Page 128 of Chains of Recompense
The blood drains from my face.Oh, God, what did I just do?
He shifts slightly, concern sharpening his gaze, and my heart slams against my ribs, panic exploding inside me all at once.
I got so caught up in the moment, I said too much.
I all but blurted the secret I’ve been keeping all this time—and Raf was listening closely enough to catch it.
32
RAFAEL
I know the second the words leave Aisling’s mouth that I’ve stumbled upon something I wasn’t meant to know.
There’s a hitch in her breath, a fraction of a second where her eyes go wide and her face drains of color, like I’ve reached inside her and touched something raw and alive.
The warmth between us collapses. The bed feels too big. The air turns thin.
I sit up slowly, sheets pooling around my waist as my heart starts to pound. “Aisling. What did you mean?” I press.
She shakes her head too quickly. “Nothing. I didn’t mean anything. I just meant hypothetically.” Her hands clutch the sheet to her chest like armor. She won’t meet my eyes.
“You said there’s no better feeling than becoming a mother,” I say carefully. “Not that you imagine it. Not that you want it someday. You said it like you already know.”
Silence presses down on me until my chest tightens.
“Aisling,” I repeat, sharper now. “Look at me.”
She does, and the fear in her eyes hits me like a blow—there’s no guilt, no calculation there, just pure, unfiltered terror.
My pulse spikes. “Tell me the truth.”
“I am,” she says, voice trembling. “I didn’t mean it the way you think.”
But I can see the wobble in her chin. She’s lying—it’s the same tell that gave her away on the night I learned her last name.
God damn it, she’s doing it again.
And the chaos of emotion that rises inside me is enough to choke the air from my lungs.
“You’re lying,” I say, the word bitter on my tongue. “And you’re bad at it.”
Her breath stutters. She shakes her head again, eyes shining. “Please don’t do this.”
The plea snaps something in me.
“Don’t do this? Like I’m the one responsible for bringing us back to the same damn place we were five years ago?” I say, anger rising fast and hot. “You don’t get to say something like that and expect me to pretend I didn’t hear it. Tell me what you’re hiding.”
She presses her lips together, shaking now, her skin beneath her freckles as white as a sheet. I’ve never seen her like this. Not when we were younger. Not even when I walked away.
My chest aches with a terrible, creeping dread. Then the truth hits me like a club upside the dead. “Is Riley your daughter?”
The words feel insane the moment they leave my mouth. I almost laugh at myself.
Riley couldn’t be.
She’s Aisling’s sister, the Murray family’s youngest whoopsie child.
Everyone knows that.
