The room was deafeningly silent, the tension broken when Callan parted his lips, his deep voice like rolling thunder through a large room that suddenly felt so small.
“Where’s Lisbeth?”
The woman didn’t turn to look at me, her eyes locked to his as she pointed toward where she’d left me.
Callan hesitated for only a second, an expression on his face that I couldn’t read, a push and pull between them that I couldn’t comprehend.
It was as if a spell had been broken when he finally moved away from her, and as I watched him come toward me, I realized Haley had been right in what she told me about watching a man walk toward you out of the ring.
It was thrilling and terrifying at the same time. You couldn’t look at the evidence of the battle he’d fought and not fear the danger that walked toward you.
But even that fear was nothing more than a flicker against what the sight did to everything female and soft inside me.
All my pain drifted away as he approached, our gazes tangling together as he dropped to crouch beside me.
His eyes assessed the damage to my head, narrowing on the blood in my hair. But those hands I’d just watched tear another man apart were so gentle when he reached out to touch me.
“Are we dead?” he asked, the odd question causing my brows to tug together, my stomach to clench.
“I don’t think so.”
Callan leaned forward and brushed his mouth across my lips in a soft kiss that sent a shiver down my spine.
His voice a whisper, he trapped my eyes with his.
“We have to be,” he said.
“Why?”
His eyes blinked slowly, opening again with something behind them I didn’t understand.
“Because that’s the only reason I can think of for why my mother is here.”
Callan
Another week passed after the night I ended the life of Antonio Moritze. I’d spent most of my time walking between Jacob’s room and Lisbeth’s, too many hours speaking to medical staff as they kept me updated on the only two people that mattered.
Jacob had surgery to repair his knee, while Lisbeth took too long to recover from her head injury.
I was a ticking bomb in those first few days, a tension so taut that one wrong move would have broken the tenuous restraint I held on my temper.
Focusing on Jacob and Lisbeth allowed me to ignore the secrets revealed to me, allowed me to slowly understand and digest the true depths of the Rose family lies.
Standing against the wall in a large central conference room that was too tight, too enclosed, too packed with a group of people who shouldn’t have been possible, I crossed my arms over my chest, narrowed my eyes, a muscle in my jaw jumping each time I ground my teeth together.
I could barely look at a particular woman who had betrayed me worst of all.
“Tell me again,” I demanded, my voice calm despite the underlying warning.
Franklin relaxed back in his seat, the heavy sigh he released in chorus with the creak of the leather chair.
“We’ve told you two times already-“
My eyes met his.
“I seem to remember threatening to kill you the next time I found out you lied to me. The fact that you’re still breathing says a lot about the restraint I’m showing at the moment. Don’t push your luck.”
His mouth slammed shut, the color draining from his face, not from fear but in reaction to my disgust.
How fucking dare they stare back at me like they hadn’t conspired to lie? To deceive? To toy with my life without ever stopping to consider what it would do to me?
Not just to me.
To Lisbeth as well.
She may have been the pampered princess in this fucked up family, but her life had been dragged through the same mud.
My eyes flicked to my mother, my love for her warring with the hatred I felt for allowing me to believe she was dead for ten years. Pure heartbreak shone in her expression, sorrow for what she’d done. It didn’t help calm me even a little.
I locked my stare on Franklin, my words slow, every syllable lined with the naked blade of my anger.
“Explain it again.”
Scrubbing a hand down his face, he said, “We were trying to protect the family-“
“From the fucking beginning,” I roared, not in the mood for his abbreviated version of events.
Silence bled through the room, three sets of eyes staring at me, each with their own reason for the guilt reflected in their expressions.