Page 34 of Honest Neglect

We arrived outside the diner, and I could tell from the way she tensed that she didn’t want to go inside. I opened the door and took her hand. I didn’t want her hiding out from this town, from these people. She belonged here as much as the McCarthy family did, maybe even more, and I would be damned if I let her forget that.

“It’s going to be okay,” I promised her quietly as we headed to the door. Inside, the place was mercifully quiet, so I didn’t have to deal with the stares that were starting to become normal to me now. We took a seat in the booth as far from the door as we could—and then I saw her eyes widen.

“Oh, my...” she gasped. “Warren, it’s...”

She looked past me to the other side of the diner, and I turned to see what had caught her attention. My stomach dropped when I figured it out. Shit—it was Mark. Mark McCarthy, sitting there in a booth a couple of dozen feet from us. He had clearly seen us when we had walked in, and he was grinning at us now, clearly enjoying the terror on her face.

I felt a surge of rage, even though I knew it wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I wasn’t going to let him look at her like that, sneering at her as though he felt like he still owned her. Just because they had managed to get her away from me once didn’t mean I was ever going to give them the chance to do it again. I would fight him on this. And I would do it right here, right now, if that’s what it took.

I was on my feet before I even knew what I was doing, closing the distance between the two of us quickly. I could hear Lily calling after me, but her words seemed distant. I wanted to give Mark a piece of my mind—to stick him with the same fear he had left her with after he had taken her. Slamming my hands down on his table, I glowered at him.

“You should go,” I told him, and he chuckled.

“I’m sorry if your girl can’t handle being out in public like this,” he remarked. “But that’s not my problem. I have as much right to be here as you do.”

“Stay away from Lily,” I warned him, but he raised his eyebrows at me, playing innocence.

“I’m sorry about what your girlfriend went through,” he remarked, shaking his head. “Having that manic episode and running off to the woods...she’s lucky something worse didn’t happen to her.”

“Manic episode?” I spat back. Was that what he had been telling people? Another surge of rage hit my chest, and I tried to quell it. I couldn’t let him get to me, I couldn’t. No matter how much I just wanted to swing for him right now, I knew I had to restrain myself, and I wasn’t going to let my emotions get the better of me.

“Yes, that’s what everyone’s been talking about,” he added. “She ran off into the middle of nowhere...she was lucky nothing worse happened. You’ll need to keep a close eye on her to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Should she even be out and about right now?”

He glanced over in her direction, and I hoped she couldn’t hear what he was saying. That was the last thing she needed right now. I didn’t want her to have even more ammunition to torture herself with when it came to imagining what people might have been saying about her. She had already been through enough as it was.

I narrowed my eyes at him. I wasn’t sure I had ever hated anyone as much as I hated him right now. I wanted to rip his head from his shoulders and end him right then and there, but I had to control myself. I had to keep myself calm. I couldn’t react to the way he was taunting me. I knew it was what he wanted, an assault so he could throw me back in prison and have access to Lily again without my protection.

“We’re not going to stop,” I told him, my voice shaking slightly as I tried to contain the rage. “We’re going to keep digging, Mark. And you know as well as I do that there is a hell of a lot to come out about your family, isn’t there?”

His face flickered for a moment. I knew I had managed to get to him. He didn’t want to admit it, but I was right. He couldn’t keep getting away with everything he had been doing; there was a point where it had to come out—and when it did, the reputation he had made for himself would be ruined. Nobody would fear him enough anymore to do as he asked when he was in prison, and all the power he had cultivated would puff into nothingness in an instant.

I felt my phone buzz in my pocket and pulled it out, praying it was something from Frank or Leroy—something I could throw in Mark’s face to make him think twice about trying to intimidate Lily and me. And, when I saw the message that was waiting for me, a big-ass grin spread across my lips.

Leroy had found her. The girl who had run away—the girl who had taken the restraining order out against Tony: Marcy. And he was telling me that he was bringing her back to Oakville. I didn’t know what we were going to do when we got her there, but I would sure as hell take it.

“What is it?” Mark demanded, and I could hear the shift in his tone of voice as he tried to work out just what was going on with me. I leveled my gaze to his again.

“Just got some news,” I replied calmly. “Looks like you should start enjoying your last meal as a free man, Mark.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, his face draining of blood. All at once, the power had shifted, and now I was the one holding all the cards. I wasn’t going to let him forget it.

“Don’t you worry about it,” I replied, tucking my phone away. His eyes darted to it, clearly trying to get a read on what news I had just received.

I made my way back to the table with Lily, and she looked up at me, eyes wide.

“What happened?” she asked. “He looks like you just told him something terrible...”

I glanced over my shoulder, back at Mark, who had his phone pressed to his ear. His face was red, and I could tell he was doing everything he could to work out what information I had just come into that had me so confident. After a few minutes, he got to his feet and hurried to the door, firing one more look in our direction. I lifted a hand to wave at him, leaning back in my seat. This was way, way more satisfying than I had thought it would be, and we were only just getting started.

But I wanted Mark and Tony to be as terrified as Lily had been when they’d taken her—as scared as I was knowing there was nothing I could do to get to her. I wanted them looking over their shoulders at every turn, knowing something was coming for them.

And knowing there wasn’t a damn thing they could do to stop it.

I turned to Lily and grinned.

“I have some good news,” I told her.

Chapter Twenty