What the hell is he talking about?
I swallowed. “How did ye’know me ma had cancer, and that me da had an affair? I never told you any of those things.”
Morgan shrugged. “I hacked your phone.”
“You … You hacked me phone?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To see if what I was doing was working.”
I blinked. “Morgan—”
“My name is not Morgan Allen.”
My head pounded.
“If it’s not Morgan Allen, then what is it?”
“Carter Miles.”
“Carter Miles?” I repeated.
“Yup.” He nodded. “I’m from New York, not Dublin, that was a lie.”
I frowned. “You’ve given me a really bad headache.”
Morgan, or Carter, laughed. “Baby, we haven’t even come close to the headache yet.”
“Okay, Carter,” I said, placing my hands on my hips. “If you’re really who you say you are, why lie to me?”
“I knew if I told you my real name, it would pull up a red flag with the brothers.”
“The brothers?”
“Yeah, the Slaters.”
I had to sit back down.
“What has this got to do with the Slater brothers?”
“Fucking everything, angel.”
I lifted my hands to my face and rubbed my eyes.
“Okay,” I said tentatively. “Just tell me why you’re here, and why you said you planned to keep me confused.”
“The Slaters … your boyfriend … they’re not who you think they are.”
“What? They have fake names, too?”
Morgan’s lips twitched, and I decided then that I would still think of him as Morgan, because calling him another name didn’t feel right.
“No, smartass.”
When he chuckled, I felt like he was playing some sort of massive joke on me, but then I remembered what he said about hacking my phone and the fact that he knew information about my parents that I hadn’t shared with him. That put me on edge and made me very wary of Morgan and how close he was to me.
“Who are they then?”
“People with a dark past,” Morgan answered. “A past they’ve neglected to share with you.”
I raised my brows.
“You, a complete stranger, know about their past?”
“I’m not a stranger to them, angel.”
“Stop callin’ me that,” I scowled. “And get to the point of all this.”
“I knew the Slaters back in New York. I grew up in the same compound as them.”
I sat back, shocked.
“You did?”
“Yes.” Morgan nodded. “I did.”
“Was the compound like, a street, or somethin’?”
“No, it was a compound.” He shrugged. “You know, a cluster of buildings surrounded by a big wall.”
“Damien said he grew up in a small community.”
Morgan snorted. “The compound wasn’t small and neither was the community. People came and went every day, but only a certain amount of us called the place home, though.”
“I don’t feel like you messin’ with me anymore.”
“Good, because I’m not.”
Sickness swirled in my abdomen as I realised the person sitting across from me, a person I let into my home, wasn’t who I thought he was.
“Are you goin’ to hurt me?”
“No,” he answered, and he sounded sincere. “I’d never hurt you. I’d never hurt anyone … once upon a time I probably would have, but not now.”
“Then who were you referrin’ to when you said you wanted to use me to hurt them?”
“The brothers,” Morgan answered. “I wanted to use you to get to them but not physically.”
My heart pounded in my chest as fear overcame me.
“Mentally?”
“Bingo.”
“But … why?”
“Because they killed my family.”
My lips parted with shock, and my breath left me in a strangled cough.
“Wh-what?”
“As I said, angel, you don’t know the Slaters like you think you do.”
I swallowed down the bile that rose up my throat.
“Then tell me what I don’t know.”
Morgan grinned, and leaned back in his chair.
“Sit back and relax, angel. Because shit is about to get real.”
“I’ll start from the beginning,” Morgan said, clasping his hands behind his head. “Just to give you a bit of backstory.”
I didn’t answer him; I only waited.
“How much do you know about the mafia?”
My heart just about exploded.
“Excuse me?”
“The mafia,” Morgan repeated. “How much do you know about that circle of people?”
“Absolutely nothin’.”
Morgan snickered. “I figured as much.”
“What has the mafia got to do—”
“The compound where I grew up, where the brothers grew up, was a mafia base, so to speak.”
My mouth went dry.
“The boss of the compound, my uncle Marco, worked with the mafia from time to time, different drug cartels, too. Wherever business was good and there was money to be made, my uncle dabbled in it.”
His uncle sounded absolutely terrifying to me.
“We ran things from drugs, weapons, underground fighting, to prostitution,” Morgan continued. “These were things the Slater brothers were all directly involved in.”
I lifted my hand and covered my mouth.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Yes,” Morgan nodded. “You do.”
“You could be lyin’!”
“But I’m not, and you know I’m not,” he answered. “This is the reason why you’re in the dark about that entire fucked-up family. They don’t want you to know about their past because they don’t trust you with information that could land them in prison.”