Page 31 of Still Burning

“Go on now. We don’t want to be seen,” the man behind me said.

Reluctantly, I released the ladder with one of my hands and reached over to Emmett. His grip felt secure. He clearly didn’t want me to fall either. I gave him my other hand and steppedonto the very top, then slid over the mattress, and he held on to me while I turned around and got my foot safely onto the first rung. I saw a man at the bottom who didn’t appear to be a pirate, but looked Irish. He was even a ginger. I moved quicker this time, wanting to get it over with. I was almost at the bottom when the ladder shook from my captor getting on to it.

If there could be any relief in this situation, my feet hitting the grass was one. I stepped away from the ladder when the ginger man grabbed my arm firmly.

“This way,” he said with an even thicker lilt to his voice.

He led me out of the tree coverings and brush that blocked the sight of the gate from the road. A black Mercedes Sprinter van with no windows sat there with the back open and another man waiting beside it.

Glancing back over my shoulder, I wondered if the man who had taken me was also tall, muscular, and dressed in expensive-looking clothing. Because the three I had seen were in designer jeans that I recognized because they were the ones Eamon had always worn. Other than Emmett and his pirate hair, the others were clean-cut and well groomed.

When he stepped out of the shadow of the trees and I saw his face, I stumbled, and the man beside me had to catch me.

“Oh my God,” I gasped as I stared at him in a state of shock.

He flashed me an eerily familiar smile. “It’s uncanny, isn’t it?” he replied. “He was three years older, and yet we could’ve been twins.”

I shook my head. “I don’t…” I whispered, confused. “Who…” Words failed me as my heart raced wildly in my chest.

This couldn’t be happening.

“Brady,” he replied, “Murphy.” He said his last name with a smirk on his lips so different from the man he resembled. The man I’d lived with for fourteen years.

How did this man look almost identical to my husband? He’dcalled me sister, but Eamon was an only child.

“The younger brother.” He shrugged. “I was never the favorite child. That was reserved for Eamon, and it seems that even with him gone, it still is. Mother tolerates me, but ye’ve been forced to be around the woman. I much prefer Ireland, where she’s not.”

The man beside me budged me to get into the van, and I realized we’d kept walking and reached it. I climbed in and sank down onto the leather seat farthest away from the door. My mind was reeling and refusing to believe what I was hearing and seeing.

How could he be Eamon’s brother? Eamon hadn’t lied to me. He wouldn’t havenottold me about having a brother.

I shook my head, not believing him.

He climbed in and took the seat across from me while the redheaded man took the one by the door. The two front doors opened, and Emmett climbed inside the driver’s seat while the other man took the passenger’s seat.

I was being taken by my husband’s doppelgänger.

“Eamon was an only child,” I stated, but my voice sounded as uncertain as I felt.

He chuckled. “I can show ye my birth certificate if that would help,” he replied, leaning back in the seat, completely relaxed.

There were differences. This man had a scruffy, short beard, almost like he was shy of a couple of weeks of shaving. His eyes weren’t the same blue as Eamon’s although they were blue. I saw even more of Cormac in him.

It was hard to believe that my husband had lied to me about being an only child, but this man was too Murphy. He was too much like Eamon in similarities. The only possible reason for Eamon not to have talked about him would be that he and his parents had cut ties from him, and the only reason I could think of for them to cut their son and brother from their lives would be because he was…bad. A criminal.

“What…what did you do?” I asked him.

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Yer gonna need to be more specific. I’ve done many things.”

I swallowed and gripped my hands tightly in my lap. That was it. He was a bad man. His family didn’t have any contact with him. Was that why he had gone as far as putting tracking devices in my shoes, purses, and phone? Was that why he had taken me? Was he trying to get back at them? If so, he must not know his parents very well. Taking me was not going to affect them. I wasn’t someone Keira cared for.

“If you’re taking me because you want to lash out at your parents, it’s not—I mean, I’m not the person to take. Keira doesn’t even like me. She never did.” Hope that he’d let me go was starting to take root.

He smiled. “I’m well aware of my mother’s feelings toward ye. That’s not why I saved ye from the brutal fix you’d gotten yerself into. I did this for my brother. He’d asked me to watch over ye. I did. Ye got mixed up with a bad crowd. The CIA and DEA are hot on yer tail.” He shook his head and laughed. “A poxy place.”

CIA and DEA? What was he talking about? Did he have some affliction? Had he gotten a head injury at some point and gone off the rails?

I had to think of a way to talk him into taking me back to the club. Back to Rome.

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