Page 9 of Defiant Queen (Mount Trilogy 2)
One of his strong arms wraps around my waist and his free hand cradles the back of my head, pressing it against his chest. “Shhhh.”
“Don’t tell me to shhhh.” My shaky response is weak but still snappish.
“My little Irish hellion. You’ll fight to your last breath.”
“So would you.”
Something presses against the top of my head, and I think it’s his chin.
“You’re finally starting to understand.” He keeps his tone quiet and steady, but his words set me off again.
I shove both palms against his chest and he drops his hold on me, allowing me to go free.
I’m under no illusions anymore. Nothing in my life happens without his permission. Well, almost nothing.
“I don’t understand anything, obviously, because if I did, I wouldn’t have seen a ghost tonight when my dead husband showed up at my door.”
Mount’s expression, which for a flash of a moment held something soft, hardens. “He was supposed to stay dead.”
I take another step back in the direction of my bedroom and cross my arms over my chest. “He said you paid him. The loan that you used as leverage on me, he said you gave him that money on the condition that he’d disappear. He said you faked his death! Is that true?”
“Yes.” Mount steps toward me without a hint of remorse in his expression.
Tremors threaten my body again as he comes closer. I swallow, not sure I want to ask the next question, because I already know the answer. But some stupid part of me needs to hear him admit the truth.
“That night, at the masquerade, when I wrote that note for Brett to come, it was really you, wasn’t it?”
He takes another step toward me. “Yes.”
My hands clench into fists. “Why? How could you do that knowing I thought it was him?”
Mount’s expression, already hard, turns to granite. The muscle in his jaw ticks. “I thought you knew it was me.”
“That’s impossible.” The answer comes out on a stunned breath.
His dark eyes narrow as he shakes his head. “I got your note. Not Brett. I assumed you were instructed to write it. I thought it was part of the game, and you were the gift left for me.”
I haul back in shock at his words. “A gift? Like you’re some kind of warlord people deliver women to as prizes?”
Instead of answering my question, Mount turns to look at Scar and jerks his head toward my apartment door. “Wait outside. Make sure we’re secure. Handle any threats.”
“What—”
I don’t even have a chance to form a question before Mount prowls forward, stalking me until we’re in my bedroom. He kicks the door shut behind him.
I’m trapped in my room with the man who thought I’d been given to him as a gift.
And to top it off, my dead husband isn’t dead.
Nothing makes sense anymore, especially the fact that I’m more scared of the man I married than the brutal stranger towering over me.
Mount
“Tell me everything.”
My words are a razor-sharp demand as I turn on the light. Seeing her in this shithole apartment, shaking in fear, fuels my rage against the man who never should have gotten close to her again.
Hours ago, she was perfectly dressed in designer clothes, defying me like an empress, and now her hair is tangled in her face and her eyes are red from crying. All because of him.
