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“I thought he was your boss,” Seamus sneers. “The one you’re all bowing to now.”
Willow creeps forward, pressing her warmth to my back and dropping to her knees beside her brother.
“Perhaps that’s a good idea,” Konnor speaks up, and my attention shifts to him.
I narrow my eyes. “What’s that?” Perhaps I read him wrong and he was in on whatever Seamus concocted all along.
Konnor eyes me. “Do you remember what I said to you the day you left my office, looking for your wife? She was in the other room.”
I stare at him as my mind clicks in.
The waft of night jasmine. The day I knew she was there but I didn’t hunt her down.
Jesus, had she been hurt and hadn’t told me? My gaze drops but one word lifts my attention back to the man before me, the only one in this place who I respected enough to fear, if only for an instant.
“Kneel. Will you kneel for her?”
Seamus gins and gestures with his gun while the men around him shift.
I try not to smile, all too aware that while they would let him kill one of the family heads, humiliating us might be that one step too far on men who’ve had loyalty reared into them by my father and Konnor’s.
Keeping my back straight, and my eyes on Konnor alone, I lower myself until my thigh screams and first one knee hits the concrete, then the other.
Months ago I failed Willow by letting her be taken by her uncle while I was distracted, and it cost my father his life. Guilt still claws at my gut but I understand now why he didn’t fight, why he accepted his fate, knowing it gave me the moment I needed to save my wife and the boy who has become my brother.
Now, I have that same opportunity, if from a different perspective.
Konnor nods, some of the tension leaving his face, apparently satisfied by my unspoken reason, so I address my next words to Seamus.
“We are one family. Two sides, but joined. We can have more than one seat of power, though I don’t expect you to understand that.” I count the seconds off in my head, working my knee slightly forward to press to Roman’s back.
In my periphery, he shifts, exposing the mat-black butt of a pistol I didn’t think he’s used today so far. My chest expands with the bubble of hope and I fight for control of myself. Like before, the air in the room holds, pensive like the moment before a thunderhead rolls through.
But that’s the thing about storms—they can be deadly, or armless, all noise and washing away too fast to be replaced by the searing heat of a world washed fresh.
We are about to find out what sort of storm Seamus Cunningham has wrought.
“Fuck, you’re wordy. I always liked that about Konnor, you know. He says what he thinks and shuts up.”
“Unless he’s had whiskey.” I grin at the memory of crawling through Konnor’s house on a break from the same boarding school Roman attended, seeking more of the golden ambrosia when I couldn’t put two feet beneath me.
“Cheap drunk,” Konnor mutters under his breath, shooting me an amused glance.
“I aim to please.” I wiggle my toes in my shoes, seeking circulation. If I have to move, from here at least I can arch my body over Roman, but I need working limbs to be able to achieve it before he’s killed.
Mind, with this many weapons in the room, we’ll all look like Swiss cheese before the showstopper is over.
“Shut up!” Seamus lowers his gun, focusing it straight at Willow. “Both of you have had her—could have had her.” He glances across at Konnor who says nothing. “And neither of you know what a fucking lying bitch she is. Teasing and taunting with that body and her pouts,” the man pants, spittle foaming at the corner of his lips. “Whore,” he whispers, as though his adrenaline rush of utter contempt is spent, glaring at her through glazed, mad eyes.
I have no doubt at this distance that he won’t miss, and I curse myself for not holding her back.
“She can be a royal pain in the ass,” I agree.
Willow snorts and mutters something I can’t make out.
Still fighting, still so beautiful.
No matter what Cunningham says, he can never steal the memories I have of her from me. Can never tarnish them. And that assurance is all I need as my countdown hits the last twenty seconds of the promised two-minute window.
