My heart stops.
“Had we lost any of our men, this conversation would be taking a very different direction.”
He knows. There’s no point in denying it, and I don’t think I could.
“You can’t stay here.” He’s still standing, rolling his sleeves up as if this is just coming home after another day at the office. “Was it worth it?”
“My father. He- he was going to marry off my little sister. She’s only sixteen. He told me I had to spy on you and I refused, and then she called me and-”
“Stop.” The even cadence of his voice is more terrifying than if he’d screamed at me. “Put your shoes on.”
“Taking me to a second location to shoot me?” I laugh, something ugly that sounds more like a wail.
“Put your shoes on or I’ll take you out barefoot.” He’s completely expressionless. Not an eye twitch, no grinding of his jaw.
Rising slowly, I go to the front hall and put on my sandals.
“I tried to tell you yesterday,” I say in a rush. “When I came to your office, I wanted to-”
“But you didn’t.” He cuts me off.
I follow him into the garage. I get in the car. I don’t struggle or scream or try to run away. Am I in shock? Maybe I just know I deserve this. What if someonehaddied? Kai? Logan? My heart gives one painful thud. Mason?
Mason drives, and I see another car following us. Will he have one of his men kill me? His second in command, Devon, maybe. Vincent? Please, not Talon. The car is silent, no music, Mason doesn’t speak.
I’m not familiar enough with Glasgow yet to know where he’s taking me, but the car merges onto an expressway that runs along the coastline. After an hour he turns onto a private road. There are no houses anymore, just trees on one side and seagrass on the other.
No one is in sight, aside from the SUV following us. After several more twists and turns, the road straightens out and there’s a beach cottage in front of us. It’s an old one, made ofstone with a slate roof and crisp white trim around the doors and windows. The house looks like it’s withstood generations of storms battering against it, but it’s well-cared for.
At any other time, I would have loved to have been here.
We pull up to the front door and I don’t move, staring at the cottage. I can’t look at Mason. I don’t want to know what happens next, my thoughts are muddy with terror and self-loathing. Jumping as he opens my door, I slide out carefully, as far away from him as possible.
My heart sinks as Vincent and Talon step up behind us. It’s humiliating enough that Mason knows I betrayed his family, Talon and I were cautiously building a friendship. Now, that’s gone. Unlike the brutal dissolution of my imagined connection with Wyatt, this one I deserve.
The quaint old oak door has a little fall of ivy that conceals another one of Mason’s biometric security systems. It takes a retinal and fingerprint eye scan to open the door.
“Go in,” he says, not looking at me.
Vincent follows me, carrying an overnight bag that I recognize as mine. Did Davina pack it for me? Did everyone know what was going to happen before I did? The only bright side here is that if I’m in possession of my toothbrush and underwear, my husband isn’t planning to kill me.
Yet.
I make a left into the first room I find and sit down on the big, built-in window seat. It looks out over the ocean and I draw my legs up tight, wrapping my arms around them and watch the waves rolling in. It’s a desolate stretch of beach. I suspect if I screamed, no one would hear me, aside from the seagulls.Vincent gingerly sets my bag on a wooden bench in the hallway and leans against the door, watching me in silence.
Mason and Talon finally come in, my husband exchanging a few words before my bodyguard and driver head for the back of the house. I continue to stare out the window.
“If someone had been killed, if you weren’t married into our family, it’s likely my Chieftain would order your death. He would expect me to do it.”
My lungs feel too thick to draw in a breath. His voice is flat, emotionless. He could be talking about the stock market or the weather.
“The next option would be to send you back to your father.” He chuckles humorlessly. “The old bastard did know what he was doing by orchestrating a Catholic ceremony. That stands for something in my family. The third option is this. Keeping you here.”
“For- for how long?” I climb off the window seat, moving as close to him as I dare. “How long will I have to stay here?”
“Traitors in my family are considered a disease,” he says. “If we can’t kill the disease, we quarantine it.”
Choking back a sob, I wait until I’m sure I can speak without breaking down in front of him. “Are you saying this is permanent? Until… the disease,me, dies out on its own?”
