Page 26 of Stolen Rebel

But it’s also just different enough from me that it makes my blood boil.

Someone purposely wrote this letter and sent it to Liam pretending to be me.

Why though? Why would someone do that? I read it again, and again, and the more I read it, the more my blood threatens to melt my skin from the inside. I can’t believe someone pretended to be me.

Yes, you can.

I can’t believe they took away my agency over the situation and broke up with Liam on my behalf.

Except you can, Rowan.

Isn’t that exactly what Brian did when he took me from Ireland to protect me? He’s my boyfriend on paper, my warden in practice, and a stranger in every way that actually matters.

Most of all, though, I can’t believe Liam fucking bought it. I mean it’s good, but it’s not me.

For a man who claims to know the real me inside out and back to front, he sure missed some tell-tale signs in the letter that screamed it wasn’t me. I’d never use words like henceforth.

Hell. Never mind the vocabulary, I’d never fucking break up with someone that I was madly in love with over snail mail. Does he think so little of me to believe I would?

He knows me, he gets me, he knows how I speak and write and what I’d say if I did type up something like that. It’s obvious he’s blinded to the truth by his fury and his hurt, but if he stopped long enough to peel back the anger and let the truth come through, he’d see what I see.

That he can’t—or won’t—hurts. A bone-deep ache that not even rubbing my chest can get rid of. My eyes fill with tears I refuse to shed. Someone decided my voice was theirs to use. My choices, my words, my ending has all been rewritten without my knowledge.

No. Fuck that. I don’t belong to Liam, and I sure as hell don’t belong to Brian. If people want to play games with my life—I’ll play back.

That letter had to have been written by Brian. He’s the only person who knows every detail of the situation that led me to run.

Another thread of doubt about my handler joins the others forging to the front of my mind. Five years of control dressed up as protection, and now this. He didn’t just take my life—he tried to rewrite who I am. The doubt isn’t a thread anymore. It’s a pattern, one I’m done ignoring.

Holding me hostage because of a fucking letter I never wrote is ridiculous, even for Liam. Is this really about revenge? Or is he so desperate for female company that he’d kidnap me just to have someone to talk to? Someone to taunt. Is that the only way he can make women look at his fucking smug face?

Unfortunately, it’s also a fucking gorgeous face.

A pang of regret spears my chest at the jagged scar running down his face. People are cruel enough to let that be a turnoff. Not me, I’d love him no matter what he looks like. Or at least, I would, if I still held a candle for him. Which, of course, I don’t because he’s an arsehole who kidnapped me and locked me in a room like a certified psychopath.

We don’t hold space for kidnappers and psychopaths. I’m sure there’s a rule about that somewhere, if only my friend, Willow, were around to remind me of it.

Fuck. Another barb of grief stabs me directly in the chest. Willow. I miss her.

I miss the idea of friends, the few people I dared to exchange more than a “hello” with in London were just shadows, but they were my shadows, not Brian’s.

I refold the letter and place it back where it has lived for the last few days so I don’t tear it into tiny pieces and throw it in Liam’s face like confetti. Two men. Two cages. Different methods, but they both come down to the same result. I can’t break out of one just to fall back into the other. But I do need to break out of this place.

I leap to my feet, ready to beat the shit out of the door until that asshole comes up here and faces me. Right as I approach it, the bolt squeaks, the door opens and crashes into me, throwing me onto my arse.

The angry tears I’d been trying, so far successfully, to avoid spill down my cheeks as the air bursts from my lungs with a loud “fuck.”

Sorcha rushes to help me off the floor. “Aw shite. Are you okay?” She pulls me up and guides me to the edge of the bed, checking me over because now the dam has broken, the tears won’t stop. And of course she thinks it’s from pain because I just got hit by a door.

I can’t speak, the shudders rolling through my body are too violent to form words. So I simply nod.

She offers a sympathetic smile and sits next to me on the bed. “Aye. You definitely seem fine. The rivers of tears pouring down your face and the anguish in your eyes are nothing but a diversion tactic, aren’t they?”

This makes me crack a smile through my tears and breaks the emotional pool of agony I was sinking into. If the situation was different, I could like this woman.

I might like her anyway but I’ll never say it aloud. He’ll use that against me somehow, too. Shit. Maybe he already has. She’s been gone for a few days… Did he…?

Despite the question burning my tongue, I can’t ask it. Even my suspicion could tip her off to the fact I know his personality enough to guess it’s something he’d do to get at me.