Page 10 of Aidan (The Doherty Mafia)
But five years ago—we had no beef with the Barons.
It didn’t make sense.
Was the story about her mother a lie? Was she working for them and I was her new case?
Or did they have something on her they were using against her? To make her work for them?
Every possible scenario ran through my mind, but I still couldn’t decide what was really going on.
The man grabbed Leah’s arm and even then, she didn’t try to get away from him. They turned as they spoke and I couldn’t tell if he was threatening her. What was being said?
If I got any closer, they would have seen me.
Fuck!
Then it was over. The Baron guy got back in his car and Leah ran up the steps into the building. Like she couldn’t get away fast enough from him.
He drove away.
I waited another fifteen minutes, but she didn’t emerge from the building. I wrestled with the idea of texting her. Demanding to know exactly what was going on. Whatever she was up to—she was busted.
But I didn’t text her.
That would have been stupid of me.
I needed to wait and see how this played out. Whatever she had planned for me, I wasn’t going to fall for it.
But now the glass wall was shattered. I knew she had an ulterior motive for being here. For lying to me. She wanted something from me. She was working with the Barons—willingly or not.
I couldn’t trust her anymore.
No matter how much I wanted to fuck her again. One last time—I knew she was playing a game.
For all these years, I had clung to the memory of a woman who was back in my life to use me.
I could feel the fury coursing through my veins.
I would find a way to make her pay.
Six
Leah
The meeting with Aidan was hard on me. I could sense he was suspicious, but I hoped he would want to see me again. That he would want to keep talking. That was what the Barons wanted—for Aidan to keep talking to me until he gave me some vital information they could use in this war between the two families.
I didn’t know what kind of information I was supposed to collect. I didn’t know what they would use the information for. At this point—it was just a matter of survival for me.
And I hated the fact that I was on a journey of deceiving Aidan again. But I felt like I had no choice. No matter which way I looked at it, I was screwed.
The guy who met me outside my apartment made that much clear to me.
I tried to explain to him how I was trying my best to break down Aidan’s barriers and get him to trust me again. That maybe the plan might not even work since he despised me now. But the Barons were impatient. They wanted quick results. He threatened me and warned me that if I didn’t have something to give them fast enough, then my mother didn’t have long to live.
He said they already came up with plans on how to kidnap her from the hospital and make her death long and painful.
Back in my apartment, I allowed myself to cry again.
I did this for the sake of my mother. The same mother who had rejected me, sent me away, forced me into a situation where I had no choice but to give up my baby. And now I had to save her from a gruesome death. I had to betray the only man who had ever cared for me.
I hoped Aidan wouldn’t contact me again. I hoped he would just forget about me.
But he didn’t.
When I stepped out of the shower, I saw another text from him.
Meet me at the bar in an hour
A part of me was relieved. Aidan was still open to seeing me again. Did I still have a hold on him? Did he still want me the way he did when we first met?
Or was this a trap? Did he want me to pay for how I’d hurt him?
I got dressed and left the apartment.
I was going to see him at the bar we used to hang out in five years ago. I tried to push away happy memories of our nights out together. How we used to spend hours talking and laughing. The first time I got up on the table and danced. How I would ride on his bike, clinging to him as he took me back to his place and made love to me in his bed.
Those nights with him were the happiest moments of my life. Back when I thought I still had a chance of a future with him.
Now, a night with him was going to be one of manipulation and deceit.
I wondered if he knew it too.
I saw him the moment I walked into the bar. He was at the table in the corner where we used to sit.
