“I assume you told them.”
“Yeah.” Liam chuckles. “Seamus…” He pauses for a moment, pain lancing through his grief-stricken eyes. “The man I believe was Seamus was furious. He told us to end it. That he won’t put the treaty at risk for silly infatuation.” He takes a breath before continuing. “Katherine was a firecracker, though. Stubborn as a mule too.”
I chuckle at that. Ava is just like her then.
“She threatened to disown him.” He snorts in amusement. “Strolled right into his office during a meeting and told him that if he didn’t call off the arranged marriage, she would leave, and he’d be left with no heir.”
“He could have just appointed someone,” I point out, but Liam shakes his head.
“It may work that way in the Bratva, but clans are blood-only successions,” Liam divulges. “No one but a blood relative can inherit. That means not even a wife.”
“And Katherine was an only child.”
“She was.” He hesitates again, thinking over what he is about to divulge to me. “Part of me thinks she wasn’t, though.”
“Why do you say that?” Nothing in Katherine McDonough’s history gives way to the theory that she wasn’t an only child. I searched through Sheila McDonough’s hospital report the night she gave birth, and there didn’t appear to be any discrepancies.
“Right before we moved to Seattle for college, Katherine started acting…off.” Liam taps his fingers on his jean-clad knee.“She was spitting out nonsense about her father not being her father.”
“Which we now know is the truth,” I remind him.
“That we were being watched,” he keeps going. “She began to distance herself from Marianne. Katherine planned to move in with me after I got back from my Portland trip. The two of them had been falling out for a while, but I never knew why.”
“You.”
Liam shoots me a puzzled look.
“Me?” he questions. “That makes no sense. Marianne never had any interest in me. She was always head over heels for Noah. Another reason why I shot him.”
“I’m going to throw you a bone here, because I think you deserve it.” I clear my throat. “But Ava needs to be the one to tell you the whole story and what she found.”
“If this is about her theory that Marianne is somehow involved in Katherine’s disappearance,” he grumbles, “she already told me.”
“Did you listen?” I wonder. “Or did you brush her off like you did when she tried to warn you about the Seamus doppelgänger?”
Shame is etched into every pore, his shoulders sagging with the weight of his guilt.
“I can understand that her poking at the people you’ve known your entire life can be painful,” I assure him. “But if you ever make my wife feel like she is worthless or crazy, or you make her cry because you dismiss her thoughts again,” my voice turns cold, venomous, “I’ll kill you.”
Silence follows my declaration. The only sound in the copter comes from the blades slicing through the chilly air and the hum of the motor that shakes our feet. Liam’s gaze holds mine, unblinking for several moments, before he gradually shakes his head, acknowledging my words with a deep smirk.
“Break my daughter’s heart again, and I’ll give her yours.”
I chuckle. “Deal.”
“You two are fucked up,” Vas grunts from his seat, rolling his eyes. “Seek therapy.”
thirty-two
Where am I?
The scent of pine and spices fills the air outside my closed lids. I don’t need to open them to know that I am no longer in my cell at my grandmother’s mansion. Something heavy is draped over my body, but it is soft and silky. Not the scratchy wool that was covering me before.
My eyes feel swollen and as heavy as lead bricks. My lashes are glued shut, and it takes considerable force on my part to pry them apart. When I do, my vision is foggy and blurred.
There is a soft voice filling the space. Rough and sensual. His words are honey on his tongue as he reads out loud from a small book in his hands. I can just make out the shape of him through my bleary eyes. He is sitting right in front of me, at the side of the bed normally designated for a night table. My ears are still ringing from the beating I took, but his soft murmur is soothing to my wounds.
He wears a pair of light gray joggers and a fitted white shirt that stretches across his broad muscles, melding to him like a second skin.