Trevor looked at them both. “You guys okay?”
“We’re fine,” Mac assured him.
Trevor glanced her way. “We’ll find him, Mac. Don’t worry.” The two shared a look that made Coop want to punch his friend’s face in.
What the hell?
He knew the guy was here to protect her. Plus, Trevor was very happily married. So why the sudden jealousy?
Because he knows more than you.
More than ready to rectify that situation, Coop growled, “Will one of you please tell me what thefuckis going on?”
The other two shared another look before Mac spoke up. “I’ve got this, Trev.”
“You sure?”
“He deserves to know.”
With an almost satisfied nod, Trevor held her gaze for another second before slapping Coop on the shoulder. “I’ll be across the hall if you need me.”
Coop waited for the door to close behind his friend before turning his infuriated gaze to Mac’s.
“You’d better start talking right this fucking second, or so help me…”
Her shoulders seemed to fall. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Looking more vulnerable than he could ever remember seeing her, Mac turned and sat down on the foot of the far bed. With her hands twisting in her lap, she refused to look at him as she began.
“I was born Abigail McKenna Moretti.”
He’d already known, yet when she spoke the words aloud, the tiny strand of hope he’d been holding onto that this was all some sort of mistake broke. He’d tried to come up with a plausible explanation for why the woman he loved would lie to him the way she had.
At one point on the drive here, he’d all but convinced himself Abigail Moretti was a cover for a job. Somethingother than the deception he felt to his bones.
Coop shoved his hands to his pockets. “And Tony Moretti?”
“Like you said.” Her weary eyes found his. “He was my uncle. I was sent to live with him after my parents died.”
At least the part about her parents dying had been true.
The second the thought hit, Coop felt ashamed. He pictured her as that young girl in the photo being forced to live with a guy like Moretti. His heart ached for that girl.
“And the stories about Moretti being a mob boss?”
“All true.”
“So why come back? And I want the truth, Mac.” He refused to call her Abigail. “The wholetruth.”
“And nothing but?”
“Goddamnit!” His voice bounced off the thin walls. “Someone just took a shot at you. This isn’t a fucking joke!”
“You think I don’t know that?” she yelled back. “You think I wanted this to be my life?” Shooting up from the mattress, Mac squared herself off to him. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way, Sean. My parents weren’t supposed to drive off a fucking cliff when I was only fifteen. I wasn’t supposed to have to move to a new city with a different school and an uncle who spent his days breaking the law and deciding who lived and who died.”
Despite her betrayal, Coop found himself wanting to go to her. To comfort her and take away every ounce of her pain. So he dug his heels into the cheap carpet and let Mac purge her hidden truths.
