Deviant (Boys of Winter #3) - Sheridan Anne Page 0,145

you just letting him get away with it?”

King lets out a breath, blowing his cheeks out and looking at me as though he’s preparing to break my heart all over again “He’s not getting away with anything. We’re all getting away with it,” King tells me, making my breath come in sharp, painful gasps.

“You were in on this?” I question, the betrayal hitting me like a freight train.

King nods. “You need to understand, Winter. We did it to protect you. My father … he wasn’t the man that you believed him to be. He had us all fooled, even me.”

My gaze narrows and I quickly flick my stare to Carver, making sure that he’s not about to try anything. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demand, my head hurting and my heart lying in a million, shattered pieces at my feet.

King drops down on the armrest of the couch behind him, his head drooped, but his eyes still on mine. “My father let you see the pieces of him he needed so he could win you over, just as he did with your father. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. It’s what he used to always say to me. It was all a game. He … fuck, Winter. He was working against us the whole time.”

I shake my head. “No, I don’t believe that for one second. He was like the father that I never got the chance to have. He … he took me in when I was a baby. I lived in your home. He said he was devastated when I was sent to live in foster care. He wanted me to stay.”

“I’m sorry,” King murmurs. “We confronted him a few nights before the ball and he admitted to working with Royston and Scardoni, but we knew how much you valued and trusted him. He was going to die anyway so we decided not to put you through the pain of learning that he couldn’t be trusted. You’d already gone through so much, we couldn’t bear to see you in pain over him.”

“So, you just poisoned him in the living room and hoped that I’d never find out and instead, have me shit-scared of being alone with all the other heads of Dynasty, fearing that they’re about to kill me too. You had no right to keep me in the dark, and absolutely no right to kill a member of my organization without my approval. You crossed a line.”

Grayson shakes his head. “Listen to yourself, Ellie. Are you seriously going to stand against us on this? Tobias was a dangerous man. He had you believing that he was some kind of substitute father to you, when in reality, he was the one who had access to your whereabouts all these years. He was the one who was telling Paris where to find you, and he was the bastard who told Royston where your parents were staying that night. For eighteen years, he built a sob story around you being a long-lost daughter to him, that he even had his own son believing it. Don’t be fooled, babe. The second everyone else was out of the picture, he would have worked his way right up beside you, and the second you looked away, he would have stabbed you right in the back.”

I back up again, not liking what I’m hearing, but there’s too much evidence. I’ve never had a reason not to trust these guys and while my head is screaming that they are wrong, this is just too big to lie about.

Are they really telling me that the man I trusted was the one responsible for giving up my parents' location to the man who ended their lives?

Fuck no. How could I have been such a fool. I trusted blindly. “He took me in as a baby,” I remind them. “How could he do that?”

King stands, taking my hands and this time, I let him. “He didn’t,” he whispers. “You never stayed with my family as a baby. It was all a story that my mother went along with. Hell, they even had me fooled too.”

“Then … who did take me in after my parents were killed?”

King shakes his head, having absolutely no idea, just like the rest of us. “That’s a good question,” he says. “But I promise, we will find out. I want you to know who you are and where you come from, even if that means digging through eighteen years of bullshit