Trying to put all the pieces together, Francesca asked, “We’re talking about Malachi, right?”
“Yes,” Luis answered, fingers gently squeezing her thigh. “He was Ginny’s former… employer, I guess. He made a comment at the Games that sounded like hemightknow she’s with us.”
“He held her captive foryears,”Nash snapped. “And branded her like cattle.”
Francesca’s horrified gaze snapped to Genevieve, who was staring hard at the coffee table. One tattooed hand moved the sagging side of her baggy sweater higher up on her shoulder, but not before Francesca glimpsed the sinuous body of a tattooed snake draped over her collar bones.
“My father gave me to him to pay his debt. When he died, I thought I could be free. I took a chance and went to the Amauris, thinking they were the only family he wouldn’t mess with,” Genevieve explained in a flat voice. Her shoulders curled a little. “I guess I was wrong.”
Nash looked down at the witch. His expression shifted from outraged to tortured in a heartbeat. He slowly lifted his hands from the couch to place them on her shoulders, as if he wasn’t sure he should.
In a gruff voice, he promised, “You’re safe, Ginny. I won’t let anything happen to you. Ever.”
Genevieve glanced up at him, then at Luis and Francesca, before landing back on Nash again. There was something wild in her eyes when she exclaimed, “It’s not me I’m worried about! You have no idea what kind of things Malachi is capable of. Heusespeople to get whatever it is he wants. I’m not just talking about blackmail and debts. I’m talkinglives,Nash.”
In a hoarse whisper, she added, “Now he knows there are people he can use against me.”
“Right now, all we know for a fact is that he wants Frankie,” Luis argued. “He shot at me, not Nash. He tried to kidnap Frankie, not you. He’s a greedy prick who had his ego bruised.”
“But he knows,” she insisted, fingers curling tightly into the sleeves of her sweater.
Luis shook his head. “Let’s say he does. Why hasn’t he acted, then? If he wanted you back so bad, why not go after any of us before now?”
“The smartest thing to do right now is lay low,” Nash insisted. “Let me take you away for a while. If he does know you’re with us, then we get out of his orbit. If he doesn’t, then no harm done. We can go north. I know you’ve wanted to get back to the snow. I’ll get us a cabin?—”
“And what if someone’s hurt?” She vigorously shook her head. “I need to be here in case of emergencies, Nash. I can’t run away. Not again.”
The witch stood up suddenly. Her ashen face was set in hard lines when she announced, “We should get back. I don’t want to miss anything.”
Nash looked pained. He reached for her arm but dropped his hand a mere inch from catching her sleeve. “Gin…”
It was only at that moment that Francesca remembered what Marietta had said in the penthouse.They aren’t together,she realized, lips parting with astonishment.
It wouldn’t have seemed strange except for the fact that Nash was so clearly, visibly, achingly in love with Genevieve, who at least on the surface didn’t appear to notice.
The witch curled her arms around herself and offered a wan smile to her bodyguard. “We’ve got this, right?”
Nash’s throat moved with an audible swallow. “Of course,” he answered in that gruff voice.
The pair shared a long look before they made their goodbyes. Francesca waited until the windows stopped rattling from the explosive power of the m-gate before she turned to Luis. “Does she know?”
Grabbing her hand, he gently pulled her up from the couch. “That Nash is in love with her? I don’t think so.”
She let him guide her back to the entryway to pick up their bags. “I feel awful,” she admitted, unable to banish the image of Genevieve’s pale face from her mind. “Not only did I put you in danger, but now she is, too.”
Hefting their bags, Luis ordered her, “Don’t, Frankie. It was always going to happen. We’ve had guards on Ginny from day one exactly for this reason. If it wasn’t him, it’d be someone else trying to take her.”
TWENTY-SIX
She walkedalongside him to the primary bedroom, her eyes on her feet. “Still…”
“Take your mind off it,” he gently commanded. “How about you tell me what you thought of my family.”
“Your parents seem…”
“They’re a lot, I know,” Luis chuckled. “I’m sorry about them. I would’ve waited if it weren’t an emergency.”
Francesca watched him closely as he set their bags down in the bedroom. “It’s all right. Your mothers are really lovely. Even if Isabelle scares the shit out of me. Your dad’s a harder read, though.”