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His gray gaze deadly serious, he stares into my eyes, refusing to let me look away. “It was thirty years ago, Beauty. Our families had continued to stay loyal and work together. Her older brother was my best friend and became my father’s right-hand man as I was away, busy bloodying my own. Raymond was smart, brilliant, actually. My father recognized that, saw him as the next in line for the throne and me as merely an element of brute force. I don’t think he ever truly thought I could take over the family.”
Knowing Weston as well as I do now, I can’t imagine anyone ever doubting his strength—physical or mental. The man is vicious and unyielding when he needs to be, exactly what a father should want in a son who will take over a criminal empire.
There’s a disconnect somewhere.
Something I’m missing.
Because Weston sits at the helm, and I’ve never even heard of Raymond Rosewood.
“What happened?”
He swallows thickly and looks away, this time toward the window. “Ray, my father, and I were here one night discussing business. Dad let us know that his contacts in the FBI told him a RICO investigation was being launched.”
“What’s RICO?”
The term seems familiar, like something I’ve heard or read about, but I can’t access that memory at the moment, too distracted by the information Weston is finally giving me.
“Racketeering and organized crime. It’s what the FBI uses to bring down the mafia and other families like ours.”
I blanch. “Shit.”
“My father accused Ray of being an informant.”
My stomach clenches. I can already see where this is going, and it won’t end well.
“Raymond denied it, of course, and Father offered no proof.” He sucks in a long, slow breath, then lets it out again, like he’s gathering the nerve to finish the story. “But he told me to kill him, anyway. He was my best friend, my fiancée’s brother, and like another son to my father, but none of it mattered. Because of his paranoia, he was willing to make me kill him without any actual evidence, just supposition.”
Pressing my trembling hand over his heart, I watch his face. “What did you do?”
His teeth snap together, and he grits out the words between them. “The only thing I could do…”
WESTON
The emotions brought up by reliving that day threaten to choke me. They sit in the center of my throat, and each swallow, each breath, gets harder and harder. Only having Callista’s body pressed to mine and my arms around her is keeping me grounded in the here and now instead of lost in the painful memory.
Yet exposing the truth for the first time, giving her what she wanted—answers—might make me lose her.
She rears back slightly, her eyes wide and filled with so much trepidation that I almost release her so she can run if she wants to. “Did you…kill him?”
I take her face in my palm and glide my thumb across her soft cheek as I shake my head. “I couldn’t do it. I had a gun to his head, ready to pull the trigger, and I just…couldn’t. I told him to leave, to run, and he fled into the woods. I thought I had saved his life, but instead, I just created a bigger enemy in my father.”
“What did he do when he found out?”
“Exactly what I expected. He said I was worthless, unreliable, and that I had just doomed the entire Barker family. He told me to go out after him, to find him and fix the problem I had created.”
The uncertainty that plagued me in those moments rushes back.
The turmoil that twisted me up and threatened to tear me apart.
“He almost had me convinced to do it, but then the door opened. Wendy stepped in. We hadn’t even known she was in the house during the meeting, but she must have overheard everything. She told our father that she had taken care of the problem.”
Callista gasps, her hand settling over her mouth. “No.”
“I never thought my sister was capable of it. Her entire life, I had protected her and tried to insulate her from the family business and Father. I kept her out of it. She never showed any signs that she was interested in involvement or that she ever knew what went on behind closed doors here. And I never thought she could pull the trigger on anyone, but especially not Ray. Not when Eliza was her best friend.” Shaking my head, I remember the eerie calm she had that day when she walked in and told us what she had done. “She killed Eliza’s brother as if he were some stranger on the street, and then she told me to go bury the body.”
“But-but…” Callista opens and closes her mouth a few times, her shock rendering her speechless. “She’s the governor…”
I nod, feathering my fingers through her hair, trying to keep our connection strong when I can feel her pulling away. “We’ve spent the last thirty years maintaining the lie that I’m the head of the family controlling everything from up here and that she and our cousins play no role in any illegal doings and are fine, upstanding, patriotic citizens who just want what’s best for Montana. But the truth of it is, she stepped in the day she killed Ray as his second, earned that role in my father’s eyes, and she’s been the one pulling the strings, giving the orders since the old man died, only a few short weeks later.”
