Deadline to Damnation (Sons of Templar MC 7)

Liam’s eyes moved to my hands and he was off the bed in a slow blink. My hands were no longer my own, they were in his grip, in his possession.

He turned them over and let out a curse at the crescent-shaped cuts in my palms. They were bleeding. I was happy about that.

“Peaches,” he murmured.

I yanked my hands back. “Don’t touch me,” I hissed. “And don’t call me that.” I skirted around him so there wasn’t a door behind me, so he couldn’t back me into a corner. “I need to get out of here. I need you to tell them that I won’t talk. That I won’t snitch. Then I need to order a taxi, get to my car and go…” I trailed off. Where the fuck was I going to go? I couldn’t go home. Not to my true home. Not with the big, ugly rotten truth I’d been exposed to. I couldn’t tell a big, ugly rotten lie to Kent and Mary when I saw them. That I still believed their son was dead.

No way could I tell them that he was alive either.

It might kill them.

Not that the son they’d cherished and mourned was alive. No, that he’d made them believe he was dead.

“So I can leave,” I finished, figuring I’d sort it out once this was all in my rear vision mirror.

“Peac—Caroline, I can’t let you leave. Not without an explanation.”

I stared at him. “There is no explanation,” I snapped. “Not one that will do anything. That will excuse this. I don’t need to hear it. I don’t want to. I just want to leave.”

My voice had a desperate quality now. Despite the fact I’d moved from the wall, Liam had cornered me. With the truth. With my own pain. I wanted to claw my skin off to escape.

He looked torn. Tortured. Fists clenched at his sides. Tattoos moving with the tenseness of his sculpted muscles. Scar tearing through his face.

I itched to touch it. To know what happened to him that scored through his skin.

But that wasn’t my story to know.

This wasn’t a man for me to know.

The door was right there, to my right. I could open it. Leave. Run.

Not once in my life, in my career had I run from a story.

Not once had I imagined I might run from Liam.

And I was going to do just that until the door in question slammed open and Claw tore through it, eyes wild, feral and on me.

He had me backed up against the wall before I could fully fathom what was going on.

“Who the fuck are you workin’ for, bitch?” he demanded, gripping my throat with a violence I didn’t think the man who’d flirted with me over the past month was capable of.

But I knew better than anyone that any man, any human was capable of anything. Or everything, given the right circumstances.

Claw was ripped off me before he could prove my point.

Liam’s fist flew into his face, the crunch of bone against flesh echoing through the room.

“You tell me what the fuck is going on before I continue beating the fucking life out of you,” he said, voice still. Calm. Cold.

Frightening.

I’d heard some dangerous people speak. I’d interviewed them. It had been disconcerting. But most of the time, I’d been able to discover the human underneath the monster the world saw. Because monsters were all just humans, somewhere.

But in Liam’s voice, I didn’t hear it.

The human.

Or maybe I was listening for the boy I used to know.

I definitely didn’t hear him.

And it frightened me like nothing else had.

Claw’s nose was bleeding.

He didn’t seem to notice.

“She’s a fuckin’ journalist, man,” he hissed, eyes wild on me. “She’s been doin’ a fuckin’ story on us. Wire tapped into her hard drive. She had shit on us. On the club. Notes.”

Shit.

I wasn’t stupid enough to leave physical notes lying around, in case anyone decided to check out my apartment. My computer was encrypted. I didn’t store anything in the cloud because I wasn’t an idiot. But I shouldn’t have been surprised that the Sons had what I guessed was a world-class hacker.

Liam froze and gaped at me. There was accusation in his stare that he had no right to fling at me, but that hit me just the same.

I jutted my chin up in defiance.

He had no right to say anything about my choice of profession.

He had no right to anything, as far as I was concerned.

Liam shook his head at that head tilt with a familiarity that he wasn’t entitled to.

Then he ran his hand through his hair and began pacing. “Fuck,” he hissed through his teeth.

“Fuck is right,” Claw said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He was regarding me with pure hatred.

I was used to such looks. So I didn’t waver.