Page 105 of Illicit Temptation

Trace

Stunned, Shea stumbles back a few steps. Then turns and bolts from her father’s office, pushing me out of her way. She takes off down the hall at such a speed it even surprises me.

“Lachlan!”she yells in the middle of the grand living room.

When I reach her, she looks like a cornered animal. Eyes wild, tears running down her cheeks. A much different response when Kieran brought up a marriage deal for her.

I’m ready to fucking rip someone’s head off. We’re out of our element. We’rebothcornered. All she has to fight is Lachlan, Darragh, and me. But Faolan has a prison full of men at his disposal.

Men her father needs.

Faolan told me about his arrangement with her father out on the back deck after she left. A deal he wasn’t inclined to make until he saw Shea.

Saw Sheawith me.

Now he wants her. Because she’s mine. And got pretty graphic telling me how he’ll take his marital liberties with her,cruelly, were his exact words. And if I dare to get in his way, he’ll throw me in Dunbar along with Cormac.

Faolan admitted to quickly drumming up those charges against Cormac as insurance. Sweetening the deal to release him in exchange for Shea’s agreement to marry him. All while her father thinks she’s getting a strong husband where he can keep an eye on her.

Faolan is a fucking psychopath.

“What?” Lachlan emerges from their mother’s hospice room with Darragh on his six.

Shea runs into his arms, his massive biceps comingaround and swallowing her. His eyes land on me as if I’m the one who has her in this lather.

Faolan and Fergus join us in the living room. The old man has lost his mind making this arrangement and springing it on everyone when his most lethal son is present. Only, Lachlan is outnumbered here.

Holy fuck, this is complicated.

I’m trying my best to keep my cool because I need my wits and sanity to think about how I get her out of this. She isnotmarrying Faolan Malone. I’ll kill him myself as a last resort. Even if it causes his people to gun me down in the process. There’s no point in living if I have to look at a ceiling every night and think about what my worst enemy is doing to her. I’d give my life to save Shea from that kind of hell.

“Lachlan, this doesn’t concern you.” Fergus waggles a finger at his son. “She’s my daughter.”

“What is he talking about?” Lachlan spits out.

“Your father and I made an arrangement,” Faolan speaks up confidently. “Your sister is to be my wife.”

“Over my dead body,” Lachlan growls without flinching.

“Are you willing to die, Lachlan?” Fergus relights the tip of his cigar. “Leave your wife a widow and your unborn child without a father?”

Lachlan’s head looks ready to explode, but he doesn’t answer.

“And what about you, Doc?” Fergus taunts Darragh. “You got two wee-ones now. You and your brother haveBratvawives. They’ll be remarried by my old friend Alexei Koslov. Do you want that, Shea-Lynne? Two of your brothers dead and their wives married to Bratva pigs?”

Jaysus Christ. Talk about fucking unfair.

“You’ll let us be killed?” Lachlan sneers.

“She’s my property,” Fergus taunts his son. “And youknow it.”

“She’sno one’sproperty,” Darragh barks.

“Give her to me and your precious brother is freed. The charges dismissed,” Faolan chides Darragh with a sinister smirk. “If he’s found guilty, it will be a matter for the Irish government, and he could be sent to a different prison where the O’Rourkes don’t call the shots.”

“As you can all see, I have a considerable amount of leverage.” Fergus stands shoulder to shoulder with Faolan. “Did you not see the mansion he lives in, lass?”

“I don’t care about that!” Shea says, loosening herself from Lachlan.

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