Page 34 of What Lies Within

“I just said,” Connor states, voice a little too high-pitched for my liking. “I like her.”

“Bullshit.” The tremors ease beneath my palm as Rae finds her strength. “You hated whenever I would talk about her. You don’t like Maddie—you despise her.” A strength that comes from defending those she loves.

Connor looks ready to kill.

Tyke senses this also, shifting to stand behind the guy again, one hand on his shoulder in a warning.

“Fine.” Terry’s son steels his jaw, gaze averted to the shelves behind my brother’s desk. “I feel responsible.”

The fingers over Connor's clavicle tighten to the point that the kid winces with pain. "How?" Tyke's one-word question was delivered level and sure, yet the stiffness of his jaw and the madness in his eye suggest he's ready to beat the answers out of the kid.

“Ronan’s been after Rae for weeks.”Fucking knew it.“I may have made it hard for him to get near her on purpose.”

His obsessive stalking. His continued need to show up just to 'check on her.' "You shadowed her so Ronan couldn't snatch her."

Connor shrugs. “Worked, didn’t it?”

“What fucks does Ronan give if you see?” Tyke asks the question on my mind. “Why would you bein’ there stall him?”

"It wasn't me being there," Connor states. It was where I shepherded Rae." He glances at Tyke and me before continuing. "She's always been here or with you. Before that, she had Maddie with her. Keeping Rae scared kept her needing people with her." He shrugs. "It kept her safe, and it kept my old man off my back, with him thinking I did it from a place of obsession."

He did, though. The guy tracked her as an obsession. Her well-being is his obsession.

Sheis his obsession.

“Why not just tell me that’s what you were doing?” Rae growls, scooting forward on her seat as she does. “Why make me so damn afraid of you instead?”

“Because if I’d told you that my father’s fucking hitman was following you, waiting for an opportunity to shove you in the goddamn dungeon, then you would have freaked out for real.”

“Like I didn’t already?” Rae asks, pitch rising.

"I couldn't risk you doing something stupid like running," Connor yells. He jerks from beneath my brother's hold and moves forward, urging Rae to give him her hand. "I needed you where I could see you." He snatches her fingers anyway, thumb rubbing the back of her palm. "Where I could reassure myself that you were safe.”

“Then why not leave me alone once I was here?” She rips her hand away, rubbing the connection from her flesh. “Like you said, I’m safehere, Connor. You could have left me alone and let me be.”

The guy pulls a deep breath through his nose, assessing Tyke and me as he answers. "I didn't know if I could trust these fucks not to sell you out for their gain."

“We gain by keeping her here,” Tyke states coolly. “We gain by keeping what she knows inourpocket.”

I shove my hand beneath Rae’s and twine our fingers. Partly as a fuck you to Connor when she lets me do it, but also as a gesture of reassurance. We don’t need her like that anymore. Sure—her ability to send Terry to prison is amassivecard to play, but we would have dealt it by now if that were the only use she had.

I couldn’t give a shit if Terry remained walking free for the rest of his life. Not if it meant I got to keep Rae here—by my side, with our colors on her back—for as long as I fucking well can before she wakes up to what she’s agreed to.

To the fuck-up she’s let brand her with his name.

“How do we do it?” Rae queries, fingers tightening around mine. “How the hell do we find Maddie then?”

“I’ll give you a list,” Connor offers. “Of my father’s vacant properties.”

"What's the cost?" Tyke asks, his back turned to us as he regards a picture of the club with Maddie at the forefront. "You want our help escaping your old man. Is that your only request, Connor?"

“Access to Rae.” The cocky son-of-a-bitch holds her gaze as he states his terms. “When this is settled, you can’t bar me from seeing her when I want to.”

“Ever occurred to you thatIdon’t want to give you that?” she answers.

Tyke turns slowly, eyes hardening when he shifts them off our woman and onto the slim thread of hope he has at finding his daughter. “Done.”

“What the—?” Rae jerks from the seat, our hands ripped apart. “Are you serious?”

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