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She’d never imagined it would one day be her father she was having to defend a friend to, though.
“Trust me, Liza, it has nothing to do with you,” he repeated, his gaze brooding and filled with anger.
“When my lover is one of the Breeds you’re trying to run off Navajo land, then yes, I do believe it is my business.”
Her father’s shock was surprising. “There’s no way I heard you correctly.” His gaze was colder, harder now than before, shocking her.
Surely he had already guessed?
“Why are you so surprised?” Her arms crossed over her breasts once again. “You knew we were sharing a suite. You knew he had been at the house when we were attacked. As for Malachi, you seem to be forgetting what Holden Mayhew would have done to Isabelle if Malachi hadn’t been there.”
“What he did wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for him.” Audi’s finger jabbed in Malachi’s direction. The Breed followed his mate as she jumped from the love seat again.
“Because rather than trying to give her to the Genetics Council, he would have just raped her himself.” Claire surprised them all as she stood, fury flushing her face.
“Claire, what is wrong with you?” her father snapped, his gaze suspicious. “Son of a bitch, are you on something?”
The accusation had silence suddenly filling the room as all eyes turned on the Nation’s p
resident.
Liza couldn’t believe the words had left his lips. That he had dared to say something so horrible to Claire, especially in front of so many people.
The look on Claire’s face was so rife with tortured pain, Liza could only stare back at her miserably before turning to her own father again.
“So if we stand up to either of you then we obviously have to be on something? We can’t possibly be adults who are simply sick and damned tired of being treated like children, could we?” Liza asked them as her chest tightened with pain.
Ray had always aggressively fought Claire’s independence with every weapon he could come up with. This was one of them. Accusing her of doing drugs as past friends did, or not caring about her family, whatever it took to get her to back down and obey his demands rather than living as she longed to do.
Behind her, Stygian let his hand grip her hip as he moved closer.
She was certain no one heard it, even she didn’t, but she felt the growl rumbling in his chest.
“I didn’t say that,” Ray snapped back at her.
“Neither of us did.” Her father stared back at her as though he didn’t know her, though.
“No, it’s the same accusation he used when she tried to leave and go to college in California, and the same one he used when she tried to take a job at the casino rather than the receptionist at the Navajo Nation headquarters. For God’s sake, she’s his daughter and didn’t even get the assistant’s job. She was pushed down to a damned receptionist as though she were some lowly distant cousin he felt responsible for,” she accused Ray. “And he used the same tone of derision and disgust when she announced she was moving into the house with me too.”
“What other reason would she have to treat me so disrespectfully?” Ray charged.
“There was no disrespect, Father.” Claire straightened her shoulders as she battled her tears. The sight of it broke Liza’s heart. “You can’t bear the truth now, any more than you could bear it when I was younger. I’m starting to wonder if you wouldn’t have preferred to see Isabelle raped or murdered than to see her with a Breed. Just as I wonder if you wouldn’t have preferred I died in that crash.”
“Enough of this.” Terran stepped forward, his dark eyes blazing with anger as he glanced at Ray and Audi. “I’ll be damned if I’ll stand here and listen to you insult my child as well as your own. We’re not here to discuss who our adult children have taken as lovers. We’re here to discuss their safety and the fact that the security we placed on their phones and laptops has been broken.” He turned to Liza. “That, my dear, is the reason your, Chelsea’s, Claire’s and Isabelle’s security clearance was denied so quickly. The signal we tracked moved from your phone to your laptop, slid past the encryption and began sending files to a location we’ve yet to track.”
Liza stalked from Stygian into the next room. She moved across the sitting room to the bedroom and grabbed her phone off the bedside table.
Returning, she slapped it on the desk beside her father before moving to the couch, collecting her laptop and dropping it at his feet. “There you go. If you had listened to me last month, when I told you it was acting strange, perhaps you would have found the problem before now.”
Her father watched her with a hard scowl as she moved back to Stygian.
His arm slid around her, pulling her to his side as she stared back at her father challengingly. “Are we still fired?”
“Until we determine what’s going on, yes, you are.” It was Ray Martinez who stated the obvious. No doubt, he was the one who gave the order to rescind their security as well.
Liza nodded slowly, her gaze never leaving her father’s.
“Liza, I know you’re hurt and angry,” he said. “But, rather than blaming us, you and Isabelle should look to your new friends.” His gaze moved to Malachi and Stygian. “We couldn’t track it, but we know damned good and well that signal didn’t leave this hotel.”
