Page 54 of Her Irish Treasures
“Ri, honey, make sure you’re communicating with at least Doran. They might trigger you unexpectedly and not know how to handle it.”
“Yeah.” My throat tightened but I nodded, even though she couldn’t see. “I will. They’ve been great so far. That’s how I started to realize that things must not have been right at all with Jonathan. Simple courtesy, asking my opinion, making sure I’m okay. That shouldn’t surprise me.”
Arms closed around me. Keane leaned down over the back of my chair, his cheek to mine. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
“I’m so angry.” Her voice vibrated with low, quiet fury. “Not only did he sexually assault you, but then he took away your memory of it, so you couldn’t even work through the trauma. What can I do to help? Make a list of therapists? Drive around the city until I can find him and run his ass down? Hire a hitman?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I love you, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got four hitmen more than eager to hunt his ass down.”
“I love you too. I’m so sorry, Riann. I wish I could have done something as soon as I suspected things weren’t right.”
“It’s not your fault. How could you possibly know what we were dealing with that long ago? We had no idea any of this existed.”
“He targeted you from the beginning.” Keane’s voice carried a sinister edge though he didn’t increase his volume. “That you survived long enough to find us at all is a miracle.”
“Doran said I was marked by Faerie. I thought my first interaction with anything fae was atShamrockedbut Jonathan marked me years before.”
“How did you finally break free of his hold?” Vivi asked. “And what kept him from forcing you to come back?”
Chills raced down my arms. Shivering, I pressed back against the chair, tugging Keane’s arms around me tighter. “I have no idea.”
10
More than a little shellshocked, I said goodbye to Vivi. With cold fingertips, I fumbled to put the phone back in my pocket. My hand didn’t seem to want to work. Keane closed his fingers over mine and gently took the phone from me.
“I’ll take it for you,mo stór.”
“Thanks,” I whispered, my throat aching.
I didn’t want to cry.
I wanted to scream. Break things. Punch Jonathan’s smug face into a bloody smear and light his house on fire. Smash his windows. Slice his tires.
I wanted five years of my life back.
I didn’t want to remember all the horrible things he might have done to me. I just wanted those wasted years spent hunched over a computer in a grim, dim cubicle. Rushing home to cook his dinner and wash his clothes and clean his house. And worse.
My mind flinched away.
“Shhh.” Keane swept me up against his chest. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now and always.”
I burrowed my face against his throat and breathed in his scent. Warm, spiced rum with a thread of something smoky winding through it. A hint of pipe or smoldering peat. In a flash, I sat beside a cheery fire on a cold, snowy night, wrapped in furs and sipping my hot drink. Not cold at all. Because the heat of his eyes promised to keep me warm forever.
Aidan threw open our room’s door. “What the fuck happened?”
Keane carried me inside and leaned down to place me on the bed, but I clung to him, hiding my face against him. He finally shifted around to sit on the bed and hold me across his lap. “Some of her memory’s returning.”
A large, very gentle hand settled on my back. I knew before he spoke that it was Doran. “What do you need most, love? What can we do this very moment?”
I tightened my fingers in Keane’s shirt, clenching my jaws. Fighting to keep my rage controlled. My mind leaped from thought to thought like stray sparks lighting up a bone-dry forest.
All the chores I’d done around the house. While my husband did absolutely nothing. The cooking, cleaning, laundry, errands, grocery shopping… Everything that a household needed done. Plus work. The job I’d hated so much. No time to paint. No time to see Vivi. No time to do anything but slave for him.
Work. I needed to tell them.
“Solobrex,” I ground out. “I worked there too. It was awful. I didn’t remember until Vivi told me.”
Doran’s giant hand smoothed up and down my back. The bed dipped and another man pressed against my side, enveloping me in the rich scent of leather. Warm, golden light bathed over me, trying to take some of my hurt away. But this hurt couldn’t be soothed. Not this time.
