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Felicity gave a teary laugh. “I’ve actually met your dad, you big lug. And you’re right. He is a very wise man.”
She set the phone aside and leaned her head against the back of the couch and thought of Duncan Murphy.
How different her life — and her sisters’ lives — might have been had she grown up with a man like him as a father. A man whose legacy was measured not in fear, obedience, and pain, but in love, honor, respect, and unwavering commitment to his family. She was so grateful she’d had the chance to meet the man who had shaped Ronan into the person he was.
She wiped her eyes and moved on to the next message, one left less than two minutes later.
“Guess my willpower isn’t so great.” A soft huff of laughter. “Just … let’s spend the next forty years together, Lissy-love.”
It destroyed her. Simply destroyed her.
Only Maisie’s frantic nudging against her neck stopped the storm of tears.
Several minutes passed before she was able to press play on his final message, left mere days ago.
“I don’t know if you ever listen to these, Lissy-love. But if you do … come home when you’re ready. I’ll be waiting.”
God.
What had she ever done to deserve the love of that man?
42
Fairy lights
It was a bright, sunlit day when Felicity drove through the imposing iron gates of her childhood home. Set on nearly fifty acres overlooking the Atlantic, Falcon’s Watch comprised the main house, a guest house, extensive garages and employee lodgings, and a scattering of outbuildings tucked among windswept trees. Beneath the mansion lay a labyrinth of cellars and the concealed passage leading from the library to a cave carved into the cliffs below — a passage she and Raegan had once used to escape.
Built at the height of the Gilded Age by her great-great-grandfather, shipping magnate Konstantin Sokolov, the estate possessed the same grandeur as Newport’s famed summer cottages. It had been intended as a monument to the Sokolov family’s wealth and ambition.
Then Sergei Liminov married Anastasia Sokolov.
With that union, darkness had quietly taken root. For decades thereafter, the place brooded beneath the weight of Liminov tyranny.
The estate now belonged to Andrei, Vasily’s son. Falcon’s Watch escaped the forfeiture of the Liminov holdings, having been held for generations in a Sokolov family trust. And sometime after Vasily’s death, her cousin had quietly discarded his father’s surname and reclaimed the family name that predated the Bratva.
Felicity guided the van to a stop beneath the shadow of the porte-cochère, the same one where chauffeurs had once deposited Newport society and where, years later, Bratva soldiers had stood watch.
She sat for a long moment, staring through the open window at the enormous double doors at the top of the marble steps, half expecting Sergei to appear.
The door moved. Opened.
A man stepped through the opening.
For the life of her, she couldn’t suppress the sharp inhale. Or the sudden spike in her pulse. Cold sweat broke out across her skin.
A weight pressed against her side.
Glancing down, she found Maisie stretched upright, paws braced against the seat as she nudged Felicity’s hip and issued a soft wheeze.
Felicity rested a hand on the pug’s dark head.
“I know, girl. I’m stronger than the memories.” She swallowed. “But shit, it’s hard.”
She forced herself to look again.
The man descending the marble staircase bore an uncanny resemblance to the portrait of her grandfather that had dominated the formal dining room for decades.
She had known that, of course. She had researched her cousin before reaching out. Had seen the photographs. None of that had prepared her for the reality. And for a terrifying second, she was thirteen again.
