Fear for my dad overrode any fear I had for myself.
Two people had met me at the door. A tall, thin man who walked a little off kilter, and a woman with crazed black hair and light brown eyes. She wore a butcher’s apron with blood on it. The knives were sheathed and attached to a leather belt.
I kept screaming at them to tell me where my dad was. He was here and I knew it, but they wouldn’t tell me where he was. They kept whispering, saying little. Even from that short interaction, I could tell they both had thick Irish accents.
“Where’s my dad?” I held the phone up, close to the Beast’s face.
I’d decided then I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of calling him a beast again. He’d be a man. Just a man.
Cian O'Callaghan.
Even though his eyes were dull, a current of pain lit them up when I shouted at him. It was like the flickering of the lights. There and then gone.
A shouting voice inside of my head told me to shut up, to whisper the question, because he seemed truly unstable, but I was done.
I’d cracked, and the crazed part of me oozed to the surface. I wanted these people to tell me where my father was! He was all I had left, and it felt like he was slipping through my fingers.
“My dad! Where is he?” I shouted again, and this time a growl seemed to tremble deep inside Cian’s chest. He held his hands over his ears.
I looked at the man and woman who had met me at the door. They were huddled together, watching our interaction with what seemed like…fascination mixed with fear on their faces.
Why is he holding his head like that? Is there something wrong with him? Is he hearing impaired, maybe?
Instead of asking the questions, I found the courage to hold up my phone to the man and woman again, to prove I knew my father was in the mansion somewhere. The man took a step toward me, maybe to look at the phone closer.
Cian made one of those deep, growling noises in his chest again. The man held his hands up in a sign of surrender and took a step back.
Like a storm, Cian—what a gorgeous name for a man as beastly as him—blew around me and disappeared somewhere inside the mansion.
“Please,” I whispered to the man and woman after he’d gone. “My dad is all I have. I know he’s here. I tracked his phone, and his car is outside. He was coming here to talk to…Mr. O'Callaghan about the Craigs.”
“Oran is forcing you to marry Dermot,” the man said.
Melted ice slid down my cheeks like cold tears. I wiped my face. “In a week.”
The man turned and rushed after Cian, which left me alone with the woman. I was hoping she would have more compassion for my situation, but I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t find any other word to describe her butdifferent. And those knives she wore? They made me anxious. Her eyes kept darting around, like she was expecting someone to jump out at her. When they stilled on me, I wanted them to go back to darting around. It was like she was trying to get past my skin, her eyes as sharp as the blades she wore.
I wasn’t too proud to beg, and I was about to do just that when footsteps stopped me from opening my mouth. Cian was back, trailed by the other man. Cian held my dad by the collar and was dragging him down the hallway. I ran to him, falling to my knees, realizing he was bleeding from a gash on his head.
“Maeve,” he barely got out. “Why did you come here?”
“He needs help!” I looked up at Cian. I swallowed past the lump in my throat and lowered my voice. “Please.My dad…he needs help. He must have hit his head.Pleaselet him go.”
A strike of lightning lit Cian’s face, almost making him look inhuman, before wind rattled the windows. His face seemed like it was made of stone.
The man stepped around Cian. “Here’s the thing, girl.” When he saidthing, it sounded liketing. “You both trespassed on the property. Payment is due.”
“We don’t have that much money. Oran Craig keeps us living a rich lifestyle, as far as our apartment, and middleclass in all other aspects, but it’s all his.” That way we were always indebted to him. We lived in a stunning apartment, had drivers if we wanted them, enough food not to go hungry, but we had little in our bank account.
“Not that kind of payment.” The man ran a hand over his face. His short silver whiskers rasped against his palm. “Your Da is our prisoner—for now.”
Realization hit me as hard as a fist to the chest.
This was it. I was going to have to say goodbye to my dad. He’d gambled with his life by finding Cian O'Callaghan to reason with him so he could save me. But I refused to let these people keep him—or kill him. He might even die without medical help. I wasn’t sure why he couldn’t stand, and his head kept bleeding.
No. I refused to let my father die among strangers in this cold house.
I stood, even though I had no idea how I had. It felt like gravity was pressing down on me. “If a life is the cost of trespassing, then take mine. I’ll trade places with my father. I’d rather die than marry Dermot Craig anyway.”
