Page 72 of His Deadly Devotion

“Aurora, stop.” I walk over and wrap my arms around her waist.

“Connor, if you don’t let me go, I will stab you,” Aurora hisses, which has me dropping my hold on her. If this woman says she’ll stab you, she fucking means it. “Tell him.” Aurora looks down at Maeve again. “Tell him what your plan was.”

My ex stares at my wife. Wide-eyed. “How? You’re supposed to be dead.”

“What the fuck did you do?” I ask her.

“I… I did it for us.” Maeve looks past Aurora. Over to me.

“What?”

“She told me that she was marrying you, that you loved her,” Aurora says. “I was chained to a fucking wall and she fed me soup. All while planning on taking you from me.”

I can feel the rage radiating off Aurora. I can see it too. “No one can take me from you, princess. You know that.”

“Oh, I know, but she sure as hell doesn’t.” Aurora points the knife at Maeve. “Well, I guess she does now.”

“Maeve?” I ask.

“Connor, don’t let her kill me,” she begs.

“If she doesn’t, I will,” I tell her. “You helped keep my wife captive. You sat back and watched as they beat her.” The more I think about what she’s done, the more I want to take that knife from Aurora and slit Maeve’s throat myself.

“I did it for us, so we could be together. Your father promised me you would marry me,” she chokes out a sob.

Aurora kneels down next to her. “You know, I don’t blame you for loving him. I get it. Trust me, I do. He’s kinda annoyingly irresistible,” she says, her eyes bouncing from me to Maeve. “But that annoying, irresistible asshole is mine. And I’m not about to let anyone try to take him from me.”

Aurora slides the blade from one side of Meave’s throat to the other. In one, quick, clean slice.

Then she stands, flips the blade around, and gives it to me handle first. “Sorry.”

I pull her against my chest. “You have nothing to be sorry about.” I kiss the top of her head while nodding at Patty. I know he’ll organize the cleanup.

Patty is driving. Aurora is lying across the back seat, and I’m playing with her hair as she falls asleep with her head on my lap.

“We’ve got about two hours left,” Patty says.

“You want to switch off?” I offer him.

We’re headed to Galway. It’s usually only a couple of hours’ drive but we’ve made a few detours to set up things along the way. Stopping in Kilkenny to meet up with one of Patty’s uncles, who loaded us with weapons and cash. I could have gotteneverything in Dublin, but I don’t want anyone knowing what I’m doing or where I’m going. For now, they think I’m still in the city. They’ll all be waiting for me to hold an official meeting. My first as boss.

That’ll have to wait. I plan on cleaning house. And to do that, I prefer the element of surprise as well as the advantage that comes with it.

There’s a safe house in Galway. My father told me about it when I was thirteen, saying not even my mother knew he had it. Which serves me fucking perfectly right now. That’s where I plan on hiding out for a few weeks. To plan and let Aurora fucking heal.

The amount of bruising on her body is sickening. I wish I was surprised, but I’m not. I’ve seen my father’s brutality. I didn’t think they’d go as far as they did without his preferred audience, though. That’s not something they’ve done before. I know she says they didn’t rape her. I want to believe that they didn’t. I have to believe that they didn’t. But there’s that little doubt in the back of my head that’s telling me she wouldn’t want me to know. That she’d lie to protect me. And I have no way of fucking finding out the truth.

“Patty, when they were… Did they… Do you know if they…”Fuck me, I can’t even say the word out loud.

“No,” he says. “Your father wouldn’t let them go that far until you were there to see it.”

I rest my head on the seat.Thank God for that.Not that what she went through wasn’t bad enough, but add that kind of violation on top of the rest of the abuse, and I’m not sure even Aurora would be able to come back from it.

34

It’s been two weeks since we arrived in Galway. No one knows where we are. Connor has driven me a few hours away once a week, so I can message my parents and let them know not to worry about me. Assure them that I’m okay. Then, just like the first time, he destroys the phone and we drive back to the little safe house.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss my family. I want to go home. More than that, though, I want Connor to be able to come home with me. I won’t return to New York without him.