Page 30 of Ruthless Reign

I slipped my phone from my pocket and Aodhán raised his hands in surrender. He made no move to try to take it from me, though, and somehow that infuriated me even more. I felt my face heat. It felt like he was daring me to do it.

I would. I fucking would if he made me.

“I need you to hear this,” Aodhán said in a low voice, crossing the short span of dusty floor to me with slow, practiced movements meant to calm me, but every inch of space he erased between us was having the opposite effect. My stomach flipped and my chest went cold, palms slick with sweat. “Séamas knows who you are, Rebecca.”

His words took a second to register. “He what?”

“He knows.”

I felt my shoulders pull in, wrapped my arms around myself. I felt so cold. So cold I was fucking shocked that I couldn’t see my breath in the air.

If Séamas O’Sullivan knew that Damien St. Vincent was my father, I was dead already.

Aodhán caressed my shoulder, and I flinched back from his touch, but there was nowhere to go. My shoulder blades connected with the paint shelf behind me and he held me there until my eyes met his.

“Do you understand?” he asked. “You have to go.”

I shook my head, a horrific realization dawning on me.

The ice in my veins was replaced with fire and I threw my arms up, breaking his hold on me. “And how did he find out, Aodhán? Hmm? Who could’ve possibly told him that?”

He had the decency to look sorry. The bastard. “I had to.”

I slapped him, surprising myself more than him.

My palm stung, but I didn’t care as I slapped him again, harder. Hard enough that the sting against my skin made my teeth clench as I watched an angry red handprint bloom on his cheek. Saw where the edge of his lip split. He licked the blood away from the wound.

“Finished?”

“I trusted you.”

“I know.”

“They’re coming for me because of you. And after what I did at that fucking pub, they’re going to want to hit the Saints where it’ll hurt the?—”

“No,” he interrupted. “I fixed that. As long as the two you hit are dead there’s no one left alive to tell Séamas anything.”

I gasped. “It was you. You were the one in the Lincoln.”

I gagged, tasting bile at the back of my throat, making it harder to ask the question that I needed to ask. “Did you cut the gas lines?”

He closed his lips tight, and his eyes darkened.

“Oh my fucking god.”

“I fixed it,” he repeated. “The only reason you and your precious Kings are still breathing is because I fucking saved you. But it’s a stop gap, nothing more. I can only put off the inevitable for so long. Now, I need you to pack your shit and get the fuck out of California before it’s too late.”

I shook my head again.

He crowded me against the shelf, rage glittering like embers in his eyes. “I’m trying to fucking save you!” he whisper-screamed, his lips only a breath away from mine as he fought for even breath.

I couldn’t move. I felt everywhere his body touched mine, pressed into the places where he seemed to fit too perfectly.

“Please,” he begged, his lower lip brushing mine with the plea.

I pressed myself into the shelf, panting. I swallowed as he bent, letting forehead fall against mine. “Please, just go.”

I steeled myself, shutting my eyes tight, pulling on that rage inside. The rage I knew I should feel. I trusted him and he betrayed me. I trusted him and he fucking sold me out.

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