I smile down at her. “I would never dare hurt a woman. Unless she begs.”
Quinn rolls her eyes. “Then hand her over.”
“No. But if you won’t leave without her, feel free to enjoy sleeping on my lawn,” I gesture. “I’m generous. You can even make your way around the property to sleep on a pool chair.”
“I’ll call the cops,” Quinn threatens.
“And tell them what? That I’ve kidnapped someone from Caleb’s virginity auction?”
Her mouth drops open. “You’d do that to Caleb?”
I just shrug. She doesn’t need to know if I would or wouldn’t. Then I lean in, whispering so just she can hear, “No offense, but who do you think they’ll believe? You spent two years in maximum security lock-up and only got out on early release because I sponsored you.”
“So now you think you own me?” Quinn furiously bumps me with her corseted chest. “You think you can just get away with anything? Fuck you, Domhnall. You aren’t a god, and unless you give me a good goddamned reason, I will raise hell in every way I can until you free that woman, I don’t care if it ends me back up in prison.”
“You don’t want to go to war with me, Quinnlynn,” I warn. “You will lose, and it will be painful for you.”
She pulls out her phone from her boot and pushes a few buttons. “You’re a smug bastard. You forget. I know your weaknesses.”
Is she really calling the police? I’m not bluffing. Nothing will make me give Madison up.
“Hey, what’s up?” comes my sister’s perky voice over the phone that Quinn put on speaker. She’s breathing hard like she just went for a jog. In the background, I hear a familiar rhythmicthwack, thwack, thwack, thwack.
“Jesus, Moira,” I cover my face with my hand eventhough I can only hear her, not see her. “Are you fucking somebody right now? How many times do I have to tell you not to answer the phone while you’re fucking somebody!”
“Domhnall, hi!” she says, completely unphased as thethwackingcontinues. “So Quinn found you. Good! We were worried about Brooke when you disappeared with her all the sudden. We just wanted to check in with her after the devirginizing. How’d it go?”
Quinn tilts her head at me, glare still in full force as she holds out the phone in my direction. Power move, using my sister against me.
“Everything’s fine here.Isn’t it, Quinn?”
She stabs the mute button. “You’ll let me see her?”
“I’ll let you in and we’ll have a chat,” I amend, teeth gritted as I sift through various plans in my head.
She hits unmute. “Everything’s great. Chat later, babe. Bye.”
“Oh good,” Moira says, her voice a little higher pitched, “because I’m about to co?—”
I hit the redend callbutton on my sister who’s got no boundaries.
Then I step back and gesture for Quinn to step inside.
“Start explaining,” she demands.
We sit in my den and jaw clenched, I do. I talk. I pace. Then I talk some more.
I explain who Madison was to me. And her father. It’sdifficult for some of it to make it past my lips. I’ve kept all of it under lock and key inside me for so long.
Quinn sits stone-faced through my whole story. She only lets out an explosive breath at the end. “Well fuck. And you’re sure she’s the same woman?”
“Positive.”
“But she’s lost her memory.”
I tilt my head at Quinn, as if to say,seriously?
“A woman who fucked me over half a world away just coincidentally ends up at a hospital that sends her to the shelter where my sister works? Come on. I don’t think so. You don’t know this family. But I do. They’re sociopaths. Convincing sociopaths. They draw you in. Weren’t you listening? She’s the bait, and she’s so, so good at what she does. She was a genius at it all those years ago and I can only imagine how she’s perfected her skills over the last decade. She’s here because she wants something.”