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Turning, she faced him as he entered the kitchen. He was taller than his father, easily six two. His black hair was cut close, a midnight shadow over his scalp as his black eyes watched her with inscrutable mystery. A mystery she’d always seen in his eyes whenever he’d been around. Linc had been kind to her whenever he was home, but unlike others he hadn’t pretended a love or a connection that wasn’t there. She’d wondered if that was merely because he was years older than his sister, or if he had known the truth.
At least he hadn’t lied to her as everyone else had. He hadn’t led her along that gilded path that led to the belief that she might belong somewhere. “Why are you here?” she demanded the second he cleared the kitchen doorway. “After all these years you suddenly find an overwhelming need to play brother? Where were you when Claire needed you?”
When it had been Claire he faced within Cat’s body. During that time that Cat had slept, protected by a spirit that walked and talked within her body.
Anger flashed in his dark gaze. “I’m not here to discuss Claire, Cat. I refuse to discuss Claire.” Something painful and dark filled his expression for a moment. “This is about my father. He may be an asshole, and he may not have always been kind . . .”
She had to laugh at that.
“Dammit, Cat, I won’t let Wyatt railroad him. If he was as terrible as those charges claim, then he would never have helped you.” Loyalty was something that dug sharp, merciless claws clear to the heart and soul of who Lincoln Martinez was as a man. Like his uncle and his grandfather, he was a man born to lead, one born to shelter others and it was evident Raymond had convinced him of his innocence.
Who would he believe, she wondered. His father, or the woman his sister had sacrificed so much to protect?
“It is inconceivable to me that you’ve allowed him to fool you,” she bit out in disgust, infuriated that such a smart, intuitive man couldn’t see the evil that infected his father. “Let Wyatt railroad him? Linc, if I could get away with it, I’d kill him myself. As a matter of fact, if I could have convinced several Breeds to let me, I would have murdered him, gladly, years ago.”
Linc stared at her as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. After several seconds his expression hardened, became emotionless.
“He wouldn’t have betrayed his daughter nor his sister like that.” The hard iciness in his voice was something to be wary of. It was dangerous, a warning of retribution if he felt it warranted. “I admit he wasn’t always kind . . .”
“Kind?” she sneered in disbelief. “There wasn’t a day that Claire didn’t feel his hatred, and once I became aware once again, there wasn’t a day that I didn’t feel it.”
Sometimes blood was thicker than water, it seemed. Funny, Linc had managed to surprise her. She’d expected him to at least be curious why she hated Raymond so deeply. Why she wanted to kill him, would have killed him, easily.
“Believe what you want to. Why are the two of you here?” Pushing her fingers through her hair, she reminded herself that she shouldn’t have been surprised.
Linc might have pretended to be her brother when he was home on leave, but he wasn’t her brother. She was nothing to him.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, still staring at her too intently, a brooding frown pulling at his brow as he watched her. “I was hoping you’d come to the tribunal with us, present a family front. If for no other reason than to preserve your own precarious safety. He protected you. He deserves that much.”
He’d protected her?
She blinked back at Linc before she had to laugh again, mocking amusement nearly choking her as she stared at him.
“Is that what he told you? That he protected me?” She questioned him in disgust as one hand went to her hip in challenge. “He really managed to push those words past his lips without choking?”
“Well, I’ll be damned if anyone found you while you were under his roof,” he claimed, frustration filling his voice. His gaze wasn’t filled with frustration though, it was hard, cold and analyzing.
“Do you really believe that, Linc?” she asked, certain he had to at least suspect the truth. “They have proof that he contacted a known Genetics Council informant just after leaving the meeting where it was proven he not only sold his sister to them, but knew where she was all along. He let her die during one of the most horrifying acts anyone could endure.”
Why had Terran and Orrin kept this from him? They knew the truth.
“The hell they did. Cat, he was accused, not proven.” He was fighting the truth, she could smell it, sense it.
“He was lying,” she snapped. “Everyone there knew he was lying.”
She remembered the scent of Grandfather Orrin’s horror and his slow acceptance that his eldest son had done something so horrible. He’d known Raymond had done just as he was accused of doing. He’d sold his sister and allowed her to suffer to death beneath a surgeon’s scalpel.
“Breeds?” Linc questioned, his voice, his jaw tight with fury. “They smelled his lies? And I’m supposed to accept that?”
“I smelled his lies.” Staring up at him, fists clenched to hold back the claws she wanted to bare, she silently begged him to call her a liar.
He blinked back at her, silent now, his face drawn so tight it could have been carved from marble.
He knew what she was, knew what she had been to his sister, and if he didn’t know she had no reason to lie to him, then he’d learned nothing over the years since she’d come into his family.
“Then why help you?” He didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to accept it, but at least he wasn’t denying it completely any longer.
“Because he had no other choice,” she pointed out. “His brother and father were part of it. You were part of it and he knew it. He was told it was the only way any part of Claire would survive and he had to preserve the illusion that he loved his daughter. He couldn’t let any of you suspect how he truly felt. If he did, then he risked his secrets being suspected or even discovered. But don’t fool yourself into thinking there was a day of my life in that house that he was ever kind. Unless you were there.”
