hands trembled at the revelation and she could not help but to feel betrayed by her own brother. “I lied to him because you asked it of me.”
“Aye. As you should. You’re a loyal Sutton.”
“I should have been loyal to him.”
Because I love him.
Jasper took the wine from her hands, which was for the best. She’d been about to either spill it or toss it against the wall. “You did what was right. We all did, in our ways.”
If lying to Gavin had kept him safe, she would make the choice again just as she had done. There was no question; she would save his life before any other decision, even if it meant destroying his faith in her.
“He’ll never forgive me for this,” she whispered, the words torn from her.
“He’ll forgive you,” Jasper vowed. “Because ’e has to marry you now, the whoreson. No Winter is going to bed my sister without making an honest woman of ’er.”
Her brother was serious, she realized. Jasper intended to see her married to Gavin Winter. And while her foolish heart leapt with hope at the thought, the rational part of her mind knew that marrying Gavin without earning his forgiveness would be an even greater blow than watching him turn his back on her this morning. She would not force him to wed her.
And that meant he could never be hers.
Gavin was bruised and battered, bloody and more miserable than he’d ever been in his life. He could recall all the damned years of his existence now, though the feeling was still strange, all this remembrance after so many weeks of emptiness. Still, he knew the difference.
By the time he reached the back entrance of The Devil’s Spawn, the gaming hell he and his half brothers and sister owned and operated together, he felt a bit more like himself. But the homecoming was bittersweet.
Because it didn’t feel like home when he rapped on the door and was swept inside the corridor by a guard who looked as if he had just seen a corpse come back to life. It didn’t feel like home all the way to his brother Dom’s office.
And Gavin knew the reason why. It didn’t feel like home because she wasn’t here.
But everything he’d known with her, he reminded himself, had been a bloody lie.
He could never forgive her for what she had done. She had committed an act of betrayal so deep, so cutting, there would be no healing.
Gavin didn’t bother to knock and announce his presence. He threw open the door and crossed the threshold, halting at the sight meeting him.
Within, he found three of his half brothers. Dom, Devil, and Blade. They had been gathered around Dom’s desk, and it had appeared as if they were discussing something of great import when he had intruded. Three sets of eyes hit him at once.
Dom, the eldest of them all, responsible for the daily running of The Devil’s Spawn, spoke first. “Holy Christ, you look like shit.”
He passed a hand over his ravaged face. The bout with Jasper Sutton earlier had not been pretty. “Ain’t dead though.”
“Thank the Lord for that,” Devil said.
Blade cocked his head. “I don’t know, brother. You look as if you’ve recently escaped the body snatchers.”
Emotion rose within Gavin, strong and fierce. He had missed his family. He loved them and their antics. Their sallies, their banter, their howls of laughter, their knife-tossing competitions, the way they protected one another no matter what happened.
He was home here, amongst people he could trust.
“I feel as if I’ve escaped the body snatchers,” he told Blade wryly. “I’ve spent the last few weeks at The Sinner’s Palace, kept under guard by Jasper Sutton, without an inkling as to who the hell I was.”
“You remember us,” Dom said. “Your memory has returned?”
“Aye. Why else would I be here?” He searched his brothers’ countenances, feeling as if something were amiss.
Dom winced. Devil lowered his gaze. Blade cleared his throat.
His instincts never failed him. Something was wrong. Desperately, terribly wrong.
This was not the bloody welcome he had expected. Unless he was mistaken, there was guilt on every one of their damned faces. Suspicion began to rise.
“Have you nothing to say?” he demanded. “Any of you?”
He’d never known them to hold their tongues. A right vocal lot, the Winter siblings.
“We knew you were with Sutton,” Dom said.
What the bloody hell?
He listed on his feet, feeling as if he had taken another blow in addition to the ones Jasper Sutton had landed