Page 81 of Ruthless Reign

We were no strangers to blood and gore, but there was something deeply fucking offensive about it when it painted her skin. Watching the doctor stick needles in her and having to see her flinch made my trigger finger twitch. But I deserved it.

I reached over, peeling her hand from the arm of the chair to squeeze it in mine as the doctor worked.

I didn’t let go until he was finished and both he and the nurse left.

They rigged her up an IV for fluids and already there was a little color returning to her face. They were able to close the long cut across her cheekbone with medical glue and butterfly closures instead of stitches, but I could tell from the look of it alone that it would scar. She’d have to look at it for the rest of her life.

I’d take Séamas’ whole damn head for this in repayment.

“What did you want to talk to us about?” I asked Becca as she rejected the tray of food offered by the rounds nurse and she put both of them on my bed table instead.

“You need to eat,” Hardin said, still standing sentinel by the door like he expected the Sons to walk in here and take over the hospital Joker style.

Becca shook her head. “Later. We should talk.”

She and Hardin shared a look I didn’t like one bit and then Hardin jerked his head toward the door, eyeing Ma and Dad. They took the not so subtle hint and left, Dad muttering that they’d be just down the hall.

“What’s this about, Vixen?” I asked as the door closed, hating that I felt like an outsider to whatever information she was about to drop when clearly Hardin knew what the fuck was up.

Becca bit her lip, thinking for a second as she stared at the floor. “I owe you both an explanation?—”

“For what?”

She looked over at me pleadingly, and her eyes glossed over with unshed tears. “This is my fault,” she said. “All of it. If I’d?—”

“Don’t say that. It’s not true. None of this is your fault.”

She lifted a hand, asking for my silence.

“Look, I’m going to just get it all out there. If you could both just not say anything until I’m finished, I would really appreciate that.”

It wasn’t like she needed to ask Hardin.

I had no idea what the hell she was going on about, but I mimed zipping my lips, giving her a wide eyed look of incredulity that I hoped conveyed that I was not worried in the slightest. Even if Hardin looked like he was ready to tear apart the room at the drop of a pin.

My Vixen took a deep breath and began.

I didn’t know what I was expecting, but the words that poured out of her definitely weren’t it.

She knew Aodhán.

And not just knew him, but he was her friend. They were friends. They were…friendly.

Not important. Nothing happened between them.

What was important was that Aodhán cared about her enough to try to warn her to leave town. He was in her fucking classroom while Hardin and I were out in the hall.

And Gilligan’s Finch?

It was him. He blew it up to make sure Becca’s cover was maintained.

He was just as fucking unhinged as his damn father, but…he saved her. Made it so the Sons could never find out she was there.

She agonized over the last few things.

That Aodhán had tried to warn her about the meet. That something was wrong.

And that Séamas had known about her—who she is to Damien—for a while now and she didn’t tell us.

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