The mantra played in her head as she slammed her hand down on the door handle and ripped the door open, only to stumble back slightly when she met her father’s familiar gaze, which paralyzed her to the floor.
Cormac was waiting, and Maeve wondered just how long he’d been there. If he’d heard everything Margot told him.
Beside her, Margot stiffened for a split second before composing her face into indifference and lowering her head in his direction. Cormac took a good look at his daughter?at her wide eyes, flushed skin, and trembling hands.
And then he chuckled like something was funny.
Dread coiled in the pit of Maeve’s stomach. She had barely even made any attempt, and he was already there, intercepting her like he’d done all her life.
“Well, well,” he sighed, his voice laced with sarcasm. “I guess a father can always count on a good woman to warn his little girl.” His gaze flicked to Margot, and Maeve instinctively stepped to the side, shielding Margot from his piercing stare. “I should’ve figured she would stick her nose where it doesn’t belong.”
Margot stood her ground. “She deserved to know.”
“Such loyalty,” he mused. Then he turned to Maeve, and his amusement faded into cold authority. “Let’s go.”
That hate, that one she always tried to believe she didn’t feel for him, started to knock at the back of her head. It gave her the courage to glare at him.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“What happened to your manners?” Cormac asked, his expression darkening as he took a firm hold of Maeve’s wrist. “And I wasn’t asking,A stor.”
Maeve hated when he called her that?my treasure?when he treated her as anything but.
Maeve struggled in his hold, trying to rip his arm away. For the first time in her life, her father’s touch repulsed her. “Let go of me.”
“Manners,” Cormac warned just as Margot stepped forward. But he put her in line quickly, leveling her with a warning look that neither Maeve nor Margot dared to challenge.
“I’ll let this one slide, Margot,” he warned. “This is a family business. You’ve done enough.”
Without another word, he yanked Maeve forward, dragging her through the suffocating corridors ofThe Grotto. She kicked against him like a petulant child, not caring that she was digging her heels into the ground.
She would do anything possible to get out of this ruse of a marriage her father was trying to trap her in.
“Stop fighting,” he murmured as he dragged her to the main floor of the bar, towards the table she’d watched them sit at. “You’ll only embarrass yourself.”
Cormac dragged her forward, stepping over the body on the floor without a care in the world, and Maeve felt a little faint. Panic wrapped around her heart, swelling bigger and bigger as he set her in front of the stranger and the rest of the men at the table.
By now, the attention of the entire bar was on them as Cormac clamped down on her shoulders with his hands and gave her a slight shove forward.
She refused to meet Jonathan’s gaze, but she could feel it?feel him. Staring at her like he had never seen a woman before.
“Here she is,” Cormac said behind her as he tugged her hoodie away, causing her hair to fall down her shoulders in bundles that teased her waist. “A better deal than a bag of cash.”
Maeve kept her gaze trained on her feet, on the trickle of blood coming from the body, staining the whites of her Converse. She had never felt more stripped raw than she felt right now?being sold off to a stranger in the presence of these men.
“You take the girl and the corpse with you,” Cormac said next to Maeve’s ear. “You marry her in three days. And we have a deal.”
Maeve felt her lungs deflate to her stomach. It was a miracle she hadn’t passed out.
But as she stood there, under Jonathan’s irritatingly intense and scrutinizing stare, she forced herself to meet his eyes from beneath her eyelashes. Hate and disgust grew within her, spreading like wildfire and setting all her feelings ablaze.
And Jonathan didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. But she saw it?the way his pupils dilated slowly when she held his gaze, and he was still looking at her when he nodded.
Maeve wanted to sink into a hole and die.
“Deal.”
And Cormac grinned.
