Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
“An eye for an eye.”
“Leaves the whole world blind.”
He huffed out a breath. “You’re being intentionally difficult.”
“Maybe.” He might have changed his mind about Callie, and spared Sorcha, but he still wanted Colm’s blood. Nothing she could do or say would turn him from that path.
She did understand, at least in theory. Colm Sheridan was the one responsible for killing Jude’s family. Killing his relatives wouldn’t make Jude feel better. Killing Colm was unlikely to assuage the loss he might never recover from. Can you recover from losing something you never had?
But then, this wasn’t about his father and brothers. It couldn’t be. The pain was too raw, too deep, too angry. It was like her plotting revenge for the death of the grandfather she’d never met. He might be related to her, but he was a stranger. People did not spend their entire lives orchestrating the downfall of someone who murdered a stranger.
But they would do it for a beloved family member—and Jude only had one living. “What happened to your mother?”
He was silent for so long, she thought he wouldn’t respond. “She couldn’t go back to the family home without fear of Colm finishing what he’d started with my father and brothers and their wives, so she ran. She had to resort to whoring to feed us, though she never let the johns near me.” He shook his head. “Before my father and brothers were butchered, she was a happy woman. Carefree. Sweet. Or that’s what I’ve discovered in the years since. One of the few boyfriends she had saw potential in me—in our situation—and trained me when he was around. I picked up skills in all the ways a disreputable kid does while growing up, all with the intent of providing for her so she wouldn’t have to sell herself. It wasn’t enough. Nothing I did would have been enough.”
That wasn’t quite an answer, though her heart ached for him. His mother may have been alive, but she wasn’t living from the sounds of it. He’d been adrift and without any of the things she’d taken for granted—family, roots, security.
He looked at her and then back to the road in front of them. With the darkness now fallen completely and the trees blocking out what little moonlight there was, they might as well have been the last two people in the world. Jude sighed. “She took an entire bottle of pills when I was eighteen.”
Eighteen.
He wouldn’t take sympathy from her, and he certainly wouldn’t take pity, but she squeezed his hand in silent support. Eighteen. He might have been legally an adult, but that didn’t mean he was prepared to lose the only family he had in this world.
What a selfish choice to make.
She knew it was her growing feelings for Jude making her so angry, but that changed nothing. “She shouldn’t have done that. She should have lived for you.”
He squeezed her hand back and then slipped his free. “Call your brother.”
She didn’t want to. She wanted to keep talking, to deal with the fact that she was terrifyingly certain she was pregnant, to come up with some sort of plan. Perhaps an assurance that he wasn’t going to change his mind, drop her on the side of the road, and continue pursuing his vendetta against the Sheridans, either getting himself killed or murdering the love of her brother’s life. There was no winning scenario there. None.
I have to convince him to stop.
The sheer impossibility of that task made it hard to breathe. He had his entire life leading up to this plan, and they’d known each other a few short weeks. Yes, she was likely pregnant with his child, but that didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. She was no stranger to the fact that a large percentage of the world’s population were single mothers. Sloan would have to be living in a fantasy to expect things to work out between them simply because they might have created a life. That wasn’t reality.
Reality was cold and heartless and brutal.
One step at a time. First, she had to ensure that Teague didn’t send anyone after her, and ensure that Sorcha saw justice. She had no doubt that Jude would remove Teague’s men who tried to track her down, and that would only antagonize the issue across the board. Sloan turned to look out the back window to where her suitcase slid around in the bed of the truck. “My phones are in there.”
“Use mine. They shouldn’t be able to trace it if you keep it short.” He passed over the satellite phone that Dmitri Romanov had called him on. She didn’t like thinking that they were on a familiar enough basis that they were calling each other. She didn’t like that at all.
Sloan dialed her brother’s number from memory and listened to it ring, part of her hoping he wouldn’t pick up. Her hopes were in vain. “Teague O’Malley.”