Page 105 of Liberated By Sin
His fist rocked the small table. “Sit. Down. No one has seen that footage yet but me, and if you want things to slide in your favor, I suggest you cooperate.”
“Fuck you.”
The detective’s mouth curved in a crooked smile. “I don’t find joy in this, but it is my job, Amara. Your boyfriend’s little cleaning crew left this ring behind.”
“You were in my apartment?”
“That’s irrelevant.”
“You fucked up. Unless you have a warrant, you can shove that ring wherever you think it’ll fit best.”
Raymond’s dark eyes thinned as he exhaled a sharp breath. “Luca Leone was human garbage. But he’s just the means to an end. What you did, what I know you’re capable of, can’t go unpunished.”
Gripping the table’s edge, I opened my mouth to speak, but another voice strangled the words in my throat.
“Is this man bothering you,mo stoirín?”
Pain.
Every muscle in my body tensed, and I froze, paralyzed with fear, as Ronan’s presence loomed over me like a dark storm cloud.
I was wrong. Kai wasn’t the storm. It was him.
For years, I’d fantasized about how I’d react and what I’d do when I had Ronan Cain in front of me—all the ways I’d make him pay and how loud his screams would be. But none of those scenarios played out. Instead, I was shaking like a fucking terrified and helpless prey.
“Look at you, my beautiful girl,” he said, touching my cheek while I was helpless to stop him.
Detective Braga read the room and shot to his feet. “Who are you?”
“Oh, how rude of me not to introduce myself.”
In the time it took me to blink away the moisture gathered in my lashes, Ronan pulled out a gun and shot the detective three times. He collapsed, toppling the table as the screams and stampeding of those around us filled the air.
With my mouth gaped open, I turned, finally facing the monster who had plagued my dreams, his claws buried deep in my soul for so long.
“What are you doing here?”
His large hands wrapped around my arms, hauling me to my feet. “Finally retrieving what belongs to me.”
“No,” I gritted out, reaching for my knife, but he twisted my arm, pinning it to my back, and pressed the barrel of his gun to my face.
“Don’t get brave now, Athena. I might have come all the way here for you, but don’t make me do what I should have done years ago the night you rejected me.”
I struggled to break free, but he tightened his grasp, and I hissed in pain as the pressure nearly popped my shoulder out of its socket.
“Kill me. I’d rather die than go with you. Do it!”
His rumbling laughter against my ear chilled me to the bone.
“That’s cute. You making a scene.” Ronan waved over a man who I hadn’t noticed until now. “Check his pockets.”
With his boot, he kicked Raymond’s body, flipping him over on hisback, and searched his pockets, pulling out his badge and a brown wallet. Despite the fact the detective was about to turn me in, I couldn’t help the feelings of anguish at the sight of him on the ground, wounded, still attempting to breathe as his lungs rattled. He was a good man, trying to do his job and do right by his son.
“He’s a cop.”
“Interesting choice of friends.”
“He has a young son,” the man said, holding a picture of Thiago.
