Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
Every single person turns to look at me. Glasses hover mid-air, conversations cut off, music still throbbing in the background like a heartbeat.
Domhnall stands up, glaring. “What’s it matter to you, anyway? You lose my sister in the middle of role-play again?”
“He’s a real priest, you idiot,” Quinn interjects.
I keep my scowl locked on Domhnall. “It matters because Moira’s my wife.”
Quinn blinks. Slowly. As if she must have misheard me.
“Your what?”
“My wife,” I bite out again. My voice is too low, too sharp.
Isaak leans back against the bar, exhaling. “Shit,” he mutters under his breath.
Domhnall has gone rigid, fingers curling around his drink like he’s about to snap the glass in half. And he’s looking at me like he wants to take my head off my shoulders. As if he has any right to. He’s been a total shit brother to Moira. I’m the only fucking one who’s been there for her the last six months.
It’s Kira who steps forward.
“Moira?” she says carefully, her brows knitting together. “I had lunch with her earlier.”
Something inside me lurches.
My pulse thunders in my ears. “When did you see her?”
Kira exchanges a glance with Isaak before looking my way again. “I don’t know. A little after noon?”
The room is still watching me, but it’s shifting now. The shock is turning into something else—something I don’t want to name.
“She seemed…” Kira hesitates. “A little off.”
I seize on that immediately. “Off how?”
Kira shrugs, like she’s trying to remember details that didn’t seem important at the time. “Jittery, I guess? She was checking her phone a lot. But she wasn’t worried. And she said she’d be here tonight.”
Everyone looks around. She’s obviously not here.
“She’s usually late to things,” Quinn says, “But we’ve already been here for an hour and a half. If she’s this late, it probably means she’s ditching.”
My stomach drops, something ugly twisting inside me.
I look back at Kira. “But you said she didn’t look worried?”
Kira shakes her head. “No.” Then she tilts her face, frowning slightly. “She was just… being Moira. If anything, she looked… excited. I think maybe after she got a text from someone?”
I go completely still.
Excited.
After she got a text from someone.
Someone who wasn’t me.
There’s a long silence, and then Domhnall laughs. It’s low and sharp, humorless. “Ah, Christ. You really don’t know her at all, do you?”
My head jerks toward him. “What?”
Domhnall takes a slow sip of his drink, never breaking eye contact. “You’re standing here, tearing the goddamn club apart, looking for her like she’s missing.” He lets out a breath, shaking his head. “You married my sister, and you still don’t get it.”
I don’t respond. I can’t. Because something is unfurling in my chest, something slow and creeping and fucking cold.
“She does this,” Domhnall continues. “She runs. She gets restless and goes off on these wild benders, screwing whoever she wants, drinking herself into oblivion. Then she comes back like nothing happened.”
I flinch.
I hear Quinn sigh before she steps in. “Look, man… I get that this is new for you, but Moira’s always been—” She hesitates. “Unpredictable.”
I don’t even realize my hands are clenched into fists until my nails dig into my palms.
“She’s my wife,” I grind out.
Quinn winces like the word physically pains her. “Yeah, well. That was a choice, wasn’t it?”
The unspoken You should’ve known better hangs between us.
I can feel the eyes on me. Pitying. Some apologetic, some amused. Like I’m the naive fool who thought he could keep her.
Like I thought I was different.
Domhnall leans forward, voice mocking. “Tell me, Father. Did you think you’d be the one to change her?”
I exhale slowly through my nose, locking my jaw, fighting the urge to break his fucking teeth.
“I was never looking to change her.”
He scoffs. “Then what the hell are you doing here? Why are you acting like she’s been kidnapped? Face it. She’s off with someone else, same as she always is.”
“She’s not,” I snap before I can stop myself. It comes out too fast. Too desperate. But is that just because I need them to be wrong?
Domhnall gives me a long, hard look. Then he shrugs. “Then why aren’t you at home waiting for her?”
And there it is.
The final blow.
Because the truth is, I should be. I should be pacing our goddamn house, waiting for the inevitable moment she comes stumbling back in, laughing off her absence, maybe even taunting me about it, seeing how far she can push me.
It’s not outside the bounds of our original agreement. And we never updated it after the marriage.
But I don’t believe it.
I can’t.
Not Moira. Not my Moira.
Not after everything.
And yet—
I hear Kira’s words in my head again.
She wasn’t scared, Bane. She was excited.
The club is too loud. Too bright. Too fucking suffocating.
I turn on my heel without another word and walk out.
I don’t slam the door. I don’t say goodbye. I just leave, the conversations behind me picking back up, the music resuming, like none of this ever happened.