“This is my secret,” she cried to Liam, as desperation cracked in her raw throat. Her shoulders wrenched painfully as she struggled toward him. “This is what I was afraid to reveal. What I was going to confess. I’ll tell you everything, Liam, just please don’t let them take me.”
Mena never thought she’d see something as human and pedestrian as indecision in Liam’s eyes. Mena’s desperation became desolation. He didn’t trust her, and who could blame him? Guilt and pain crushed any hope she had left. With a cry, she was able to wrench her arm away from Gordon and whirl on him, landing a blow to the aristocratic features she couldn’t believe she’d once found handsome.
“Unhand me,” she demanded.
Gordon returned her strike with the back of his hand, and Mena’s knees buckled as, for a precious moment, the lights of Euston Station dimmed as shadows danced, threatening her consciousness.
In her periphery, she saw Liam lunge forward, retribution etched onto his features.
Her husband had just signed his own death warrant, and thank God for that. Even if he didn’t believe her, Liam’s honor wouldn’t allow her to be struck.
She turned toward him, anticipating the moment he’d come between her and the man she’d grown to fear and hate.
The unmistakable blast of a pistol shot echoed through the portico with such deafening reverberation, even time seemed to hold its breath.
Mena whirled to see that Gordon was as stunned as she, the two men at his side looking past her in openmouthed astonishment. There was not a pistol among them.
Her heart stalled, then dropped into her stomach as she slowly turned back to see her worst fear confirmed. A pool of red bloomed over the left chest of Liam’s gray waistcoat.
Mena cried out and reached for him with her one free hand, burning to go to him, unable to claw herself from her husband’s punishing grip.
Liam’s expression turned from astonished to enraged in an instant, and he leaped around, his bludgeon lifted to swing at his attacker, heedless of his injury.
Mena saw him hesitate, and she couldn’t fathom why. Had they missed one of Gordon’s thugs? What did he see that seemed to deflate his lungs and extinguish the inferno of his fury?
The hesitation cost him dearly as a heavy piece of luggage connected with his temple.
Mena screamed and lunged forward as he fell, but someone seized her free wrist and clamped the shackle around it, leaving her to watch in horror as Liam’s magnificent body folded to the platform, landing hard enough to shake the ground.
A ragged sound escaped her as it uncovered just who held a pistol in one hand, and sharp-edged baggage in the other.
“No,” she sobbed, as the resolute anger in Jani’s dark eyes was blurred by the storm of her hysterical tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
My only means of escape is to be other than I was. You know I have a secret. A terrible secret. You can’t imagine the depth of it. The scope of it. You don’t know who I am … what I’ve become. To tell you would be the end of me.
Mena’s words haunted Liam as he stomped around his private room at St. Margaret’s Royal Hospital.
He did things to my body, to my soul. I let him. I had to.
She’d had to let him because she’d been fucking married to him.
His head pounded every time he stood upright. His shoulder burned like someone persisted in needling him with a branding iron, even though his left arm had been secured to his chest with a sling. He had enough thread in his hairline and his chest to stitch a quilt.
But none of that mattered. It barely registered. His wounds were more annoyance than pain. They slowed him down when there was so much to be done.
Everything had been ripped open and was falling apart, and he needed to be out there triaging the bleeding damage, not holed up here like a goddamned invalid.
Just when Liam had been certain Jani had become family rather than foe, the boy had chosen the worst possible moment to exact his revenge. His children were probably worried out of their minds, stuck with a grandmother they’d only visited a handful of times. Had Gavin been able to deliver Hamish to the proper authorities?
And Mena …
Mena was in the clutches of that smarmy fuck-wit who’d struck her, shackled her, and dragged her away.
Her. Husband.
Christ.