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But my body can’t overtake that little niggling feeling in my mind.
I don’t know where the strength comes from. “Let me go,” I croak.
I’m suspended somewhere between pleasure and terror for a few moments longer before he unwinds himself from me. I rip myself away and run from the dining room, without looking back.
Lorcan
I wash down Poppy’s revelation with another swig of whiskey. But even the burning sensation as it slides down my throat doesn’t take the edge off the shock.
Poppy doesn’t have a relationship with Marcus Murphy.
Marcus Murphy doesn’t know that his daughter is here.
In my head, it was obvious. Marcus Murphy would find out I had his daughter when she stopped replying to his texts. Stopped FaceTiming him every Sunday to give him updates about college life.
It explains why he hasn’t come.
I have a lot of emotions toward Poppy right now, but the whiskey haze is making it hard to make sense of them.
Admiration. She took herself from a slum kid with a pathetic lackey for a father to the best business school in the country. There’s clearly more to her than a beautiful face and a razor-sharp tongue.
And anger. It’s not directed at Poppy though. It’s directed towards Marcus Murphy himself. It’s fresh and raw, not the pent-up shit I’ve been stewing on for years.
When he stepped aside and let me stake a claim on his daughter at the fake funeral, I always thought it was because he had a plan. His revenge would come, but he’d serve it ice cold. That’s what Murphy always did.
But he didn’t. He let that precious, rare China Doll slip through his fingers and into my fists without so much of a protest.
A snarl rumbles behind my rib cage. Just when I thought I couldn’t hate that bastard anymore.
There are voices somewhere down the hall, hushed but serious. Footsteps grow louder, faster. A smile pulls at the corners of my mouth. This must be Poppy coming back because she can’t find a housekeeper to let her into the Museum.
I set down my drink and straighten my back, turning to the doorway expectantly.
I don’t even bother to hide my annoyance when Eileen, my secretary, appears. As always, her face is hardened with frustration and crinkled from years of being a miserable old bitch. “Do you ever answer your cell?” she barks, clutching at her chest.
I raise an eyebrow. “I know you’re not talking to me like that, Eileen,” I snap.
A few deep breaths and she just about manages to control herself. “My apologies, Mr. Quinn,” she says in a tone that is anything but sorry. “But it’s an emergency. Your presence is needed at the office,now.Everyone is there.”
The hairs on my neck stand to attention. “Everyone?”
“Antoin and all of your other cousins. The car is waiting for you out front.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m stepping out of the elevator and into my penthouse office of the Quinn Ventures sky-rise building in downtown Boston.
A sea of suits around my boardroom table. All my first cousins. They all turn to me at the sound of the elevator ding, amber eyes burning. Antoin leaps to his feet. “Where the fuck have you been?” he growls, slamming a hand against my oak table. “We’ve been calling you for an hour.”
“Chill out, man,” Donnacha growls next to him.
Whatever the emergency, I need to stamp this shit out right away. He isn’t going to talk to me like that, especially not in front of my cousins. Three strides and I’m in his face. “Don’t ever talk to me like that again,” I hiss, matching his furious expression.
Like two lions standing off in the Serengeti. He’s the first to back down. Obviously.
He sinks back down to his seat and straightens his tie. “We have a problem.”
“No shit,” I snarl, “I wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t. What’s going on?”
I don’t notice the brown envelope in the middle of the table until Donnacha slides it in my direction. I rip open the flap and tug out the single Polaroid photo.
