up, ya said. Take out his sons, too, ya said. Didn’t listen to me and now . . . he knows you’re after him. They all do, and the MacKilligans won’t let you or me get near him again.”
Aunt Tina took a sip of some fruity-looking drink before calmly asking, “And why do you keep focusing on that little one?” She put her drink down, took a few grapes from a bowl. “We know you were in the Netherlands when she was.”
“And how do you know that, Auntie?”
Now Tina smirked. While Rina was nothing but raw rage and hatred, her twin was the cold plotter. Together, they were a dangerous pair because they had nothing but money and time.
“I’ll never understand you two,” Mairi admitted. “You could be anywhere, doing anything, but instead you focus on a family that could not care less about either of you.” It was true: Mairi’s granddad was like most of the MacKilligan men, fucking anything that walked and had a pussy. But the MacKilligan male honey badger didn’t like the single life. So no matter how many girlfriends he might keep, he always chose a mate as mean and as vicious as he could find. Sometimes she was another honey badger, sometimes a full-human. And no matter who he fucked on the side, who he lied to about divorce and children, who he promised “forever” to, it didn’t matter. Because at the end of the day, the mate the MacKilligan male had chosen was the one he stayed loyal to until the end.
“Your father—me granddad—would have never left our grandmum for your mum and he never would have claimed you two as his own,” she told them frankly. “Not ever. So I don’t see why either of you are sweatin’ about it.”
“He didn’t have a problem claiming his American children.”
There was truth to that. But, in Granddad’s defense, he’d bred those children through the meanest and most vicious honey badger female he could find in the States. He had wed both women. Just not legally. But what was a badger to do with all those stupid laws that prevented him from being married to two women at the same time? Of course, Granddad’s tragic end came when those two females found out about each other. That’s when they lured poor old Granddad to some place in Paris to plan a heist—and he never came back. The pair, however, did return. They met with the uncles, split up the available funds between the two families, and the American returned to her cubs in the States while Grandmum returned home. It was never discussed again; it was never analyzed or thought about. It was the risk a male took when he tried to have more than one honey badger mate.
“Well, choosing to acknowledge his American cubs over you . . . that was different, wasn’t it? That was because he loved their mum.”
This time the blow to Mairi’s face came from a fist. Impressive, when she thought about those ridiculous nails her aunts filed so that they resembled actual claws. Considering they both had claws naturally, it seemed excessive.
“You piece of shit,” Rina spit out in her Italian accent, “you do what we tell you.”
“We’re not paying for you to go after that Asian one,” Tina said.
Ah, yes. The Asian one. The one who thought she was so special. So smart. So much better than the rest of them. At least the other two knew their place among the MacKilligan clan. Knew exactly where they belonged. But Max Yang thought she was unique. Blessed. She was none of those things, and Mairi was committed to showing her cousin exactly that.
A commitment Mairi was not going to be dissuaded from no matter what her aunts ordered.
“Well . . . I won’t get near Uncle Will,” Mairi responded. “Not now. His sons will make sure of that.”
“You focus on Freddy,” Tina said, standing up. She pulled at the bottom of her gold bikini, digging it out of her ass. Classy! “He still has our money.”
“Don’t you mean Uncle Will’s money?”
“He lost it. Now it’s ours.”
“Everyone wants Uncle Freddy,” she reminded them.
Rina leaned in close to her and growled, “Find him. Or the money stops and then we start—on you. Understand?”
“Perfectly.”
In their matching gold bikinis and six-inch designer heels, the twins stomped off. Guards followed them and the one who had asked for Mairi’s weapons stepped in beside her. He gestured to the exit that would take her back