Tiger Mom (Killer Moms #4) - Eve Langlais Page 0,60
though, you did a most excellent job of concealing yourself. After ten years, I’d just about forgotten about the little trap I’d set. Funny how it takes only one thread to unravel everything.”
“You could have just left us alone.”
“Are you really going to blame me?” He pretended to be the injured party. “I will note that it was our daughters who reached out to me. Who asked to meet their father. Ironic that the very people you protected betrayed you.”
Ronin still knew how to inflict the most pain with just a few words. It did hurt that the girls had gone behind her back and lied. But they’d only done it because she’d lied first.
“I want to see them.”
“Say please.”
She gritted her jaw. “Please.”
“Not good enough.” He pointed to the floor.
Her fists clenched. She knew what he wanted. For her to beg.
She wanted to tell him to fuck off.
She wanted to dive at his face and rip out his eyes.
She wanted her daughters most of all.
Her knees hit the hard concrete. She stared at his shoes rather than glare at his face as she said, “Please, Ronin. Let me see my girls.”
“Only after you show me how much you’ve missed me.”
He expected sex. How pathetic.
“Going to make me whore myself?”
He laughed. “You think highly of yourself. As I recall, your skills left much to be desired. No, my love, I won’t need your tainted lips touching me. But you will show proper obeisance.”
“I won’t be your slave.”
“Then I guess we’re done.” He walked past her, and she had no doubt that he’d leave and make sure she never saw her daughters again.
“Wait.”
He paused.
She shuffled forward, her head bowed. “I’m sorry I left.”
“Sorry…what?”
It soured in her mouth to say, “My love.”
“Was that so hard?”
She couldn’t help but glance at him, only to catch his triumphant smirk. He thought he’d won, and she’d wager that he believed her to still be the weak Macey of before. The woman who would bow at threats.
Let him think that.
Let him underestimate her.
She ducked her head again and bowed even lower, using the bend of her body to hide the movement of her hand as it slid under the skirt of her dress, reaching for the gun holstered to her thigh.
“I wouldn’t try that if I were you,” was his soft warning. “Shoot me, and one of the girls will die. I left orders with those guarding them. It’s up to you. Is my death worth losing one of our children?”
“Bastard,” she hissed.
“Hardly. But I am also not stupid like Chen. Attempt to harm me, and there will be repercussions. Now, if you’re done testing me, shall we go? You might want to hurry to decide. I also left orders about the timeframe in which I expected to return. We’re cutting it close.”
She shot him an angry glare. “You’d truly kill your own daughters?”
“If one dies, I still have the other.”
The coldness of the remark had her slumping. He’d won. She couldn’t risk her daughters. “I’m coming.” She rose to her feet. When he gestured for her to go ahead, she shuffled to the door and got into the car that pulled up outside.
Funny how in all her nightmares, not once did she ever walk to her doom of her own volition.
Reality proved most frightening of all.
Chapter Twenty
The Twins
“Ronin is not a nice man,” Lin declared less than twenty-four hours after they’d met him, and only after disabling the camera and microphone in their room. Who put listening and surveillance devices in a young girl’s room? And recently, too. The plaster and concrete silt from their installation still dusted the dresser under it.
Despite Mae agreeing with her sister’s assessment, she couldn’t help but feel ornery about it. Because admitting that their father was a jerk, meant having to fess up that she’d been wrong. That perhaps Mother knew best. But she was still mad at her mom.
“He is exactly how a father should be. Well-dressed. Hard-working.” Or so it seemed, given how he barked, and people listened. “He knows how to command.” And possessed a stern mien, along with old-fashioned ideas like having the girls dress for dinner and waiting to be told to speak. Mae didn’t have a hard time with that one as she went silent for most of the meal. However, Lin gushed about everything. It irritated Father as they had sat at the formal dining table the night before. She could see it in the tic jumping by his eye.
Lin didn’t get