is if I’m going to be a part of this.” She folds her arms over her chest and leans back in her seat, mouth pulled into a no-nonsense line. “If I’m going to help you, I need you to be honest with me.”
Part of me wishes that I could be, but I banish those thoughts. I can’t. For her sake and for mine.
Alexis watches me carefully, but when I do not break the silence to reveal my secrets, she lets out a throaty sigh and gets to her feet, muttering something I can’t make out under her breath.
Alexis makes for the door, and I clear my throat just as her hand reaches for the handle. She pauses, but doesn’t turn.
“Why did you run?” I ask, though I already know the answer. I don’t know why I need to hear it from her lips.
Alexis turns. “I ran because you lied to me,” she said. “I shouldn’t have had to find out about my dad the way that I did. I still don’t know what to think, whether to trust you when you say that his death was necessary. You’re still not telling me the whole truth.”
She wants the whole truth. Oddly, I am ready to give it to her, however reluctantly. Perhaps it will help her understand. Or perhaps it will push her even farther out of my reach, but at least then there will be one less secret hanging over us.
I stand up, walking around to lean against the front of my desk. “Do you want to know what happened the night your father died?”
Alexis blinks, standing perfectly still. “Yes,” she rasps.
I look deep into her eyes, clear blue lakes that swim with indecision. She doesn’t know if she wants to hear what I am about to tell her, but she is making the leap anyway.
“Sit,” I say, gesturing to the chair in front of me. When she hesitates, I add in a gentler tone, “Please.”
Alexis sits, and I consider where I should begin. I have already told her that her father poisoned her mother, which I learned from overhearing him and my father joking about it one night after they’d both had a few too many drinks. I didn’t know much about Harry Wright in those days, but I knew that he had a cruel streak. I learned that all too well on the night I killed him.
“Do you remember the video I showed you of our fathers torturing Damien Walsh?” I ask.
Alexis nods.
“They did that because of me,” I said. “Things had been heating up between us and the Irish for some time, with losses on both sides, but back in those days my father thought he was invincible. We had more territory and money than we knew what to do with, and he wanted to use that to stomp the Walshes out of existence. Only the Walshes were not defenseless, and I had suspected for a while that they were receiving outside help from an unknown source. I advised my father not to push them, to leave our borders where they were and focus on building our own businesses.”
“I’m assuming he didn’t listen?” Alexis poses.
“No. He told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and assigned me a role in the battle to come without further consideration.”
Alexis glances at the portrait of my father on the wall above the bookshelf. “I always wondered why you chose the only photo of your father where he’s not smiling to put up in your office,” she admits.
I follow her gaze, taking in my father’s stern brown, and the dark eyes that burrow through the glass.
“It’s because that’s how you saw him, isn’t it?” she guesses. “To everyone else he was the smiling, carefree billionaire. But to you he was—”
“Cruel,” I fill in for her. “He was a downright bastard, if I’m being honest.”
Alexis swings her gaze back to mine, and there is a fresh glimmer of understanding there. Perhaps even sympathy.
I don’t want her sympathy.
I clear my throat and continue. “I knew that my father’s plan would be a catastrophe, so I set up a meeting with the younger of Andrew Walsh’s two sons. Damien was known to be the most reasonable in the family, and the couple times I’d spoken to him in the past I had found him clever and shrewd.”
“You were going to betray your father?” she gasps.
I narrow my gaze. “No. I was going to help him. Under no circumstances was I going to