Page 95 of When We Break

“No.”

All eyes turn to this fiery Irish girl at my side.

“What?” Connor asks, scowling.

“No, I’ve told you before, I don’t want strange men wandering around my property. It’s myhome, and I won’t have it. I won’t feel like a prisoner.”

“It’s not to keep you bloody in,” Connor says with more emotion than I’ve seen from him before. “It’s to keep that psychopathout.It’s not up for debate, Skyla Maeve.”

“Don’t think you can use my whole given name and have me folding as if I were a wee girl,” she replies, getting hot now as she sits forward on the sofa, pulling out of my arms.

God, she’s fucking gorgeous when she’s pissed.

“You’ll do what you’re bloody told,” Conner retorts, and I think I just saw steam come out of my girl’s ears.

“He’s right,” Mik interrupts, speaking for the first time. “Malishka, you can’t be stubborn and careless.”

“Careless?” Skyla stands and stomps across the room, shaking her head. “You think I’m feckingcareless?I moved my whole life because that arsehole threatened you. Threatened all of you. I disappeared from everything I knew and loved to keep everyone safe, and hefinallywent away. It’s been almost a year without any contact of any kind, and it’s been the best year I’ve had in so long. Everything was finally starting to feel normal again. If you call living in what might as well be Fort Knox with a highly trained attack dognormal.”

“Back up,” Connor says. “Who threatened who?”

Skyla’s mossy eyes, so full of emotion, widen, and she clamps her lips closed.

Jesus, I want to hold her.

“What are you talking about,a stór?” Maeve asks.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, it does,” I reply before anyone else can. “It all matters, Irish.”

She sighs and looks so weary, but then she squares her shoulders and lifts that beautiful chin. “He made it clear that he’d get rid of everyone else in my life, so it was only him and me.”

“What the fuck?” Mik asks. “You did not tell me? Malishka, between your family and mine, we just take care of him.”

“Right, because I want the Russian mafia in my business,” Skyla says with a huff.

“None of this matters,” Connor interrupts. “You’ll have protection, and that’s how it’s going to be.”

Skyla shakes her head, and I cross to her now, taking her face in my hands.

“Baby.” My voice is firm, but I’m not yelling or raising my tone. “I want you to hear me loud and clear right now. Everyone here loves you. We want you to be safe.” Her eyes well as she stares up at me, and her chin wobbles.

“It’s an invasion of my privacy, and I won’t give him that,” she says, her voice rough with emotion.

“I understand. So there’s only one solution to this.”

“What?” A tear falls from the corner of her eye, and I catch it with my thumb.

“You’ll be moving in with me.”

Her brows pull together. “In one of the rentals?”

“Fuck, no.” God, she’s adorable. I can’t help the bark of laughter that slips out. “No, Irish, you’ll be living with me. On my farm. The chickens are now your responsibility.”

She catches that pillow of a lower lip in her teeth and, for the first time since everyone got here, her shoulders drop, and she lets out the breath she’s been holding all evening.

“I love those chickens.”

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