“Where are you going?” Saoirse snaps. “Come back here.”
“Do you think we need to kill her right now?” Taylor asks, surprising me. “I think she’s worth more as leverage, so we can get out of here.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she snaps. “Maeve thought the same thing and look what happened to her.”
Taylor’s body stiffens and he carefully asks, “What happened to Maeve?”
“I killed her, silly.” Saoirse laughs as she waves her gun about. “So don’t think of trying the same thing. Stella has to die.”
“She doesn’t,” he says, moving closer to her in a path that slowly puts himself between her gun and me. “We don’t need her. We need to retreat and regroup.”
“Retreat?” she gasps. “Now? Never. We’re winning.”
“We’re not,” he says. “She wasn’t lying when she said the earl is dead. So is her uncle. We need to retreat and recruit.”
Her eyes narrow on him and still, he moves closer. “You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not.” He slowly raises his hands in frontof him. “Think about it. Why would I lie to you? This is a mistake. Let me have the gun and ev—”
Taylor never gets the words out because as he reaches for the gun, she pulls the trigger on her stepson turned lover and he crumples to the ground.
“No!” I scream as she steps around him. I don’t know if he’s dead or not but I can’t take my eyes away from her to check.
I jump when the door slams opened again.
“Bloody hell, who is it now?” she snaps and no one answers. “I mean it, who’s there?”
“It’s just me, Mama,” Dahlia says. “Please don’t do this.”
“Don’t you get it?” she screeches. “Everything I’ve done is for you.”
“But you don’t have to do this,” she pleads. “Please. She’s my friend.”
“Oh, my sweet summer child, in this life, we don’t get the luxury of friends,” Saoirse says. She sounds sad. “But I have to do this.”
Saoirse takes another step toward me when she stops suddenly, frozen where she stands, her gaze no longer locked on me but instead, she looks as if she’s seen a ghost.
“George?” she asks. “It can’t be.”
“I go by Conner now,” the vice admiral responds as he steps forward.
“But you’re dead,” she says.
I wonder what the hell is going on.
“They thought that,” he says. “But I wasn’t. I built a life for myself, and I’ve been looking for you. Looking for our daughter.”
Dahlia gasps, clearly the only one who wasn’t privileged with the true identity. “No,” she gasps.
“You were looking for me?” Saoirse asks.
“But father?” Dahlia snaps. “What about him?”
“The man you thought of as your father was a monster,” Saoirse yells.
“But not to me,” Dahlia whispers. “He loved me.”
“He was definitely good at making people think that.” She sneers. “Maeve thought he was in love with her until he brought home a new wife to live right under her nose. He was like all men, a bastard who thought with his dick.”