Page 59 of A Fine Line

And then, we deplane on a paparazzi-filled tarmac to camera flashes and questions about our elopement. At this point, it’s a toss-up on who’s going to murder him first: Dare, Tony, or me.

Now, we’re in the back of a stretch limo, and my urge to bash him over the head with a bottle of Cristal is fierce. I’m so intent on my daydream that his voice breaks through my thoughts. “What the fuck is your problem now?”

My eyes bug out of my head, and I force my body to remain seated across from him rather than jumping over there and pummeling him as he so rightly deserves. “Your brother is going to kick your fucking ass, and I’m going to laugh.”

He rolls his eyes, taking a sip of his champagne before replying, “Dare may want to, but he won’t.”

“How about Tony?” I ask between my gritted teeth. “I bet Tony would kick your ass in a fucking heartbeat.”

His eyes widen a bit, his fingers on his champagne glass tightening. “What does Tony have to do with any of this?”

I throw my head back and laugh, tears in my eyes, before I finally manage to choke out, “Oh, you didn’t know?”

“Know what?” he asks tightly.

“That I belong to Tony.”

He squirms a bit but quickly recovers. “Well, good,” he says. “Then they won’t waste any time coming for you.”

I snort and roll my eyes, my teeth grinding in annoyance. The audacity of this asshat is almost comical. “I didn’t know Dare had a brother. Where the fuck have you been?”

“He doesn’t have a brother,” he replies, practically sticking his bottom lip out. “At least not in the real sense of the word. He made sure of that.”

The underlying petulance of his words is not lost on me, and I ignore the urge to reach out and slap him across the face, even though he deserves it. “It’s bad enough that you came in and took me, but to then publicly announce an elopement is insanity. People will be looking for me and I don’t mean only Dare and Tony.”

“It’s fine. Those assholes will see the headlines, they’ll come to get you, yell at me, and then go about their business, going back to ignoring me for the rest of my life.”

“Is this about you not feeling included? Did you want to be part of the merry bandits, and they refused you?”

He laughs and shakes his head. “Not hardly. I chose not to be part of the merry bandits. I chose not to live my life under the radar.”

“Is that why they’ve been ignoring your existence? Because you chose a different path than them?”

“Well, that’s what they said,” Declan replies quietly. “They said it was too dangerous for me to be associated with the Beast if I wasn’t going to be part of the gang. Don’t get me wrong, Carolina. I’m not a complete fucking moron, and I do know that they’re right. But that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes get nostalgic and want to cross paths with my big brother and his moronic friends.”

“Well, you picked a really bad fucking time to choose to cross paths with Darius. How did you even know about me? Or where I was?”

“I’ve been following your name since Dare was spotted with you on the red carpet. I noticed you had fallen off the mainstream newsreels, so I had some people looking for you in other places. When I saw your name go across the dark web—and when I say dark, I mean really dark—I figured I couldn’t just leave you there.”

“You didn’t think to maybe reach out to Darius and let him know you had concerns?”

“What’s the fun in that?”

I groan, my fingers moving to my temples and rubbing gently to ease the pain in my head. “So, you thought it would be fun to drop everything, get on a jet to the literal middle of nowhere, break into a large criminal organization facility, steal me, stuff me in a trunk, and then set up this whole intricate ruse to make it look like we’re having fun. That’s what you’re saying?”

He smiles, looking proud of himself. “Exactly. I know Darius would be the first one to say I couldn’t pull it off, but I did. I’m just showing him that I still got it. That all these years away from his life hasn’t dulled my criminal prowess.”

The guy is fucking certifiable. I can’t decide if he’s genuinely crazy or just incredibly misguided. I don’t believe he’s as stupid as he comes off. If he was, he never would’ve been able to pull it off, but his thought that this was a good thing is entirely asinine. “At least you waited until we landed for the big reveal. That gives us a bit more time to get ahead of the other people that might be coming for me.”

He gives me a sheepish look, then mutters, “I may have put a couple of hooks out before we landed, but my place is behind some state-of-the-art security. You should be safe there.”

Trepidation trickles down my spine, knowing that the wrong people might get the jump on us. “And is the location of your home well-known?”

He smiles broadly. “Oh, yes. It’s on all the tourist maps for people to drive by. Sometimes, I like to go out there and wave to give people a thrill. It’s quite fun.”

Fuck my life. Fuck every fucking day of my life.

Of all the people who had to steal me from the bad guys, he had to be a famous, egomaniac attention-whore. “I can see now why Darius thought it best to distance himself from you. Your whole enjoyment of living life in the limelight.”

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