Brawler's Baby: An MMA Mob Romance (Mob City Book 1) by Holly Hart Read Free Book Online Page B

scenario was that I simply raked up old memories, and when Conor left, as he inevitably word, I'd be left to pick up the pieces. My life here was hard enough as it was.
    Was he really worth it?
    Yes . This is what you want, what you've been waiting for.
    A drumbeat of nerves played its relentless tune in my head, the knowledge that I'd only get one shot at redeeming myself amplifying my tension. I'd once known Conor better than anyone alive, but that was a long time ago. He was a proud man, and fiercely determined, but if there was one thing I knew, it was that Conor could be set in his ways.
    "I'll tell you everything." I said softly. I knew that telling the whole ugly truth was the only option at my disposal that stood even the faintest chance of succeeding.
    Can I?
    An image of a high school boyfriend's face, bruised and battered at the hands of my father's thugs simply for having the temerity to ask me out on a date, flashed into my mind. Conor wasn't Jake – an innocent, sweet guy who'd barely understood that some people had dads who weren't accountants, or lawyers, or something equally dull – and safe.
    No, Conor was a man who came from the streets, a man who could be equally at home in the seedy underbelly of every city he visited, and a man who understood the cliques, the strife and the hard ways of life in the criminal underworld.
    Conor was no fool – now that he'd met my father, he would have quickly picked up on everything he needed to know about him to understand exactly how evil a man he truly was.
    His weight shifted fractionally, an unconscious response to my distracted silence, and it betrayed his desperate desire to learn exactly why I'd abandoned him without so much as a word of farewell.
    But I still couldn't shake the image of Jake's broken face – the cloud that had lain over my life, holding me back from romantic entanglements for years. Perhaps, for his own safety, I didn't have to tell Conor everything…
    Seriously, Maya. Don't lie to yourself . This isn't about Conor's safety – this is about you being afraid to lose him. Again .
    "My real name is Maya, Maya Antonov," I whispered, struggling to quiet the voice inside me. "Not Rachel. I lied to you, back then. I had to."
    "Why," Conor asked, demandingly.
    Why? It was such a simple question with so many answers. Why was my father so controlling? Why had my mother never challenged him? Why had he sent me to college in Ireland
    Of course, there was one answer that lay at the bottom of all the mystery and at the heart of the intrigue. But it was the one answer I couldn't – didn't dare – give.
    "Why?" I repeated helplessly, searching for a way to put into words something I'd struggled to overcome for my entire life.
    "You've met my father, so you know the kind of man he is. I didn't have a choice. He sent me to college in Dublin to, I dunno, keep me away from his enemies. It was street warfare back then, nobody was safe, not even –." My voice cracked as I was assailed by a wave of grief that I normally kept locked far away, where it couldn't hurt me.
    "Not even?" Conor prompted.
    I looked him in the eye. "Not even my mother."
    He flushed red with embarrassment for making me relive the memory. "I'm sorry."
    "Don't be." I shrugged. "Don't get me wrong, she was a great woman."
    But she was always too scared of Dad to actually stand in his way during his periodic rages. She failed a mother's biggest task – to protect her children. I won't.
    Conor filled the silence as I tailed off, captured by my memories. "So you had to pretend to be someone you weren't?" He prompted.
    "No!" I exclaimed. "Well, yes. But everything I said, everything I told you – it was all real."
    He raised his eyebrows disbelievingly. "Except your name. That seems like a pretty fundamental thing to lie about, doesn't it, now?"
    I stared at the man whose memory I'd loved for years, the man I'd had to leave. Was he still the same gentle giant I'd fallen for so many years