Page 25 of Stolen Rebel

What would she do if I did? Run from the room? Stay and watch? Take over?

Jesus, dickhead. Brain out of your fucking trousers.

“You might have the dog fooled, but I can smell a lie a mile off. Remember that.”

This time she moves, putting much needed space between us that I fucking hate.

I want her. I despise that I want her. That even after everything she did to me, the lies she told back then and now, my heart aches for the woman I believed her to be.

If my enemies could see me now, pussy whipped by a woman who tried to kill me, they’d form a plan to take over Mahoney turf, believing I’d gone fucking soft.

“What lie have I supposedly told now? I’m losing count.”

Another flash of the real woman behind the fake persona. The corner of my mouth lifts. I flip through the pages of the book while holding it just out of her reach. “A timid mouse like Erin has no need for a manual on revolution and revolt. This is a Rebel book.”

Her cheeks bloom with color. “I told you, I only just started it. It’s boring actually. I’m more into thrillers or a good romance.”

“Romance, huh? Like the idea of happy endings, do you, Rebel? Funny how you could’ve had one of your own, but you blew it. Soon, you’ll tell me why.” I turn around and open the door, gesturing. “After you.”

With her head low, she trudges down the hallway and obediently enters her room.

“Here.”

She pivots, her eyes dropping to the book I’m holding out. “I told you, it’s boring.”

“Boring or not, I’d advise you to study it well because you’ll need every ‘radical’ trick in the book to survive what I have planned for you.”

I toss the book on the bed and close her door. This time, I make a performance out of slamming the deadbolt into its housing, a deafeningly loud message that I’ve curtailed her roaming. For now.

As I walk down the stairs, I almost laugh. Plan. What fucking plan? The more time I spend in Rowan’s company, any idea of retribution slips further away.

The truth is, I’m royally screwed, and right now, I don’t know what the hell to do about it.

Chapter 15

ROWAN

I’m bored out of my fucking tree.

Two nights have passed since Liam slid that deadbolt shut, and other than mealtimes, I’m a bird locked in a cage.

I’m also cleaner than I’ve ever been because the only thing I can do is fucking shower or have a bath. And pace back and forward.

The carpet in this room seems to already be wearing thin, not nearly as thin as my patience. I know it’s a power trip.

He’s testing me. Like putting something in the microwave for too long, he’s waiting for me to explode. It’s the only thing keeping me from beating on the door until he shows up and slapping him upside the head with the two-liter bottle of water I’m given every morning.

Controlling prick.

My skin feels too tight, my chest hurts, and I’m exhausted because I’ve spent every night since he took me, wishing for my own goddamn pillow. The sheets are scratchy, the towels are rough and worn, and the shower gel smells like shit. But what scrapes most of all is Liam’s fucking arrogant, holier-than-thou voice at almost every meal as he tries to strip back my layers and needle at the Rebel he knows is underneath.

I’ve been staring at the folded paper on my bedside table for no less than an hour. I know the only control I have left over the situation is in not reading it, but the boredom and curiosity have nibbled on my nerves like they’re live wires.

I think it’s time.

I pick up the page by the corner like it might somehow electrocute me, carefully unfold it with trembling hands, and steel myself against whatever lies Liam Mahoney has written on this piece of paper to make me crumble.

It’s a neatly typed letter and not put together out of cut up newspapers and magazines like I anticipated. Any anxiety quickly turns to fury. The letter tells Liam we’re done, that I set him up as a warning not to come after me. It’s cold, detached, verging on cruel, and sounds just enough like me for me to kind of understand why Liam is so utterly furious at me. God, no wonder he hates me.