JARED-1(Lane Brothers, Book 4)(3)

My heart stutters and the monitor starts beeping wildly when he walks closer and leans in to look deep into my eyes. The blue is so like Jared’s that I can’t look away from their hypnotic pull and I swallow again, hearing my own heartbeat race in mechanical beeps.

“You want to lie and hurt us, I will make sure you regret it, but if, if you want to be one of us and live the happiest life you will ever have, you got to work for it. Understand?”

Is that what I want? I know it is. I’ve seen my babies in Jared Lane’s eyes since the moment I first got a glimpse of the dark blue depths. I want everything I could ever possibly have with the man. Babies. Marriage. Hell, I’d take mistress status and die happy just to have that little piece of him.

But I’m not good enough for him anymore and I know it. Who wants a woman who lied and cheated for months while he did nothing but be nice to me?

My parents are right, I’m nothing and I never will be. Why should I saddle the Lanes with my traitorous hide when I belong in that nest of vipers who spawned me?

“Miah—”

“You’ve got a lot of thinking to do, honeydew. Now stop those tears I see brewing there and get some rest. You look worse than shit and I don’t want Trace and Clari getting all upset when they see you tomorrow.” He smiles, losing that deathly serious look so fast, my head is spinning in shock when he turns and leaves with a chuckle.

It’s only when he’s gone and I’m left completely alone that I let out the breath I’d been holding and my heart-rate monitor stops going crazy. I let the tears that I’ve been holding back go and start streaming in silent tracks down my cheeks.

This is why I was so relieved to be halfway to dead in that alley, and why waking up in the first place was a hard pill to swallow. Not only do I have to live with the knowledge that I am alone and worse off than I was before, but I now have Jared’s hatred to bear as well as my own.

I’ve lived with this self-loathing for months and only once contemplated ending it all quickly, and yet now—as I lie in this bed, broken, bruised, and hurting in every cell I possess—I know that those feelings weren’t the worst I could feel.

I am weak and pathetic and nothing like the woman I’d once hoped to be. No, Cleo took that away from me with her kind smiles and treacherous tongue and I’m as dead inside as they could have made me.

But Jared deserves better, and no matter how much it hurts, I’ll do everything in my power to ensure that when this is all said and done, I will be gone enough that he can forget my existence.

I just hope the sacrifice I’m planning to make will be enough to fix the monumental mistakes I’ve made, and maybe one day they’ll remember me with some sort of fondness and a kind word for the girl I used to be.

“We need to talk.”

I squeak and peep at the door when that growl reverberates through the room, only to see Jared standing in the doorway, glaring at me so fiercely that I feel cornered.

“Yes, we do. Jared, I—”

“You’ll be transferred to our home sometime during the course of the day where a private nurse will care for you while you convalesce. My family have graciously offered you a safe place to heal while we sort this mess out, but—”

“No! Just let me go home.”

Please, please, please just let me go home. I have items there that need to be retrieved and a backup plan that may not be the world’s most genius notion, but if I work things just right I think we should be able to bring the Patriots down before things get worse.

Most importantly, we should do it before they get Lynn out of her little cage. Yeah, I heard everything that day, when they beat me so bad I lost half a molar to Clyde Rydell’s fist.

They want that feral animal back and they’ll stop at nothing to get her now that Cleo’s out of the game.

I can’t allow that, not with what I saw happening most recently.

Chances are I’m not the only traitor. I saw Roman Lane. I saw what that man is capable of, and if that was real and not him setting the Patriots up, then the Lanes are facing worse than Lynn.

“You will go where I tell you to go, Paulette Hayes, and you will do what I tell you to do, or you’ll have worse to face than those animals we saved you from.”

Oh God.

“Jared, please, there’s so much you don’t—”

“I understand everything, Paulette. I saw it with my own eyes. You’re a liar and a traitor to everything this country stands for. What the fuck do you think they’re planning to do? Release marshmallows in the city center?!” he yells, making me cringe at the violence in his tone.

“Jar—”