Page 63 of Brutal Obsession

I want to scream. If Cian doesn’t cut the jackass routine in the next ninety seconds, I just might.

Ignorant or uncaring of my looming meltdown, his eyes remain fixed on the highway ahead.

I open my mouth to rip him to shreds but then examine him, bloody and stressed, and remember that he saved my life. I thought I was about to die, but he neutralized the threat in under five minutes.

The compulsion to thank him hovers on my tongue, until I remember that saving me is the most basic criteria of his job.

I shouldn’t find his actions heroic. Cian killed those bastards so they wouldn’t kidnap me, the person he “rightfully” kidnapped first on behalf of his employer.

He still views me as a possession. The sourness on my tongue is cell deep.

Up ahead, an accident clogs traffic. Red-and-blue lights create a perimeter, forcing four lanes of highway to merge down to two around the scene of the crash.

The congestion provides a perfect opportunity.

“Let’s try this one more time.” I fill my voice with as much strength as I can muster. “Whowere those guys back there?”

Through gritted teeth, Cian ends his silence at last. “Stop asking me.”

“Then start talking.”

“It’s not for you to know.”

That condescending shit is the last straw. I unbuckle my seat belt and pull the latch at the same time. The passenger door opens, and I’m seventy-five percent out of the car—seventy-five percentfree—when Cian snags the waist of my jeans and hauls my ass back into the seat.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Cian erupts like a volcano.

“Help!” I yell out the window at the cops directing traffic a few feet away. Cian slaps a palm over my mouth, somehow getting my window up with his other fingers without crashing into the car ahead of us.

I bite down on the inside of his middle finger until I taste blood.

“Fucking—ow!” Digging my canines deeper compels him to rip his hand away from my face. “Would you stop?”

“I wish I’d never met you.” In spitting out the words, I finally get him to look at me properly.

Too bad for him, it’s too late now.

I grab for the door latch faster than Cian can engage the child lock.

Tires squeal beneath us. He swerves right, using centrifugal force to knock me back inside, but I?—

A loud pop punctures the night air.

We both flinch hard enough to smack our heads on the ceiling.

Cian maneuvers the Porsche into the shoulder, an ominous, rhythmic thumping on the road beneath us. My guess? He rolled over some shrapnel from the accident trying to stop me, and now his poor little rental needs a tow.

The Porsche hobbles to a stop. One of the tires is out, for sure. Maybe two.

But that’s ahimproblem.

I hop out of the car the moment Cian shifts into park. He climbs out, too, probably to check the damage, but I’m already scaling over the railing that lines the shoulder. A short hike down the grassy embankment will put me out on the street below. Lucky for me, Oahu highways cut through neighborhoods and not the middle of nowhere.

Cian doesn’t notice I’m gone until I’m halfway down the slope.

“Harper!” he barks from above.

I don’t so much as glance back.

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