Page 63 of Dark Reunion

CHAPTER 23

MAEVE

Maeve’s room was a palace and a prison.

Silk sheets, carved wardrobe, and a vanity with gold filigree curling like vines. Dresses shimmered like water hung in the closet, tags still on them. A chandelier threw prisms across the walls when the breeze slipped through the balcony doors.

And yet, the windows were barred. The door had two guards posted outside. Every polished surface reflected not her beauty, but her captivity.

Maeve shoved a jewelry box off the vanity. It clattered, spilling pearls across the floor like marbles. She stomped across them barefoot, uncaring. She wanted them to hurt. She wanted something real. Most of all she wanted to know if Wolf was okay. She laid her hand on her stomach and closed her eyes.

Please let him be okay.

Eyes fluttering open, she glared at the room and her chest burned with rage. Not just at Carlos, though he deserved every bullet the world could offer, but at Dean…Mercurio…whatever his name really was.

He’d been in the office when they dragged her in. His face had seemed shocked, but then he’d stood there mostly silent, letting Carlos gloat, letting her be paraded. At dinner, he’d moved like a soldier, protecting them when the bullets started flying. And it didn’t match, none of it matched.

How could the boy who once saved her also be the man who let those men chase her down and drag her back? How could he let them hurt Wolf?

She pressed her forehead to the cool barred window and whispered, “Wolf, where are you?”

The door clicked.

She spun, fists ready, throat tight with the scream she’d been holding back, the gun Dean had given her a solid weight hidden against her back.

Dean slipped inside, closing the door with a soft click behind him. He turned and it was as though his shoulders filled the room, like an intrusion and a shield all at once. She didn’t remember him like this. All she had were memories of a tall, skinny boy. But the boy had become a man, and his intelligent gaze cut into her.

The guards hadn’t stopped him. That alone made her wary.

“Get out,” she snapped, pulling out the gun he’d given her.

“I can’t,” he said, voice calm. “Not yet, and I didn’t give you that to use against me. It’s to protect you from my father if he comes in here. Put it away in case someone sees.”

She slowly did as Dean said and then paced away from him, running her hands through her hair, tugging hard enough to sting.

“You shouldn’t even be here, or did your father send you to placet me into handing my body over for him to use?”

He screwed up his face like he just ate something sour. “Please don’t compare me to that fucking asshole. I’m not here for him,” Dean cut in.

That made her smirk, but she wasn’t going to let him know that that. She turned, eyes blazing. “Then who the hell are you here for? Because you abandoned me years ago and suddenly, I’m kidnapped and here you are like fucking deja vu.”

He flinched, just barely, but enough that she saw it.

“I never stopped watching,” he informed. “Never stopped protecting, even when it looked like I was gone.”

“Bullshit.” She laughed, pacing toward the vanity, opening and slamming a drawer shut just to hear something crack. “You left me. You left me in that firehouse like garbage on a doorstep. Do you know what happened after? Do you know what it’s like to be passed around from one rotten foster home to another? To be used, raped, broken, told you’re nothing over and over until you start to believe it?”

Her voice shook, but she needed him to hear this. The tears burned hot and wild, and she let them fall.

Dean didn’t move closer. He stayed where he was, letting her fury batter him.

“I drowned myself in anything I could and anyone who promised to make the pain stop and the voice in my head go away, even if it was only for five fucking minutes,” she spat. “And where were you, huh? Watching? From a distance? ‘Always watching.’ Is that what you’re telling me? Like some goddamn ghost who couldn’t be bothered to step out of the shadows?”

His chest rose and fell once, slow. “Yes. But I lost track of you while I as in the army. I was deployed multiple times, and was gone for six months to a year at a time. When home, I’d look for you, but I had no idea that anything like that was happening.”

“Yeah, well it did.” She crossed her arms. “So, what happened? You get out of the army and come back here to daddy?”

His face shifted and the calm was ripped away, showing off the rage and pain under his mask. “No.”