Chapter 4
ROWAN
Remain calm. Brian’s voice is a cold echo in my head. His training drilled those words into me until they became instinct.
Don’t panic. Sure. Easy to say when you’re not strapped to a chair by your psychotic ex-boyfriend who very clearly wants to kill you.
Oh but not before he’s tortured you into the bargain.
I know he must hate me for running out on him without a word, but I did it to save him.
I don’t understand why he thinks I set him up. I didn’t. I wouldn’t.
The warehouse he’s holding me in is freezing, the dampness of the bitter, British winter seeping through my thin t-shirt making me cold to the core. My teeth want to chatter, but Erin would cry before she shivered.
My wrists ache against the biting plastic ties, but I don’t struggle. If I struggle, I’m his Rebel. If I cower in terror, I’m Erin. And Erin survives.
It’s day two of this battle of wills between us. At least, I think it’s been two days. Feels like it could be longer. Hunger comes and goes in waves, but the ache in my shoulders never leaves.
He puts a blindfold on me when he leaves, thick fabric that smells faintly of engine grease, so I can’t tell when it’s day or night, and the hours all blur together.
He’s brought me water, given me access to the little girl’s room—fine, it’s a bucket in the corner, but he at least makes his men turn their backs to me so I can use it. That’s something, right? There’s still a shred of humanity inside Liam.
My Liam.
Or maybe it’s just a habit that I think of him that way because he blasted music all night long last night to stop me from sleeping. The bass thumped through the metal walls until my skull felt like it would split wide open.
The man I loved would never have done this. Not to me.
Other than grabbing me by the hair and dragging a knife down his own face seemingly in a bid to terrify and taunt me, he hasn’t physically hurt me. At least not yet. But I can tell from the loathing in his eyes he wants to. His patience is clearly wearing thin.
Liam Mahoney’s threadbare patience might be the only thing standing between me and an unmarked, shallow grave.
I couldn’t handle myself against one of these three goons, let alone all of them. If things turn violent, I’m fucked. Unless I get inside Liam’s head first.
He yanks off my blindfold, and I drop my gaze to his boots. Erin doesn’t challenge men like Liam Mahoney. I blink in quick succession to bring things back into focus, my exhausted mind already scrambling to work at a hundred miles an hour. Brian drilled this into me until I could do it half asleep.
Reconnaissance: There are two exits. One heavy roller door he dragged me in through and one small steel man door to the left.
I count the guards. Liam is in front of me.
Kai, the man who helped Liam take me from the pub, stands a few feet behind him, watching with an unreadable expression.
His eyes flick briefly to Liam before settling back on me.
There’s a third man by the roller door—built like an absolute brick shithouse, a gun visible on his right hip. He doesn’t care who sees that he has a weapon. Which means he’s the kind of man who enjoys using it.
I swallow hard, fighting the rise of bile in my throat. Three men. One chair. Blocked exits. Brian never trained me for odds this bad.
Yeah, definitely fucked. “I t-t-told you yesterday. I-I don’t have any money,” I stammer, letting my voice shake just enough to sell it. Lean into the timid mouse act, Brian’s voice rings clear in my mind, but my throat aches from the effort of holding back everything I really want to say to him.
I have to say, I hadn’t anticipated my eventual captor being the former love of my life, but here we are.
The urge to swing my forehead at his, to crack his skull against mine and tell him to wind his fucking neck in is overwhelming. You want Rebel, you ungrateful bastard, I’ll give you Rebel.
But Rebel would die here.
After everything I’ve done to keep this prick alive, he still thinks I’m the villain? This is how he treats me? I didn’t expect flowers and chocolates, but a bucket filled with my own shite in the corner of a fucking tin shed?
Romantic reunion of the year.
But I can’t let my guard down. If I show him who I really am, the last five years will have all been for nothing.
And no matter how dreadful he’s treating me, I did this to protect him.
To protect us both. The price for that was losing him.
Was it worth it? Yes. Of course it was. It has to have been worth it.
The cost was too high for me to acknowledge any other outcome.
“Look at me.”
I keep my head down, gaze averted.
“Fucking look at me!” Liam’s roar bounces off the corrugated roof as he slams his hand against the back of the chair.
The crack of wood echoes through the warehouse, vibrating through my spine.
My head snaps up. He jabs a finger at his face.
“You did this, Rowan. You set the trap. And then you watched them beat me almost to death.”
I don’t understand what he’s talking about, but I’m too afraid to ask him again. To deny it again. To ask him for evidence to prove his wild accusations. Something happened after I left, but I’m too tired to work through it now. Sleep. I just want to sleep.
“They left me lying in a pool of my own blood, and you...” He snorts, the derisive sound slicing me deeper than any knife. “You walked away and left me to die.”
His pain is a serrated thing, as visceral and raw as the scar on his face.
Whatever was done to him, he believes it was me, and there’s no chance of changing his mind.
Not like this. My fingers twitch with the urge to reach out, to try to take away his pain.
I want to beg him to believe I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about—that I saw a murder and Brian saved us both by taking me away and hiding me for five years.
But I can’t. Honesty is a death sentence. For both of us. And lies are the only thing keeping us alive right now.