Page 82 of Vengeful Vows

I can’t be in love with a man who would probably be disgusted I felt this way. He must hate me for who I am, for having my father’s blood, even though he’d said that he didn’t.

How could he be happy married to the daughter of his mother’s killer? And worse. Now I’ve betrayed him. Sicced my father on him, even if that was never my intention.

What am I going to do? It’s not like I can come clean, because God knows what Patrick would do to me. I’ve become the enemy just by virtue of wanting to get out.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to handle this.

21

BREE

“Bree?” Declan calls, and I look at him, surprised. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.” I crawl into bed with him and put my head on his chest.

“You were thinking something.” He cups my chin in his hand and tilts my head up. He’s frowning, and I know I have to say something.

I swallow hard. “I’m just worried about you. You were shot not long ago and?—”

“It’s nothing.” His face softens. “Almost healed.”

“You almost died,” I complain, my heart racing.

I almost lost him. It would have killed me.

“I’m fine, a ghra mo chroi,” he murmurs, wrapping his good arm around me. “Almost fully healed.”

He’s right. But what won’t heal is the fact that I was the one to get him shot by sending a message to my father. I had no idea that he would attack Declan and his men. His letter made me think he was coming to rescue me.

I’m still wrapping my head around what an awful monster my father is, but I never thought he’d rather leave me here to go after them.

I’m being treated well, and most of me doesn’t ever want to leave, but my father doesn’t know that. For all he knows I’m being tortured, daily, and it hurts to think that he doesn’t care beyond what it looks like for his image in the clan.

“Everything’s going to be all right,” Declan assures me, but he doesn’t know what I’ve done.

I came from a monster, and maybe he’s turned me into one, too.

My father stands over me, shaking my shoulder.

“It’s time to go, Bree,” he says in a low tone, nearly whispering, and I look over to see Declan, sleeping soundly beside me.

I wrench away from my father. “No. I’m not going anywhere with you,” I hiss. “And If you don't want a bullet in your throat, you should leave.”

“What’s wrong with you? You’ve become a Burke now?”

I tremble, sitting up quietly, trying my best not to wake Declan. I feel numb all over, cold as if I’ve been dipped in ice water.

“I’m not a Murphy anymore, that’s for sure.”

“You’re my blood,” my father says, slowly drawing his gun.

Panic rushes through me. “Stop. Don’t. I’ll… I’ll go with you. I’ll go, just... don’t hurt him.”

“I’ll kill him just like I killed his mother,” Niall says cruelly, and now I can’t even think of him as my father. He’s just Niall Murphy, and he’s the real Irish scourge, not Declan.

I start to scramble up, but then Niall squeezes the trigger, and the sound of the gun going off echoes through my head as I scream and scream.

Then I’m running, and I have no idea how I got out of the house. All I know is that I’m running from Niall, the monster I once had thought hung the moon.

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