Page 51 of Three Irish Kings
He’s never once in his life hesitated. When he sets his mind on something, he goes for it.
Liam stares down at her for a long moment before whirling around, bursting open the front door and stalking outside.
I wince and look over at Isla. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She looks up at me with a small smile. “I think I got under his skin.”
“You’re something else,a ghrá.”
“Don’t I know it.”
God, I want to kiss her, and Cillian is looking between us like we need to get a room, but I don’t care. I’m fascinated by her, and I want to prove that she’s not Maggie almost as much as she does.
Because the way I feel about her doesn’t seem to be going away.
I glance at Cillian, and he nods, telling me without telling me that he’ll watch her, be sure she doesn’t escape. As much as I want her to be free, now would be really bad timing.
I walk outside to talk to Liam, feeling like he needs a sounding board.
“Hey, boss. Are you good?”
“Not even a little.”
“What are we going to do?”
Liam groans, banging his hand down on the hood of his SUV. “I don’t fucking know, Dare.”
Panic rushes through me. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean I don’tknow. We can’t let her go. We can’t kill her. We’re stuck.”
“We can’t keep her prisoner forever.”
He sighs and runs both hands through his hair, clearly stressed. “We can’t let her go! Think of all she knows.”
“She doesn’t know much, Liam. Just our names, which anyone could find on the internet.”
“Aye, and she can go to the cops and tell them we took her. Sure, I’ve got a few guys on the payroll but with a story like that, they’ll have to take us in. We’ll be facing years in prison, Dare, and you want me to just let her go?”
“It’s not about what I want.”
“Then what is it about, Dare?”
“Doing the right thing, Liam. Fuck, we do bad things all the time. Wrong things, nasty things. But we do it because it’s either them or us, and we do it to those who can handle it. Those who punch just as hard as we do. This is not the same. This is a line we promised we’d never cross, and we fucking jumped right over the damn thing.”
“But—”
“No, man. No buts. None of us wanted this. We knew it was wrong, but we did it anyway. I know that you’re loyal to your father, but this? A woman? Worse. An innocent woman. A victim. Where is the fucking line now? Are we just erasing it altogether?”
Liam’s throat works. “That’s the thing, Dare. I don’t know.”
He sounds so lost that it makes my heart ache.
I walk over to him, clapping a hand on his shoulder.
Liam, for once, doesn’t pull away.
“Things are gonna be okay, boss. We’ll figure it out.”
