Always You (Adair Family 3)
What on earth was going on?
I hoped what Marcello had to tell me wasn’t anything too dramatic. I’d had enough drama to last me a lifetime.
Crossing the yard, muddy from last night’s rainfall, I hurried up the cabin steps and burst in. “I hope this—”
I froze. Everything in me froze.
Written across the back wall of the cabin in what looked like dripping blood:
* * *
You were once so very dear to me
But now so very dead to me
The note Lachlan received from Lucy and Fergus, along with a deer’s carcass at Ardnoch last year.
It hadn’t been Lee Kilmany tormenting me.
I whipped around to run from the cabin and a scream choked in my throat at the sight of the man standing in the doorway.
Everything in me recoiled in horror.
Guy Lewis, my bastard ex-boyfriend, sneered as he stepped inside and slammed the door shut behind him. I watched as he turned the lock and I stepped back, eyes darting everywhere for an escape, a weapon, anything.
“You know, I didn’t think this day would come,” Guy said conversationally as he followed me in. “When I started sending the notes, I honestly didn’t think you would take it that seriously. But of course, I underestimated your protective big brothers and that arsehole Galbraith.”
He had sent the notes.
Robyn had been right.
“Why?” I asked, even though I couldn’t give a shit what his excuses were for tormenting me. The psychopath.
I needed to stall while I tried to think. Think.
I’d left my phone in the car.
What a moron!
“Why?” Guy stopped, staring at me like I was a moron too. “Your brother ruined me, Arro. For fucking around with his precious sister, he ruined my reputation. No good restaurant in this country will have me.”
“Then why stay?”
“That’s not the point,” he snarled. “He fucking ruined my life because I dated his sister. Where’s the justice in that?”
“We both know that’s not why. And like I said, you could have returned to Australia.”
“That’s not the point!” he repeated furiously.
Something dawned on me. “You can’t go home, can you? What happened, Guy? You make too much of a habit of beating up women whose families want to kill you for it, and now home is no longer an option?”
“You know nothing!” he spat. “I won’t be chased out of an entire country because of a piece of snatch!”
I flinched at the word, glowering back at him. Fear thrummed through my blood, my heart, my body trembling with it, but like hell would I let him see. “You’re a coward who beat me up for no good reason. It’s not my fault you pissed off Lachlan because you beat on his sister.”
The punch was so quick, I had no time to move or block it.
Pain exploded across my face and then my back. Ringing filled my ears, and it took a second for a sense of reality to return. Cheekbone and eye throbbing, I looked up from where I was now sprawled on the floor beside Marcello’s desk. My lower back ached where it had hit the desk corner.