Page 37 of Cruel Love
I’d never felt pain like it when she left, and I’d vowed never to fall foranyone again. The pain wasn’t worth it.
“Yeah, well. Whoever said time heals all wounds was talking bullshit.”
It wasn’tthatI hadn’t gotten over Shona, I had. And it wasn’t becauseshe left methatthe memories of our relationship haunted me. It was the reasonwhy.
My father never approved of Shona. As one of the current boardmembers of Legion, he was of the opinionthathis heir should marry a girl connected to the society.
Over the years, I’d lost count of the number of times he’d tried toarrange for me to date a daughter from one of the higher-ranking families of Legion, Cleo included, which went down like a lead balloon.
I’d always resisted. Mainly because it was one of the few things Icould do to piss my father off and show he didn’t control me, but also because most of the women he set me up with fell into the category of being spoiled, needy, and demanding.
Shona wasn’t from Legion. In his eyes, she was a nobody, likeWillow. She’d come from a poor family, her father was a window cleaner, and her mom was a dinner lady. I met her when we were both eighteen at a house party, and while Jackson was off fucking her cousin, Shona and I spent the night talking. We hit it off immediately, and before the night was over, I knew she was it for me.
Legion rules dictatedthatI couldn’t disclose my links to the societyor what skills I brought to the organization until the member was legally married to the non-member. There was no such thing as divorce among Legion, so as soon as Shona and I said‘I do’, and she was wearing my ring, I was going to tell her, knowing she could never leave my ass.
I planned to propose to her on her twentieth birthday when, out of theblue, she broke up with me, refusing to tell me why. A day later, I heard she was leaving town. I’d raced to her house to convince her to stay, butthatwas when she told me she knew the truth.
ThatI was a murderer.
A heartless killer who covered his hands in blood in exchange formoney.
She said she hated me.ThatI disgusted her, and she neverwanted to see me again. The worst part was, she was right. I was a murderer, and I would never change. I enjoyed watching the light dim in my target’s eyes as they took their final breaths.
Laterthatnight as I drowned my sorrows, my father confessedthathe’d paid her five million dollars to get the fuck out of my life. He laughed as he told me how she didn’tevenpause to consider his offer.Thatit was never about the blood I had on my hands, all she wanted was the check he dangled in her face.
I guess I should have expected it from my father, he had made hisfeelings toward me marrying Shona clear from the minute I told him what I planned to do. But Shona? I thought what we had was real,thatno matter what, nothing could tear us apart.
It turned out five million dollars could.
I could never decide what hurt more. The fact my father had paid herthe money, or the factthatshe had taken it. It didn’treallymatter, they’d both broken my heart and my trust.
A week after she left town, Shona was killed. A robbery gone wrongaccording to police reports. I had my own theories, certainthatLegion was behind her death.
“This is different,”Jackson said, pulling me out of my trip downmemory lane.“You’remarriedto Willow, you can’t divorce her, and he can't pay her to do a runner…“he said, trailing off as if the reason why I was so fucking morose hadjustdawned on him.“But if she was to meet her fate in anunfortunateset of circumstances, there isn’t a single thing you could do.”
I downed the remainder of my whiskey and poured myself anothershot, not replying because he’djusthit the nail on the head.
Rules statedthata member of Legion could marry someone fromoutside the organization, but their new spouse would never be accepted into the society based solely on marriage, meaning they weren’t protected by the same rules Legion were.
So the rule,‘A Legion member will not injure or maim a fellow memberunless there is good reason to’, would never apply to Willow. She would be fair game to anyone who wanted to hurt her.
It was exceptionally rare for a spouse of a Legion member to be killedby a Legion member, but my father was a different breed. He’d use anything in his power to try to control my life.
“Fuck,”Jackson sighed, falling silent next to me.
He could say that again.
Fury swirled underneath my skin. At my father. At Willow.
At myself.
“What are you going to do?”Jackson asked, pouring me a shot ofwhiskey.
“I don’t know,”I replied, staring at the amber liquid.
Thatwas the problem. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I neededan heir, but the more time I spent around Willow, the more obsessed I became. The more obsessed I became, the more I knew it would hurt when my father inevitably removed her from my life.
And for some reason, I knew if I lost Willow, it would hurt more thanwhat it had done when Shona left me.
