Page 71 of Beyond Rosy Irish Twilight

I heard him, but that couldn’t be right. What he was saying was the stupidest fucking thing I’d ever heard. “Just tell her everything.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “She’s your wife.”

“And her father said she betrayed him.”

He rolled his eyes at me, walking away with his hand rubbing at his neck. “Christ, and you believe that fucker? Does anything about her scream snitch?”

“Then what the fuck was he talking about?”

“Do you even care?” he countered. “Seriously, if you want her to trust you, you have to tell her who you really are. You have to be honest with her.”

“And what if she turns on me? Then this is all for nothing.”

He barked out a laugh. “Do you really think she’s doing all this to help out dear old daddy? She would have to be one hell of an actress.”

“So, that’s it? You have no reservations about any of this? You think I should just walk up to her and tell her I’m not really a mobster. That I’m one of the good guys and she can trust me?”

“It would be a good start, yeah.”

“No,” I shook my head. “I don’t have enough information about what happened. I can’t just put my trust in this woman that I know nothing about.”

“Because you won’t talk to her!”

I grabbed the back of my neck in frustration. There was no way to make him understand what was going on in my head. He had a solution for everything, but for me, it was different. It wasn’t just my life on the line. If I trusted her and she betrayed us, it wasn’t just me that would pay the price. Chase and Patrick would also die, and for the short life I had left to live before Ambrose pressed the gun to my head, I would know that I shouldn’t have put my trust in someone I barely knew.

“Find a way,” Patrick said. “Talk to her like a regular person. You have good instincts. Tell her you don’t fucking believe her father.”

“I don’t!” I snapped.

“That’s not the way you’re acting. And until you correct that, you’ll never have her trusting you.”

He turned and walked out of the room. I headed over to the window and stared outside at Jade, who paced the grounds, clearly still angry. I had to make this right. This kind of anger brewing between us was distracting enough without all the other shit piled on top.

I shoved the door open and headed outside. When she saw me coming, she scoffed and started running. Fuck, I didn’t want to have to chase her, especially on my gimp leg, but I didn’t really have a fucking choice.

“Jade, wait!” I shouted, but she kept going.

I was nowhere near catching up to her, and every step was fucking agony. Thankfully, Edu stepped out of the trees and blocked her path. She tried to go around him, but he was faster. He didn’t put his hands on her, but he was intimidating enough to scare her into stopping.

By the time I got closer, I was hurting badly. I knew the pain was etched on my face. I didn’t need a fucking mirror to see it. The look on Jade’s face was enough. I was sweating hard and my heart was pounding in my ears. Fuck, that wasn’t good. I glanced down at my leg and cursed under my breath. I tore the fucking stitches open. Lock was going to be pissed at me.

“You alright, man?” Edu asked.

I nodded, but it felt like one of those wobbly nods that went in circles instead of up and down. I bent over, trying to stop the world from tilting around me. My leg gave out and I fell to the ground in a heap of the fancy suit I was wearing. I realized as I stared up at the sky that it wasn’t just my leg that was bothering me. My head was pounding harder and harder and my vision was ebbing to black.

Jade dropped to her knees beside me, and she was saying something to me, but the roar in my head made it impossible to hear anything she was saying. A tingling in my hand drew my attention, and my eyes shifted just enough to see she was holding my hand. Fuck, this must be really bad.

I opened my mouth to apologize. For some reason, that felt really fucking important right now, like this might be my last chance to tell her. But nothing came out. I squeezed my eyes shut as the roaring pain became too much to handle and I finally let go of the idea that I could hold on.

* * *

Beeping rattled through my brain like a freight train. I hadn’t set an alarm clock in years, so I wasn’t sure why I had decided to set one last night. I tried to shut it off, but my hand wouldn’t move from where it rested. My whole body felt like dead weight anchoring me to the very spot I laid.

“Stupid fucker.”

“Which one?”

“They’re both fucking stupid.”

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