13. Diego
CHAPTER 13
DIEGO
Switching from holding her hand to gripping her upper arm, I now yank her back toward the car. I’ve made my point, and my patience is spent. They’ve gotten enough pictures of her tears today. There will always be a tomorrow to humiliate her now that she’s mine.
“Let go of me,” she grits. “I don’t know why you married me, but it’s really obvious now you don’t want to help me, so let me fucking go.”
“You’re my wife, Maeve. To have and to hold from this day forward, as long as we both shall live.” And oh, how she and her father will suffer for what her family did to my mother, for all the pain they’ve caused. You don’t wind up with that type of generational wealth by being good people. The Sinclairs built this city on the blood and sweat of the common people.
I lead her back to the car and open the passenger side door for her.
“If I’m your wife, and you plan to keep it that way, what fucking point does embarrassing me serve?”
Thinking like a typical Sinclair, worried about image.
I push her until she climbs into the car. “I’m not bothered about your humiliation. I’ll trade your pussy to my friends if I feel like it. Your ass too.” I smack her cheek for good measure. “You’ll be on your knees in the street if I say so.” I smile as I lean into her, leaving only an inch between our lips. A faint sweetness floats off her, like she’s hot and worked up as much as she’s angry.
“I’m getting out of this car and getting this marriage annulled. Fuck you, Diego. ”
“He’s looking for you, Maeve. Who do you think your chances are better with? A man you’re wet for or one who wants you dead?” I ask with my lips pressed up against her ear.
“Fine.” She leans back, and I buckle her seat belt for her. New love is so sweet. “How do you know so much about what’s going on?” she asks once I’m back in the car. I’m glad she’s asking questions and that her stupidity doesn’t run quite as deep as I feared.
How pathetic is she that she ran to the arms of the very man she’s running from?
“I know a lot of things, Maeve. All you need to worry about is that I’ll keep you safe from Cygnus, just like you need.”
She gasps in shock at the mention of the name, finally quiet as I pull away with the window cracked, letting the chilly spring air fall over us. I’m refreshed by it, but she’s cold in minutes, shaking lightly, or maybe that’s just part of her reaction to her new life. Either one is fine with me so long as she’s uncomfortable, so long as I can use her pain against her father.
“You work for him? You’re one of his men?” she asks, and I’m surprised she’s gotten this far, but she’s dead wrong.
The city flashes past us, my city. I count my men on the street as we pass, the same men she wants to be protected from so badly. I don’t mind. One word from me and she’s safe.
“That wouldn’t leave me in a good position to protect you, now would it? I can still protect you from him.”
She seems too overwhelmed to make the necessary leap to realize her position. I look over at her sullen expression, watching the flash of hope cross her face.
“You’re still planning to protect me, and you realize how dangerous Cygnus is?”
“Both are true.” Protecting her from my own men is plenty easy enough, and I’m well aware Cygnus is a dangerous killer.
“And your ends? What did you need me to marry you for? What the fuck was that, Diego?”
“Your tight cunt,” I tell her with all the derision I’ve held inside me since she showed up last night.
“Your mother would be so ashamed of you.” There’s the little bitch I knew was hiding.
Despite her being right, the words are a stab to the heart. Too bad my mother is dead as a direct result of her father’s cruelty, and she can’t see the man I became as a result of all that pain. Maybe if my mother were still here, I would care about things like that. My hand shoots out, snatching my mother’s necklace off her skin.
“You don’t deserve to say her name, let alone wear this.” The chain snaps as I rip it off, and I don’t care so long as it’s off her fucking skin. “She would never want to see you wearing this.”
“I don’t understand,” she cries, and that move seems to hurt her worse than playing that recording in front of all those people.
“Tell me this, Maeve. Why would you knock on the door of someone you never bothered to check on? How fucking selfish can you be to bring that kind of danger her way?”
I feel her gaze on me, but she doesn’t reply. What would she even say? She knows nothing about our lives, yet she came back running for my mom’s help. She’s so fucking entitled. If she were alive, Maeve would have led her to her death.
“What if my mom got hurt while you fucking ran?”
She says nothing.
“It didn’t matter what happened to her as long as you were safe.”
“That’s not true,” she finally manages to argue, but I just bark an angry laugh at her audacity.
“My mom was sick for a while, Maeve. A long while.” My hands grip the wheel and push the grief deep down. “Where the fuck were you while she was dying?”
Maeve doesn’t speak. She doesn’t look at me, and her fear is palpable. I smack the wheel as hard as I can, sending the necklace flying.
“Do you know when she got sick?”
Her silence is all I need. She shakes in her seat, and my chest swells with the pain her family caused mine. I hear her little sniffles, and it enrages me. She doesn’t get to do this. She didn’t get to shed a tear when she wasn’t there to hold my dying mother’s hand, feeling the entire world crash on her shoulders.
“Do you fucking know when she got sick?!” I demand, my voice so loud she flinches.
“No!” she finally shouts back.
“Three fucking months before your piece-of-shit father tossed us on the street. What did he buy you that Christmas? A pony? A boat? He didn’t want to pay for my mother’s fucking chemo.”
Her face goes completely blank for a moment, and then shuts down like a door slamming closed. I didn’t realize she had the ability to be more fake and closed off, but I watch it happen right in front of me.
“How many private lessons did you attend while my mother died?”
“Stop it.”
“Do you want to know how he told his dying wife to move out?” I ask, this time knowing I’m holding the knife that’s sinking into her. “Answer me.”
She gulps and shakes her head. “No. I don’t. I want you to let me out of this car.”
She’s never getting away from me now, not unless she’s in a casket.
“He left the divorce papers on the dinner table beside a snowdrop bouquet.”
She curses, lowering her head, and I hope she’s ashamed of the filthy blood that courses through her veins and the money that burns in her wallet.
“Flowers,” I say as I turn onto my street. “What a gentleman.”
She doesn’t say a word, and at this point, nothing remains to be said. My anger and grief are everything. There aren’t words for my hatred. But I should know she can’t leave well enough alone.
“My father is a terrible man. I don’t have any excuses for him, but I didn’t know. I never knew your mom was sick.”
What a pathetic excuse. Not only do I not believe her but I don’t care either.
“Sure, Maeve, whatever you say.”
“I loved your mother, Diego. Even if my father didn’t.”
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut your fucking mouth, Maeve.” My hands tense around the steering wheel, and I worry for a moment I should pull over and let the haze pass from in front of my vision, but my anger is too much to allow me to make a reasonable decision. To her credit, she doesn’t argue with me. She slips on a fake and agreeable face that will do just fine for my purposes.