Page 33 of His Kidnapped Irish Mafia Virgin

I couldn’t finish. I didn’t have to; he understood. His thumb moved gently across the back of my hand, but he didn’t interrupt. He simply waited, and somehow that made everything harder.

“For a second,” I whispered, “I thought I’d lost you.” The words hung between us. I closed my eyes, embarrassed by how much they revealed. “It wasn’t rational. I know it wasn’t. The blood just...” I let out a shaky breath. “It scared me.”

He remained quiet, simply waiting for me to say everything I needed to.

“What happened?” I asked at last. “Really.”

He leaned back slightly, careful not to pull against the fresh bandage.

“We followed a lead. A burner phone connected briefly yesterday, and we traced the signal to an abandoned warehouse. It was exactly what my instincts said it would be. A trap.”

The word landed heavily between us. He didn’t embellish the story. He simply told me they’d found the phone, realized it had been planted, and that the shooting had started almost immediately afterward.

“They knew you would come. They were counting on it.” My stomach tightened. “And you still went, knowing it could be a trap.” I stared at him in disbelief. The frustration I’d been holding back since he’d walked through the front door finally escaped. “This happened because of me.” His eyes lifted immediately, and I shook my head. “Liam, if I hadn’t come into your life, none of this would’ve happened. Nobody would’ve been waiting in that warehouse. Nobody would’ve been shooting at you.”

“That’s not how this works.”

I stood before I even realized I was doing it and began pacing slowly across the room, unable to remain still any longer. “I’ve spent a year running from this. You tried to help me, and now you’re coming home bleeding because someone wants information about me.” I stopped and looked at him. “You have to stop.” His expression didn’t change. “You have to let this go. I’ll leave if I have to. I’ll disappear. I’ll go somewhere nobody can find me. I’ll keep running if that’s what it takes. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt because of my past.”

The words came out before I could reconsider them. For several seconds Liam didn’t move. The warmth that had been in his face disappeared so gradually that it was almost impossible to notice.

The amusement vanished first, then the softness. Even the exhaustion seemed to fall away until all that remained was the man I’d first met inside the bar, the one whose calm carried more weight than most people’s anger. He looked at me for so long that I felt my confidence begin to disappear.

“Are you finished?” His voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

He rose from the sofa despite the fresh wound, ignoring the stiffness in his shoulder as though pain simply wasn’t important enough to acknowledge. He crossed the room without hurry, stopping only when he stood directly in front of me.

I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.

“Listen carefully,” he said quietly. “Because I’m only going to say this once. You think disappearing will fix this.”

“It—” He raised one finger, and I fell silent.

“You think if you walk away, everyone else stays safe. You’re wrong.” The certainty in his voice left no room for argument. “Nobody decides where you go except you. Nobody lays a hand on you and walks away. And nobody comes after what’s mine and expects me to stand aside while they do it.”

My breath caught. “I’m not yours,” I said, though the words sounded far less convincing than I’d intended.

His expression didn’t change. “You can keep telling yourself that if it helps.” He held my gaze without blinking. “It won’t change what I’m going to do.”

His voice remained calm. That calmness frightened me more than shouting ever could.

“Whoever planned that ambush made one mistake. They thought they were sending me a message.” A faint, humorless smile touched the corner of his mouth. “But they’ve just given me a reason to fuck them up.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Liam

I got to the bar early, almost an hour before we opened up. Usually I would go straight to my office and take care of any paperwork that needed to be done before it got busy. Tonight I wasn’t really thinking about the paperwork.

Nora was coming back to work for the first time since everything had happened, and even though I’d said it was okay for her to come back, I still wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. I told myself I was just making sure everything was ready, but I knew that wasn’t the real reason.

The bar was quiet except for normal background noise. Someone in the kitchen was getting ready for the night. I could hear glasses being put on the counter. It was all pretty routine, and I wasn’t really paying attention to any of it.

Instead I looked around the room, thinking about how things were laid out. I had two of my guys already inside, where I’d told them to be. The more I looked around, the more I thought we needed to make some changes. I called one of the guards over and told him to move to the other side of the room near the restrooms. I wanted him to be able to see the entrance and the back booths at the same time.

“I want you to keep an eye on that side of the room. You can still see the door from there, and you’ll also be able to see the back booths. That’s usually a quiet part of the bar until later, so we need to make sure nobody is sneaking around.”

He looked where I was pointing and then nodded. After he moved, I went over to the other guard.