my life. I don’t think I could handle the burden of anyone’s death on my conscience, not even to save Rian.
Maybe it was crazy for me to think I could save him at all.
Wirth
“Fuck,” I mutter aloud when I see a man come strolling out of Maeve’s apartment. Wouldn’t you know it, the fellow looks like he has reddish-brown hair, although it’s hard to tell from this far away.
I had been sitting on my bike on the other side of the complex watching through my binoculars for almost two hours when the fucker showed up.
It felt stupid when I first got here, spying on a woman who has been nothing but amazing to me and the other guys.
But now I’m glad I did it.
The potentially redhaired man could have some sort of connection to the Irish. That would just be too big of a coincidence if not, right?
He climbs into a black sedan, and I’m about to start my motorcycle to follow him when my phone buzzes in my pocket.
Pulling it out, I answer without looking at the screen with a curt, “What?”
“Wirth?” her sexy, raspy voice is so unique I know it’s Maeve. Fuck, why the hell is she calling me?
“What’s up?” I ask,