Chapter 15
ROWAN
I’m bored out of my fucking tree.
Two nights have passed since Liam slid that deadbolt shut, and other than mealtimes, I’m a bird locked in a cage.
I’m also cleaner than I’ve ever been because the only thing I can do is fucking shower or have a bath. And pace back and forward.
The carpet in this room seems to already be wearing thin, not nearly as thin as my patience. I know it’s a power trip.
He’s testing me. Like putting something in the microwave for too long, he’s waiting for me to explode. It’s the only thing keeping me from beating on the door until he shows up and slapping him upside the head with the two-liter bottle of water I’m given every morning.
Controlling prick.
My skin feels too tight, my chest hurts, and I’m exhausted because I’ve spent every night since he took me, wishing for my own goddamn pillow.
The sheets are scratchy, the towels are rough and worn, and the shower gel smells like shit.
But what scrapes most of all is Liam’s fucking arrogant, holier-than-thou voice at almost every meal as he tries to strip back my layers and needle at the Rebel he knows is underneath.
I’ve been staring at the folded paper on my bedside table for no less than an hour. I know the only control I have left over the situation is in not reading it, but the boredom and curiosity have nibbled on my nerves like they’re live wires.
I think it’s time.
I pick up the page by the corner like it might somehow electrocute me, carefully unfold it with trembling hands, and steel myself against whatever lies Liam Mahoney has written on this piece of paper to make me crumble.
It’s a neatly typed letter and not put together out of cut up newspapers and magazines like I anticipated.
Any anxiety quickly turns to fury. The letter tells Liam we’re done, that I set him up as a warning not to come after me.
It’s cold, detached, verging on cruel, and sounds just enough like me for me to kind of understand why Liam is so utterly furious at me. God, no wonder he hates me.
But it’s also just different enough from me that it makes my blood boil.
Someone purposely wrote this letter and sent it to Liam pretending to be me.
Why though? Why would someone do that? I read it again, and again, and the more I read it, the more my blood threatens to melt my skin from the inside. I can’t believe someone pretended to be me.
Yes, you can.
I can’t believe they took away my agency over the situation and broke up with Liam on my behalf.
Except you can, Rowan.
Isn’t that exactly what Brian did when he took me from Ireland to protect me? He’s my boyfriend on paper, my warden in practice, and a stranger in every way that actually matters.
Most of all, though, I can’t believe Liam fucking bought it. I mean it’s good, but it’s not me.
For a man who claims to know the real me inside out and back to front, he sure missed some tell-tale signs in the letter that screamed it wasn’t me. I’d never use words like henceforth.
Hell. Never mind the vocabulary, I’d never fucking break up with someone that I was madly in love with over snail mail. Does he think so little of me to believe I would?
He knows me, he gets me, he knows how I speak and write and what I’d say if I did type up something like that. It’s obvious he’s blinded to the truth by his fury and his hurt, but if he stopped long enough to peel back the anger and let the truth come through, he’d see what I see.
That he can’t—or won’t—hurts. A bone-deep ache that not even rubbing my chest can get rid of. My eyes fill with tears I refuse to shed. Someone decided my voice was theirs to use. My choices, my words, my ending has all been rewritten without my knowledge.
No. Fuck that. I don’t belong to Liam, and I sure as hell don’t belong to Brian. If people want to play games with my life—I’ll play back.
That letter had to have been written by Brian. He’s the only person who knows every detail of the situation that led me to run.
Another thread of doubt about my handler joins the others forging to the front of my mind. Five years of control dressed up as protection, and now this. He didn’t just take my life—he tried to rewrite who I am. The doubt isn’t a thread anymore. It’s a pattern, one I’m done ignoring.
Holding me hostage because of a fucking letter I never wrote is ridiculous, even for Liam.
Is this really about revenge? Or is he so desperate for female company that he’d kidnap me just to have someone to talk to?
Someone to taunt. Is that the only way he can make women look at his fucking smug face?
Unfortunately, it’s also a fucking gorgeous face.
A pang of regret spears my chest at the jagged scar running down his face.
People are cruel enough to let that be a turnoff.
Not me, I’d love him no matter what he looks like.
Or at least, I would, if I still held a candle for him.
Which, of course, I don’t because he’s an arsehole who kidnapped me and locked me in a room like a certified psychopath.
We don’t hold space for kidnappers and psychopaths. I’m sure there’s a rule about that somewhere, if only my friend, Willow, were around to remind me of it.
Fuck. Another barb of grief stabs me directly in the chest. Willow. I miss her.
I miss the idea of friends, the few people I dared to exchange more than a “hello” with in London were just shadows, but they were my shadows, not Brian’s.
I refold the letter and place it back where it has lived for the last few days so I don’t tear it into tiny pieces and throw it in Liam’s face like confetti.
Two men. Two cages. Different methods, but they both come down to the same result.
I can’t break out of one just to fall back into the other.
But I do need to break out of this place.
I leap to my feet, ready to beat the shit out of the door until that asshole comes up here and faces me. Right as I approach it, the bolt squeaks, the door opens and crashes into me, throwing me onto my arse.
The angry tears I’d been trying, so far successfully, to avoid spill down my cheeks as the air bursts from my lungs with a loud “fuck.”
Sorcha rushes to help me off the floor. “Aw shite. Are you okay?” She pulls me up and guides me to the edge of the bed, checking me over because now the dam has broken, the tears won’t stop. And of course she thinks it’s from pain because I just got hit by a door.
I can’t speak, the shudders rolling through my body are too violent to form words. So I simply nod.
She offers a sympathetic smile and sits next to me on the bed. “Aye. You definitely seem fine. The rivers of tears pouring down your face and the anguish in your eyes are nothing but a diversion tactic, aren’t they?”
This makes me crack a smile through my tears and breaks the emotional pool of agony I was sinking into. If the situation was different, I could like this woman.
I might like her anyway but I’ll never say it aloud. He’ll use that against me somehow, too. Shit. Maybe he already has. She’s been gone for a few days… Did he…?
Despite the question burning my tongue, I can’t ask it. Even my suspicion could tip her off to the fact I know his personality enough to guess it’s something he’d do to get at me.
Playing a double life is exhausting.
“I came to bring you good news but then knocked you on your arse and made you cry.”
I give her another watery smile. “It’s not you. They’ve been brewing.”
A frown pinches her features, and her blue eyes turn even more sympathetic.
“You haven’t cried since you got here?” She squeezes my hand on my thigh.
“You’re doing better than I did. You’re also far calmer.
Girl, I was raging. But it was exhausting, too.
Staying calm is probably a better way to approach this. ”
If only she knew…
She doesn’t offer anymore information, and knowing Liam, even if I ask her a question, she won’t be allowed to either. So I simply wait.
Once the wave of emotion passes, she looks me in the eye. “Is there something you want to talk about?”
Yes.
“No. I’m just scared. I thought he’d send me home by now once he realized I wasn’t this Rowan-Rebel person.
I mean, what’s with the two names? I just have one.
Erin. And I’m homesick.” My cheeks heat.
“Turns out I have a penchant for the finer things in life. I think I’m allergic to his cheap prison sheets.
” I scratch my arm to prove a point. Let her see soft.
Soft gets underestimated as weak, and being underestimated might just be the key to my freedom.
Her laugh is the one I heard downstairs. It’s melodic and rich. “I have his card to pay for your clothes. I’m sure we could stretch to some luxury sheets.”
“He just… gave it to you?” My pulse steadies. Could this be an unexpected opportunity?
The grin on her face is downright terrifying. “Not quite.”
Ah. So she took it. That makes me stupidly happy.
“And towels. And maybe a lamp? It’s so bright in here.
My ma, God rest her soul, would scalp me if she knew how much I was using the big light.
” I thought about stealing Liam’s bedside lamp the other night, but I got kicked out before I could raid his stuff.
Sorcha laughs. Nothing’s as fierce as an Irish mammy when you use the big light. Or worse, commit the cardinal sin of leaving the immersion heater on. It’s been years and the childhood immersion trauma still lingers, clearly for Sorcha too.
She arches a brow, which makes me hold my hands up. “I promise I won’t use the lamp as a weapon, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Now, that’s definitely a thought to keep in my brain on the off chance his majesty lets me have a lamp.
“I can see why he calls you Rebel.”
My heart stutters, my body temp dips, but I hope I don’t react externally.
“He doesn’t know me well enough to call me anything other than Erin.
We’ve barely talked in the time he’s had me.
” It’s not a lie, not to her. I don’t say in all the time he’s known me, just had me.
And she’s shrewd enough that I think she catches it.
Shit.
She’s a smart one. Thankfully, there’s a knock on the door before any of the thoughts swirling in her expressive eyes come out.
“Either way. Let’s spend some of his money. Come in.”
The door swings open, and a flurry of activity, clothing rails, and bodies burst into my prison room like it’s nothing. The three staff members beam at both of us, and one of them quickly opens a bottle of champagne.
I look over at Sorcha who’s grinning at me as she accepts the flute from the middle-aged woman with perfect brows and a flawless face of makeup.
“How… how did they know what size to bring?”
Sorcha rolls her eyes. “He used an old dress of yours apparently.” She leans closer to me. “It won’t make a dent in his wallet, but it might make you feel better. Let’s buy some clothes.” She clinks her glass against mine before taking a long sip.
She’s right. It won’t break him, but it might be another crack.
The bubbles of the champagne tickle my nose as I drink and take in the set-up in front of me. A make-shift changing room has been put together with a tri-paneled divider, and the three women are ready to kit out my wardrobe. For what, I’m not sure.
No one will get to see any of it with me locked behind this fucking door, so I have no idea why I need anything other than the existing clothes he’s given me washed, but I play along because, if nothing else, draining his bank account of a few zeros will make me feel better.
And it’s the first real thing he can’t ignore.
Every dress, every pair of heels, every unnecessary luxury—it’s not indulgence.
It’s pressure on his pain point. Me. A reminder that I’m here, and I’m still costing him.
“It’s not a spa, but it’ll do.” I give Sorcha a warm smile. I can tell she’s really trying to be nice to me, and I want her to know I appreciate it.
I hope he comes in later spitting nails about how much I spent. I hope it does break his bank. And despite the fact Erin dresses a little more conservatively and more boring that Rowan, I hope his jaw aches from clenching to stop it falling open at how fucking gorgeous I look in all my new clothes.
I’ll distract him with my cleavage and a soft smile, let him think that’s all I am. Then I’ll go for his jugular and tell him in no uncertain terms that I did not write that letter. Real or fake, he needs to know and believe that while it might have someone’s fingerprints on it, they aren’t mine.
The champagne fizzes on my tongue as I watch the team lay out options I don’t need but take anyway.
All of them. And everything I know he hates.
Instead of plunging necklines and bold colors, I pick conservative cuts and pastels.
Because if Liam Mahoney wants to cage me, I’ll make sure it costs him.
Men like the Mahoneys only notice the knife when it’s in their fucking ribs.
And if you don’t get there first, they’ll jam it in your chest. I need to let Liam get close enough for me to blindside him.
Rule four in Rules for Radicals. Liam prides himself on being “controlled, not chaotic.” If I can make him look like a common thug in front of Maeve, I break his image of himself.
And if Brian thinks he still owns me—he’s about to learn exactly how wrong he is, too.
I smooth my hands down the first dress and smile. Let them both think they’re in control because I’m just getting started. Bring it on, Mahoney. Bring. It. On.