Page 84 of Vicious Betrayal

"I tried not to give them anything," I say desperately. "I tried to stall. But they kept pushing. They kept threatening. And when I found out I was pregnant—" My voice breaks completely. "When I found out I was pregnant, I thought maybe that would be the end of it. I thought maybe they'd let me go. But they didn't. They said the pregnancy made me more valuable. They said you'd marry me to protect the baby, and that would give me even more access to your life."

Cormac's face has gone completely blank, all emotion wiped away. It's somehow worse than the anger.

"They threatened my baby," I choke out. "Reyes told me that if I didn't finish the job, they'd take my baby away the second it was born. They'd put it in foster care, and I'd never see it again. And my family would still go to prison. So I had no choice, Cormac. I had no fucking choice but to keep going, to keep lying to you, to keep breaking my own heart every single day because the alternative was losing everything."

The tears are falling harder, words pouring out of me in a desperate rush. "I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted any of this. When you proposed to me, when you told me you loved me, it was the best and worst moment of my entire life because I wanted it so badly and I knew I didn't deserve it. I knew I was going to destroy you, and there was nothing I could do to stop it."

The silence that follows is deafening. Cormac just stares at me, his face unreadable, his expression carved from stone.

"Is that really the truth?" he asks finally, his voice so quiet I almost don't hear it over the rain. "Or is this just another manipulation? Another way to make me feel sorry for you so I'll let my guard down?"

"It's the truth," I whisper. "I don't know how to make you believe me, Cormac, but it's the truth. I never wanted to hurt you. I truly wanted you. I still want you. And they forced me to twist something real into something awful, and I hate myself for it more than you could ever hate me."

He doesn't respond. He just sits there, staring at me with those unreadable eyes, and I can't tell if he believes me, or if he thinks I'm lying, or if he's decided that it doesn't matter either way.

The storm rages on outside, and inside the empty cabin, the silence between us feels like it might swallow me whole.

25

CORMAC

The silence in the cabin is thick enough to choke on. Outside, the storm continues its relentless assault. I don't move. My back is pressed against the rough-hewn timber of the wall, my bare shoulder throbbing with every beat of my heart. The stitches pull tightly against my skin, weeping a thin trickle of blood that I don't bother to wipe away.

I stare at Oksana. She sits curled on the floorboards a few feet from me, her knees pulled tight against her chest. Her blonde hair is still damp from the shower, sticking in pale strands to the curve of her neck and cheek. Her eyes are red-rimmed, swollen from crying, watching me with a dread that makes my jaw ache from grinding my teeth.

They threatened my baby. They told me they'd take it away the second it was born.

The words echo through my skull, battering against the walls I've only just managed to rebuild. In my world, loyalty is everything. I’ve put bullets in men who turned on Lachlan. I’ve broken bones and buried bodies of people who thought they could play both sides of the street. I understand the rules. I enforce them.

But I also understand what a man—or a woman—will do when someone puts a gun to the head of the people they love.

If someone had Declan or the men who rely on me with their backs against the wall, there’s no line I wouldn't cross. There’s no lie I wouldn't tell, no oath I wouldn't shred to pieces to keep them breathing. I know federal prosecutors, and I know they find the single thing you can't bear to lose, then twist it until your bones splinter.

She's only twenty, I think. A girl caught between an older sister who sold out her own blood and two federal agents who saw her as nothing more than a convenient lever to crack open the Gallagher-Murphy organization. And then she got pregnant with my child, handing Reyes the ultimate collateral.

She didn't have a choice. Not really. In her mind, she was choosing between my destruction and the literal survival of her unborn child and her family.

The realization doesn't give me any relief. It feels like a second knife slipping between my ribs, right next to the first one.

Understanding why she did it doesn't change the reality of what happened. It doesn't undo the fact that she searched my home and accessed my laptop, or that she stole from me, or that she was lying from the minute she showed back up in front of my house. Even if her desire and feelings were real, she was lying through it the entire time.

"Cormac?" she whispers.

I drag a slow breath into my lungs. "I believe you."

She flinches, as if she expected a shout or a blow instead of quiet words. "You do?"

"I know how the feds work," I say, my voice low and flat, stripped of the fury that burned through me earlier. "I know Reyes. I know the kind of pressure they put on people who don't have the muscle to push back. You did what you thought you had to do to keep your family out of prison and our baby in your arms."

A ragged sob escapes her, and she buries her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking violently. "I'm sorry," she chokes out. "I'm so sorry, Cormac. I hated every second of it. I hated what I was doing to you."

I look away from her, staring at the rain washing down the window. "Sorry doesn't fix this, Oksana," I say quietly. "It doesn't change where we are. It doesn't change the fact that my life, Declan's organization, and every man who works for us are in the crosshairs right now because of you."

She lifts her head, tears streaking her pale skin. "I tried to give them nothing⁠—"

"You gave them enough to track us here," I cut in. "You gave them enough to know we were in Greece. You gave them enough to put agents on our tail from the moment we touched down in the States."

She shrinks back slightly, swallowing hard, unable to deny it.